Nigerian Film Festival

Most scholarship on African screen media acknowledges out- right that there have been, and continue to be, many trends and traditions in filmmaking across the continent and in the African diasporas, making it impossible to distinguish any particular coherence to the category of African filmmaking. Many scholars have advanced this argument through analysis of distinct production infrastructures, films, genres, nationally located cinemas, particular filmmakers, and critical concepts such as tradition and modernity. Furthermore, the rise of popular video-movie making in Ghana and Nigeria from the late 1980s onward, and the discussion and research that have grown around that practice, have compelled scholars of African screen media to pay far greater attention to the “different material conditions of creation, circulation, and consumption” of audio-visual cultural products. There has been relatively little research, however, on the specific sites where films are screened, consumed, and interpreted: film festivals, multiplex cinemas, makeshift video halls, people’s homes and courtyards, and internet cafés. The focus of my current research, and of this essay, is film festivals, both as global sites for the curation and reception of films by Africans and as sites within the African continent for the curation and reception of films from all over the world.