"The aesthetic form and financial infrastructures of African popular film has transformed in recent years leading to a revision of the paradigms for thinking African screen media. This paper assesses that rethinking. It examines three things. First, I argue the analysis of the technical, financial,
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and institutional infrastructures of film has a longer history in studies of African screen media and is, perhaps, one of its most innovative aspects. Second, I expand analyses beyond the dichotomy between traditional African cinema and popular film to take in colonial and postcolonial educational cinemas, the historical and continuing presence of foreign films (U.S., Indian, French, Chinese), and emergent art-world, gallery cinemas. These have all generated rich scholarly debate but are often segregated from each other. I argue we can fruitfully analyse them as part of a single cinematic ecology. Third, I turn from a general discussion of infrastructures of distribution and exhibition to a more narrow focus on “new Nollywood” cinema in Nigeria. I re-examine recent debates about the political effects of these new infrastructures of production and exhibition and their supposed complicity with contemporary neo-liberalism." (Abstract)
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"Ce dossier se concentre sur ces transformations plus récentes afin d’analyser leur impact sur l’économie et la politique de la production et de la distribution audiovisuelle en Afrique, tout en mettant en question les cadres théoriques et méthodologiques que nous adoptons en tant que cherch
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eurs pour les étudier. Dans cette optique, le Nigeria reste un cas d’étude incontournable à même d’influencer le débat sur les transformations du secteur audiovisuel à l’échelle continentale. Pour cette raison, une section de ce numéro est entièrement dédiée aux transformations récentes de l’industrie audiovisuelle de ce pays et à une réflexion critique sur les approches utilisées pour les analyser, grâce aux contributions de trois chercheurs qui ont fortement marqué les études sur ces phénomènes au cours des dernières années : Jonathan Haynes, Akin Adesokan et Moradewun Adejunmobi. Cette réflexion critique prolonge un débat que les textes du dossier (par Anouk Batard, Abdalla Uba Adamu, Julie Dénommée et Brian Larkin) permettent à la fois d’encadrer et de dépasser, grâce à des propositions théoriques et méthodologiques innovantes, ainsi que par la richesse des données empiriques analysées." (Page 12)
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"New Media and Religious Transformations in Africa casts a critical look at Africa's rapidly evolving religious media scene. Following political liberalization, media deregulation, and the proliferation of new media technologies, many African religious leaders and activists have appropriated such me
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dia to strengthen and expand their communities and gain public recognition. Media have also been used to marginalize and restrict the activities of other groups, which has sometimes led to tension, conflict, and even violence. Showing how media are rarely neutral vehicles of expression, the contributors to this multidisciplinary volume analyze the mutual imbrications of media and religion during times of rapid technological and social change in various places throughout Africa." (Publisher description)
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"This book examines the incorporation of newly accessible mass media into practices of religious mediation in a variety of settings including the Pentecostal Church and Islamic movements, as well as the use of religious forms and image in the sphere of radio and cinema." (Publisher description)
"In this groundbreaking work, Brian Larkin provides a history and ethnography of media in Nigeria, asking what media theory looks like when Nigeria rather than a European nation or the United Stat
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es is taken as the starting point. Concentrating on the Muslim city of Kano in the north of Nigeria, Larkin charts how the material qualities of technologies and the cultural ambitions they represent feed into the everyday experiences of urban Nigeria. Media technologies were introduced to Nigeria by colonial regimes as part of an attempt to shape political subjects and create modern, urban Africans. Larkin considers the introduction of media along with electric plants and railroads as part of the wider infrastructural project of colonial and postcolonial urbanism. Focusing on radio networks, mobile cinema units, and the building of cinema theaters, he argues that what media come to be in Kano is the outcome of technology's encounter with the social formations of northern Nigeria and with norms shaped by colonialism, postcolonial nationalism, and Islam. Larkin examines how media technologies produce the modes of leisure and cultural forms of urban Africa by analyzing the circulation of Hindi films to Muslim Nigeria, the leisure practices of Hausa cinemagoers in Kano, and the dynamic emergence of Nigerian video films. His analysis highlights the diverse, unexpected media forms and practices that thrive in urban Africa." (Publisher description)
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