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Contemporary African Screen Worlds

Contemporary African Screen Worlds cover image Read the Introduction

Book

Pages: 376

Illustrations: 28 illustrations

Published: April 2025

Editors: Lindiwe Dovey, Añulika Agina, Michael W. Thomas

Contributors: Jonathan Haynes, Temitayo Olofinlua, Estrella Sendra, Elastus Mambwe, Alexander Bud, Dennis-Brook Prince Lotsu, Robin Steedman, Rashida Resario, Nedine Moonsamy, Alexandra Grieve, Solomon Waliaula, Stefanie Van de Peer, Elizabeth Olayiwola, Michael W. Thomas, Asteway Mellese, Alison MacAuley, Pier Paolo Frassinelli, Femi Eromosele, Allesandro Jedlowski, Joseph Jackson, Moradewun Adejunmobi

Contemporary African Screen Worlds brings together a new generation of African screen media scholars who explore and theorize the dynamic, interactive screen worlds that have arisen in contemporary Africa due to dramatic global changes in technology. Drawing on long-term fieldwork, extensive interviews, and specific case studies, the contributors bring to life the complex materialities and entanglements of film spectatorship, fandom, production, and circulation in Africa. They particularly attend to the interfaces among film audiences, actors, makers, platforms, and screens both small and large. Engaging with more than a dozen national contexts across the continent, the book reveals the diversity of African screen media practices and the creativity and agency of the people who passionately generate them, from film craftworkers in Nigeria and film students in Ghana to film fans in Rwanda and Burkina Faso. By focusing on the work of powerful platforms (such as Netflix and MTVShuga) and ordinary people (such as domestic workers watching Nollywood films in rural Kenya), this volume grapples with the effects and affects of digitization, mobile screens, media convergence, and the televisual turn in Africa.

Contributors. Moradewun Adejunmobi, Añulika Agina, Alexander Bud, Lindiwe Dovey, Femi Eromosele, Pier Paolo Frassinelli, Alexandra Grieve, Jonathan Haynes, Joe Jackson, Alessandro Jedlowski, Dennis-Brook Prince Lotsu, Alison MacAulay, Elastus Mambwe, Asteway M. Woldemichael, Nedine Moonsamy, Elizabeth Olayiwola, Temitayo Olofinlua, Rashida Resario, Estrella Sendra, Robin Steedman, Michael W. Thomas, Stefanie Van de Peer, Solomon Waliaula

Praise

“Through the evocative concept of screen worlds, this exciting volume models an ethical, reflexive approach to undertaking African studies with resources from the Global North. The result is an original volume that centers Africa and the experiences of Africans in their relationships to screen worlds. Ambitiously laying out the fascinating dimensions of film practices across the continent, the volume foregrounds the agency of Africans, who appear strongly as participants in rapidly changing screen worlds that exploit the affordances of new media.” - Cajetan Iheka, author of African Ecomedia: Network Forms, Planetary Politics

“Contemporary African Screen Worlds is a highly engaging and cutting-edge collection that offers a snapshot in a dynamic slide show about changing technologies and screen worlds across the continent. Toggling back between the global and the local while focusing as much on global platforms like Netflix as it does on practices of domestic workers watching Nollywood films in Kenya, this volume carefully attends to the messy and contradictory ways people engage with all types of screens.” - Lindsey B. Green-Simms, author of Queer African Cinemas

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Author/Editor Bios Table Of Contents Rights Additional Information Funding Information

Author/Editor Bios

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Lindiwe Dovey is Professor of Film and Screen Studies, SOAS University of London.

Añulika Agina is Associate Professor of Media Studies at the Pan-Atlantic University, Lagos.

Michael W. Thomas is Lecturer in Film and Screen Studies, SOAS University of London.

Table Of Contents

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Foreword / Jonathan Haynes  ix
Acknowledgments  xv
Introduction: Exploring Screen Worlds / Lindiwe Dovey, Añulika Agina, and Michael W. Thomas  1
Part I. Mobile Screen Worlds and the Televisual Turn in Africa
1. We Need New Screens: MTV Shuga Naija, Youth Sexual Agency, and the “Mobile Screen” / Temitayo Olofinlua  19
2. Maîtresse d’un homme marié: Retracing Womanhood in Senegalese Screen Worlds / Estrella Sendra  35
3. Netflix: The Enabling Disruptor in Nigeria / Añulika Agina  53
4. Examining the “Opportunities”: N-Net’s Zambezi Magic Channel and the Emerging Zambian Film Industry / Elastus Mambwe  75
Part II. Crafting the Production and Circulation of African Screen Worlds
5. From Intrastructures to Treehouses: Circulations in Nollywood Distribution, Locations, and Craft / Alexander Bud  91
6. Entrepreneurialism and Enterprise: Film Students Redefining Ghana’s Creative Landscape / Dennis-Brook Prince Lotsu  113
7. South Africa’s Female Only Filmmakers Project: From On-Screen to Calling the Shots / Lindiwe Dovey  127
8. Female Film Entrepreneurs in Ghana: Shirley Frimpong-Manso and Evelyn Asampana in Focus / Robin Steedman and Rashida Resario  139
Part III. Engendering Screen Representation, Spectatorship, and Curation
9. Domestic Disturbance: Afro-Feminist Poetics in Dilman Dila’s Ugandan “Horror Romances” / Nedine Moonsamy  153
10. Fashioning African Screen Worlds: La noire de . . . and Les saignantes / Alexandra Grieve  167
11. Nollywood Cinema and Its Housemaids’ Fandom: The Case of Eldoret, Kenya / Soloman Waliaula  185
12. Archival Films in Contemporary Archives: Fragmented Legacies of a North African Women’s Film Heritage / Stefanie Van de Peer  201
Part IV. Theatrical Screen Worlds: In the Church, Cinemas, Video Halls, and Hills
13. Cinema in the Church: The Evangelical Film Worldview in Nigeria / Elizabeth Olayiwola  217
14. Tezeta in Motion: A Glimpse into a Performative Ethiopian Screen World / Michael W. Thomas and Asteway M. Woldemichael  233
15. Hillywood and Beyond: Forms of Spectatorship and Screen Worlds in Rwanda / Alison Macaulay  245
16. FESPACO @ Fifty: Forms, Formats, Platforms, and African Screen Media / Pier Paolo Frassinelli  257
Part V. Transnational Screen Worlds: Music Video in Africa, Beyond, and Back
17. Music Video and the Transnationalism of Nigerian Screen Media: Watching Falz’s “This is Nigera” /  Femi Eromosele  269
18. Rolling to “A-Free-Ka”: Seeing and Hearing the Transmedia Screen Worlds of Kahlil Joseph’s “Cheeba” /  Joe Jackson  283
Afterword 1. The Political Worlds of African Screen Media / Alessandro Jedlowski  297
Afterword 2. Africa’s Contemporary Screen Media Era and Questions of Autonomy / Moradewun Adejunmobi  301
Filmography  307
References  311
Contributors  337
Index  343
 

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Additional Information

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Related Links Paper ISBN: 978-1-4780-3142-0 / Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4780-2820-8 / eISBN: 978-1-4780-6041-3 / DOI: https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478060413

Funding Information

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We are very grateful that this book has been able to be published Open Access due to generous funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No. 819236—AFRISCREENWORLDS)