ABSTRACT

This is a proposal for this conference: http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=25938467410048
I'll submit my abstract after our class meeting on Tuesday, in order to include feedback.

Videastes vs. Cineastes: the (identity) crisis in African cinema.

Since 2009, Nigeria has surpassed the United States as the second largest film industry in the world, just behind India. Delivering more than two thousand titles per year, Nollywood, as it called, has set an impressive example of creating a viable movie industry in black Africa. The use of video and digital technologies has boosted the film production in Nigeria by considerably reducing the costs and the duration of the filmmaking process, as well as enabling a lucrative commercial exploitation. This has greatly empowered a new generation of Africans storytellers, who are now using video production as a way to compensate the low, and irregular presence of African fictions on African screens (TV & theaters).

Effectively, the Nigerian model of intense video activity has been quickly and widely imitated, almost replacing traditional cinema (35mm) in many Sub-Saharan African countries such as Ghana, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, or Cameroon. In fact, video filmmaking has now become the alternative solution par excellence in black Africa. Yet, instead of being unanimously embraced and appreciated, this video boom has created a split in African creation, in which the videastes (those who work with video) compete with the cineastes (those who work with film) in redefining African cinema.

The questions that this paper will attempt to answer are why the two currents are in disagreement, rather than in support of each other? What are the main reproaches made to the Nollywood model? Why is it seen by cineastes and scholars as another “problem” for African cinema, rather than the “solution” to the everlasting issues of funding, distribution, marketability, or visibility of African films?

The bulk of the essay will offer a survey of the new struggles between videastes and cineastes, which are currently bringing African cinema to a state of crisis: an identity crisis (what is the “good” African cinema), a commercial crisis (funding and distribution of African films), and audience crisis (who is the intended audience of African cinema).

Temporary bibliography
Barrot, Pierre. Nollywood: the video phenomenon in Nigeria. Bloomington: Indiana Press University. 2009.
Diawara, Manthia. African film: new forms of aesthetics and politics. New York: Prestel. 2010. (DVD edition)
Pfaff, Françoise ed. Focus on African films. Bloomington: Indiana Press University. 2004. Armes, Roy. African filmmaking: North and South of the Sahara. Bloomington: Indiana Press University. 2006.
Saul, Mahir & Austen, Ralph ed. Viewing African cinema in the twenty-first century: art films and the Nollywood video revolution. Athens: Ohio University Press. 2010.