Indigenous Narratives as Experimental Cinematic Texts in Nigerian Films

2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Joshua Usman
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Oral Tradition ◽  
Textual Analysis ◽  
Film Industry ◽  
Film Theory ◽  
African Film ◽  
Film Texts ◽  
Folk Narratives ◽  
Nigerian Film ◽  
Folk Stories

The paper seeks to consider the employment of folkloric tales (traditional stories) in indigenous Nigerian films as stimuli for establishing a definitive film industry. The integration of oral features into Nigerian films dates back to the era (1980–1990s) of early films in Nigeria: consider Ajani Ogun (1976), Daskin da Ridi (1990), Egg of Life (2003), Festival of Fire (1999) etcetera. Studies on Nigerian film and oral culture established that the strong narratives of Nollywood films are drawn from indigenous folk stories; indeed, the films are mostly adaptations of folktales. This article demonstrates Nigeria’s cultural history through investigating the role of culture as a strong contributor to media development in Nigeria. The research is based on textual analysis of three Nigerian films, namely The Fish Girl (2016), Hypocrisy (1992) and Daskin da Ridi (1990) as primary texts. The methodology is primarily textual. The study draws on a textual analysis of selected Nigerian films to determine their sources. The study adopts the African film theory which juxtaposes the pre-modern with modernity where the oral tradition and filmmakers are fused together, as highlighted by Tomaselli (1992). The hypothesis is that traditional folktales play an important role in the development of the Nigerian film industry (Nollywood). The study reveals that folktales and other oral genres set a footprint for film texts in Nollywood movies. Therefore, this indicates that there is a clear (although thus far, often ignored) bond between indigenous folk narratives and modern Nigerian films.

Cinesonidos

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacqueline Avila
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Mexican Revolution ◽  
Film Industry ◽  
Primary Source ◽  
Film Music ◽  
Sound Studies ◽  
Mexican Film ◽  
Commercial Medium ◽  
Film Genres

Cinesonidos: Film Music and National Identity During Mexico’s Época de Oro is the first book-length study concerning the function of music in the prominent genres structured by the Mexican film industry. Integrating primary source material with film music studies, sound studies, and Mexican film and cultural history, this project closely examines examples from five significant film genres that developed during the 1930s through 1950s. These genres include the prostitute melodrama, the fictional indigenista film (films on indigenous themes or topics), the cine de añoranza porfiriana (films of Porfirian nostalgia), the revolutionary melodrama, and the comedia ranchera (ranch comedy). The musics in these films helped create and accentuate the tropes and archetypes considered central to Mexican cultural nationalism. Distinct in narrative and structure, each genre exploits specific, at times contradictory, aspects of Mexicanidad—the cultural identity of the Mexican people—and, as such, employs different musics to concretize those constructions. Throughout this turbulent period, these tropes and archetypes mirrored changing perceptions of Mexicanidad manufactured by the state and popular and transnational culture. Several social and political agencies were heavily invested in creating a unified national identity to merge the previously fragmented populace owing to the Mexican Revolution (1910–ca.1920). The commercial medium of film became an important tool in acquainting a diverse urban audience with the nuances of national identity, and music played an essential and persuasive role in the process. In this heterogeneous environment, cinema and its music continuously reshaped the contested, fluctuating space of Mexican identity.

scholarly journals Living through Transition: The Poetic Tradition of the Jbala between Orality and Literacy at a Time of Major Cultural Transformations

2021 ◽  
pp. 1434-54
Author(s):  
Sarali Gintsburg
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Group ◽  
Oral Tradition ◽  
Textual Analysis ◽  
National Level ◽  
Arabic Language ◽  
Poetic Tradition ◽  
Standard Arabic ◽  
Cultural Transformations ◽  
Identity Changes ◽  
Arabic Speaking

In my paper I analyze transformations happening in the oral tradition of the Jbala, an Arabic speaking ethnic group inhabiting the western and central part of the Rif mountains of northern Morocco. My analysis centers on the work of two modern poets, who although they see themselves belonging to the oral tradition, compose their poetry in writing. Their poetry is, therefore, characterized by use of two different, and, to some degree, opposite modes of language – the oral and the written. This is especially interesting in the context of the Arabic language, where, officially, only Standard Arabic exists in two modes – oral and written, while its dialectal varieties are seen as exclusively oral forms of communication and ‘vulgar’ poetry. The textual analysis will be substantiated by information received directly from both poets. To complement this analysis I examine this tradition through the lens of major cultural and identity changes occurring in local Moroccan genres and traditions at the national level and argue that the oral tradition of the Jbala is converging with the more popular and prestigious tradition of the malhun.

