Elmina: Obroni Art or Popular Melodrama?

Doug Fishbone is a Jewish American artist living in London. John Apea is a Ghanaian actor, writer and filmmaker. Together they have made a film, Elmina (2010), that bears all the hallmarks of the Nollywood genre film—a melodramatic plot, occult rituals, sex, infidelity, betrayal, greed, human sacrifice and larger than life performances. Except that the lead character, a Ghanaian farmer by the name of Ato Blankson, is played by Doug Fishbone, who is white—“obroni”—and nobody in the film seems to notice. What is he doing there? What is the film all about? Is it popular melodrama for a local audience or avant-garde art for a Western(ized) elite? These are the questions this article tries to answer.