Review of MICHAEL W. THOMAS, Popular Ethiopian Cinema: Love and Other Genres

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La télévision chinoise en Afrique

Sur la base des résultats d’un projet de recherche en cours sur les activités de la société de médias chinoise StarTimes au Nigéria et en Côte d’Ivoire, cet article analyse la complexité des interactions entre les médias chinois et les publics africains, tout en mettant aussi l’accent sur les dynamiques de pouvoir qui les sous-tendent. S’appuyant sur une variété de sources ethnographiques, il plaide pour une approche de l’étude de l’expansion des médias chinois en Afrique qui soit capable de prendre en compte, simultanément, les facteurs macro-politiques et macro-économiques qui conditionnent la nature des interactions médiatiques sino-africaines, les intentions politiques qui les sous-tendent (comme, par exemple, les politiques chinoises de soft power et leur traduction dans des contenus médiatiques spécifiques), et la dimension micro des pratiques et des usages des médias faits par les acteurs (producteurs et consommateurs de médias) sur le terrain.On the basis of the results of an ongoing research project on the activities of the Chinese media company StarTimes in Nigeria and Côte d’Ivoire, this paper analyses the complexity of the engagements between Chinese media and African publics, while equally emphasizing the power dynamics that underlie them. Focusing on a variety of ethnographic sources, it argues for an approach to the study of Chinese media expansion in Africa able to take into account, simultaneously, the macro-political and macro-economic factors which condition the nature of China-Africa media interactions, the political intentions behind them (as, for example, the Chinese soft power policies and their translation into specific media contents), and the micro dimension of the practices and uses of the media made by the actors (producers and consumers of media) in the field

Desiring Bollywood: Re-staging racism, exploring difference

In this article I engage with the insights that emerged through the making of Desiring Bollywood, a collaborative ethno-fiction project I produced in 2018. The project recruited academics, amateur actors, novice filmmakers, and enthusiastic university students to narrate the story of Jason, an aspiring actor and filmmaker from Nigeria who I first met in 2013 soon after his release from Tihar Prison in Delhi, India. My goals are two-fold: first, to share a few scenes from the film – embedded in this article as video clips – to broadly theorize the affordances and limits of what I call re-staging, the collaborative, performance-based multimodal method we devised and deployed to produce Desiring Bollywood. Second, and more central to the article, I aim to analyze these very same scenes to show how re-staging, as it offered participants involved in the project the opportunity to reflexively explore how Jason’s experiences of discrimination in Delhi and the aspirations and desires that led him there in the first place, create a rich site of analysis to engage with the nuances of anti-Black racism in India in a moment where ‘India-Africa’ economic relationships are on the rise. RESUMEN En este artículo examino el entendimiento que surgió a través de la producción de Desiring Bollywood, un proyecto colaborativo de etno-ficción que realicé en 2018. El proyecto reclutó académicos, actores amateurs, productores cinematográficos novicios y entusiastas estudiantes universitarios para narrar la historia de Jason, un aspirante a actor y productor cinematográfico, de Nigeria a quien conocí en 2013, poco después de su puesta en libertad de la Prisión Tihar en Delhi, India. Mi propósito es doble: primero, compartir algunas escenas del filme – embebidas en este artículo como video clips– para teorizar ampliamente las affordances y límites de lo que llamo remontaje, el colaborativo método multimodal basado en performance, que nosotros ideamos y utilizamos para producir Desiring Bollywood. Segundo, y más central al artículo, tengo como objetivo analizar estas mismas escenas para mostrar cómo el remontaje, en la medida que ofreció a los participantes involucrados en el proyecto la oportunidad de explorar reflexivamente cómo las experiencias de Jason de discriminación en Delhi y las aspiraciones y deseos que lo llevaron allí en primer lugar, crea un sitio profundo de análisis para abordar los matices del racismo anti-negro en India en un momento donde las relaciones económicas “India-África” están en aumento

Hidden in Plain Sight: YouTube and Nollywood's Reinvention of Minor Transnational Practices

Most research on recent transformations in the economics of Nollywood film distribution focussed on the impact of the Nigerian platform https://iROKO.tv" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">iROKO.tv and, more recently, on the consequences of the penetration of international platforms such as the American Netflix and the South African Showmax in Nigeria. Much less attention has been devoted to analysing the role of YouTube in the industry’s recent economic transformations, particularly with regard to the repositioning of historical economic players in the industry, such as the marketers (the distributors/producers who controlled the economy of early Nollywood), and to the emergence of new players such as content producers sponsored by local banks and young independent directors, otherwise marginalised by the monopolisation of the existing distribution networks in few international corporate hands. Combining data from long-term ethnographic fieldwork in Nigeria with more recent observations collected through digital ethnography (conducted from 2020) about the presence of Nollywood on YouTube, this chapter investigates the different facets of the role YouTube has played in the recent history of Nollywood to highlight the nuances and contradictions of the realities that the introduction of film distribution platforms in Nigeria contributed to create