Nigerian Video Films (Revised And Expanded); Editor: Haynes, Jonathan; Paperback

Editor: Haynes, Jonathan
Revised And Exp Edition Series#:73; Africa (Ohio University); Paperback; Illustrations
267 pages
Published: July 2000
Ohio University Press
ISBN: 0896802116

Nigerian video films -- dramatic features shot on video and sold as cassettes -- are being produced at the rate of nearly one a day, making them the major contemporary art form in Nigeria. The history of African film offers no precedent for such a huge, popularly based industry.The contributors to this volume, who include film and television directors, an anthropologist, and scholarsof film studies and literature, take a variety of approaches to this flourishing popular art. Topics include aesthetic forms and distribution; the configurations of various ethnic audiences; the new media environment dominated by cassette technology; the video's materialism in a period of economic collapse; transformation of the traditional Yoruba traveling theater; individualism and the moral criVideo films are Nigeria's most popular art form. Haynes (humanities, Long Island U.) introduces ten views on this phenomenon by media directors and scholars from American, aesthetic, cultural change, economic, and feminist perspectives. Includes video scenes. The Nigerian edition appeared in 1997. A