“On Reading The South African Film Industry”

Critical Arts ◽  
1980 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Harvey
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Film Industry ◽  
The South ◽  
African Film

Vivre Ici

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alison J. Murray Levine
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Film Theory ◽  
Space And Place ◽  
General Interest ◽  
Critical Approach ◽  
Political Consequences ◽  
The Social ◽  
Contemporary Media ◽  
Being There ◽  
Selection Of

Vivre Ici analyzes a selection of films from the vast viewing landscape of contemporary French documentary film, a genre that has experienced a renaissance in the past twenty years. The films are connected not just by a general interest in engaging the “real,” but by a particular attention to French space and place. From farms and wild places to roads, schools, and urban edgelands, these films explore the spaces of the everyday and the human and non-human experiences that unfold within them. Through a critical approach that integrates phenomenology, film theory, eco-criticism and cultural history, Levine investigates the notion of documentary as experience. She asks how and why, in the contemporary media landscape, these films seek to avoid argumentation and instead, give the viewer a feeling of “being there.” As a diverse collection of filmmakers, both well-known and less so, explore the limits and possibilities of these places, a collage-like, incomplete, and fragmented vision of France as seen and felt through documentary cameras comes into view. Venturing beyond film analysis to examine the production climate for these films and their circulation in contemporary France, Levine explores the social and political consequences of these “films that matter” for the viewers who come into contact with them.

Female Entrepreneurship in the Nollywood Film Industry

2018 ◽  
pp. 126-144
Author(s):  
Floribert Patrick C. Endong
Keyword(s):  
Women Entrepreneurs ◽  
Film Industry ◽  
Future Prospects ◽  
Female Entrepreneurship ◽  
Female Entrepreneurs ◽  
Women Entrepreneurship ◽  
Early Stages ◽  
Production And Distribution ◽  
Micro Level ◽  
Nigerian Film

The Nigerian film industry (Nollywood) has predominantly been presented as a masculine world. This is not unconnected to the fact that most of the players and central figures in the history and growth of the industry are masculine. However, female entrepreneurship has marked the industry right from the early stages of its existence. Like their male counterparts, female entrepreneurs have, through exceptional entrepreneurial techniques, provided actionable solutions to some of the production and distribution crises which the industry has witnessed. Using empirical understandings, this chapter critically explores female entrepreneurship in the sector. It provides a micro-level perspective of socio-economic challenges faced by women entrepreneurs in the Nollywood film industry and their future prospects. The chapter begins by exploring entrepreneurship in Nigeria's economy before delving into the prospects and challenges of women entrepreneurship in the Nollywood industry.

Warfare, Oral Tradition, and Tourism

2022 ◽  
pp. 87-115
Author(s):  
Erol Gülüm
Keyword(s):  
Oral Tradition ◽  
Important Place ◽  
Cultural Attitude ◽  
Tourist Attractions ◽  
Folk Narratives ◽  
Gallipoli Peninsula ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Battlefield Tourism

Turkish folk narratives formed around the Gallipoli Campaign, which reflect the mental, psychological, and cultural attitude of Turks towards this war and hold an important place in Turkish folklore, also have the potential to make significant contributions to battlefield tourism of the region. The effective, creative, and innovative uses of the folk narratives conveying the mystical, supernatural, and miraculous events believed to have taken place in this war can be used in the enrichment and diversification of space, products, services, and experiences offered in battlefield tourism. The ultimate aim of the study is to discuss how authentic, creative, and innovative tourist attractions can be created by the valorization, remediation, and reenactment of intangible war heritage based on the example of the relationship between folk narratives about the Gallipoli Campaign and battlefield tourism in the Gallipoli Peninsula.

Intimacy and Romance in Film Theory

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Tulloch ◽  
Belinda Middleweek
Keyword(s):  
Detailed Analysis ◽  
Textual Analysis ◽  
Film Theory ◽  
Mutual Understanding ◽  
Historical Understanding ◽  
Mapping Theory

Chapter 3 explores the critical frame of feminist Lacanian postmodernism, underpinning an understanding of real sex films like Romance as art-house cinema in mutual dialogue with pornography. It argues that this fusion and tension between genres misses significant disparities within art house, and neither offers a robust history nor acknowledges that the Romance narrative focuses on Marie’s negotiation of her own sexuality and embodiment via a picaresque series of female/male encounters in a changed modernity. In its detailed analysis of Romance, the chapter draws on Giddens’s concepts of plastic sexuality and confluent love, Raymond Williams’s notion of emotional realism, and Trevor Griffiths’s historical understanding of the (raced and classed) wandering vagrant in an interdisciplinary “extension” of Tanya Krzywinska’s analysis of real sex cinema. This textual analysis combines “mutual understanding” of feminist mapping theory with risk sociology’s recognition of history as the growth of dialogue with the ars erotica.

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