Nairobi-based middle class filmmakers and the production and circulation of transnational cinema

Abstract

Filmmakers in Nairobi are embedded within transnational circuits of cinematic production and distribution. Many make use of Euro-American funding to make their films and seek to show their films in prestigious festivals outside Africa, but in so doing they are critiqued by scholars and critics who worry that the involvement of outsiders in African cinema curtails filmmakers' creative freedom. This sort of criticism does not account for the fact that Euro-American audiences and filmmakers from elsewhere might share a common taste in stories. Based on an eight month period of research in Nairobi in 2014-2015 where I conducted 31 expert interviews with 27 filmmakers, I argue Nairobi-based filmmakers are members of a transnational middle class, with transnational experiences and tastes, and that accounting for this leads to new understandings of the production and circulation of their films and African film more broadly.

Nollywood Accounting and Financial Performance: Evidence From Nigerian Cinemas

“…Regression analysis was conducted to validate all variables. This is in line with (Eluyela et al, 2019a;Okere et al, 2019;Ozordi et al, 2019;Steedman, 2018). The ethical committee approving this experiment are the authors involved in the research.…”

“…The Indigenization policy also aided the fast growth of the Nigerian movie industry as 300 film theatres owned by foreigners had to be handed over to Nigerians and this made more Nigerians more interested in film business. The period of plenty marked by the high revenue accruing tot the country due to sales of oil produce, made it possible for Nigerians to have extra cash to spend on investing in technology such as televisions and VHS, recreational activities and social moments, hence this aided content growth and birth more television programmes and stations as the years went by (Steedman, 2018).…”

The work of hope: Spiritualizing, hustling and waiting in the creative industries in Ghana

“…The practices of hustling have long been neglected in studies on cultural and creative industries, though scholars have recently utilised this term to describe the entrepreneurial activities of establishing a filmmaking career in LA (Mehta, 2017), or working as a female film producer in Nairobi (Steedman, 2017). The role of waiting, i.e.…”

“…Hustling is a prominent manifestation of the work of hope as an active mode of dealing with everyday uncertainty and precarity. It once referred to informal/semi-legal activities, often in ghetto life, that people on the margins chose as an alternative to the low-paid and demeaning work typically available to them (Thieme, 2018); however, the term is now used to describe the everyday entrepreneurial activities of workers in a much larger variety of contexts, including in the creative industries (Mehta, 2017; Steedman, 2017). Rather than being merely a mode of coping with precarity, hustling is a way of actively working to find beneficial outcomes in uncertain conditions.…”