African Screen Media Studies: Immediacy, Modernization, and Informal Forms

Moradewun Adejunmobi argues that, while noncommercial African screen media (i.e., festival films) constitute some of the most incisive articulations of African experiences, they do not speak univocally for the “political and artistic life” of African communities. They must be considered alongside commercial, often informal screen media, which represent “autonomous voices specifically responsive to diverse local and regional publics.” In my course “African Screen Media,” I combine examples of festival films with examples of video film, television, music videos, and more in order to provide students with a range of opportunities to consider the political and artistic lives of African communities, producers, and texts. I also require students to present shot analyses of each example we study. Alongside readings in African history, politics, economics, and critical cultural theory, we use these formal analyses to treat African screen media as sites of potential immediacy between various producers and spectators. Understanding the importance of immediacy in the history of African screen media calls us to name new modes of theorizing. Moreover, such theorizing may help us understand why the markets in which media circulate seem to correlate with the amount of scholarly attention they receive.