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The first lecture in the 2010 Africa Speaks series got off to an entertaining start when Prof Peyi Soyinka-Airewele, of Ithaca College in New York, delivered a lecture on the vibrancy and necessity of African cinema.
Entitled “Canons of conformity, canons of audacity: insurgency and voice in the emergent African cinema”, Prof Soyinka-Airewele discussed the phenomenon of popular African cinema and focused largely on Nollywood, Nigeria’s film industry which is the third largest film industry in the world.
The lecture formed part of the College of Human Science’s Africa Speaks series and was held on 22 March in the Senate Hall.
She began by explaining the concepts “canons of conformity” and “canons of audacity”. She said that “canons of conformity” demanded – of post-independent Africa, of its writers, artists, politicians, philosophers, theologians, economists, scientists and humanists – that our modes of analysis and application, and our sense of affirmation should fall in line with the demand for imitative, subaltern conventionality, orthodoxy and modes of compliance that are dictated by hierarchical canons. “These hierarchical canons are those that first erased us as autonomous agents before benevolently integrating us as objects. Regardless of where we are located geographically, few from the formerly subjugated Africana world have escaped the power of these canons that influence and define our products.”
She described “canons of audacity” as Nollywood and popular African cinema’s emergence to confront and challenge existing hierarchies such as Western media and Hollywood. “To both, the established institutions responded with a gamut of reactions from disdainful dismissiveness, to dismay, then counter-mobilisations and resistance and finally, a quest for co-optation that guarantees acknowledgement and recognition if the former nonentities agree to respect and comply with canonical authority, the gatekeepers of white-western-capitalist tradition and authority.”
She said despite its technical deficiencies, Nollywood and popular African cinema emerged from the margins, challenging and threatening the control of Hollywood. “This Nollywood trajectory of cinematic audacity is now studied authoritatively by bemused schools of cinema that have sent groups of exploring agents to Nigeria to help them in recapturing, redefining and explaining the industry.”
Prof Soyinka-Airewele said she sometimes cynically wonders if these new expeditions and writings on Nollywood signify a genuine coming to terms with the polycentrism of global voice or whether they simply indicate, as anticipated, the anxious reassertion of canonical authority.
She said from the days of Tarzan, audiences continue to witness problematic representations of Africa in Western media and scholarship; the recent blockbuster “Avatar” is proof of the West’s obsessive-compulsive and narcissistic involvement with the myth it has created.
Prof Soyinka-Airewele said just over a decade-and-a-half ago, Nollywood erupted within a restrictive global economy. “African filmmaking from Senegal, Morocco, Burkina Faso and Zimbabwe had already made its mark on the cinema world. But is this explosion of a new generation of African filmmakers who have emerged via the vehicle of what is popularly referred to as home video films that have challenged the stranglehold of Hollywood on African audiences.” She said Nollywood has broken every rule in the book of cinematic, social, economic and political canons, retaining and retraining millions of viewers across the continent. She said this cinematic explosion has revived the staggering world of theatre and focuses on particular content that addresses issues faced by Africans. And regardless of the many problematic contents of Nollywood fare, its transnational and trans-ethnic conversations have opened a new arena of thinking and have introduced a range of new role-models for Africans.
Prof Soyinka-Airewele indicated that while these films were aimed at millions of Africans living on less than R10 a day, it was tragic that very few African universities had access to them; these films, however, can be found in the Western world at very high prices.
She said it was saddening to note that some of Nollywood’s most talented filmmakers have become “mere beggars” in order to make their films. She then showed guests videos of behind the scenes of Nollywood filmmaking – how they film, recruit actors, sell their films and flourish without government support.
With regards to South African film culture, Prof Soyinka-Airewele believes that South Africa is unique among African film cultures, because it is plugged into the Hollywood paradigm of production and international circuits of distribution and exhibition. In conclusion, she said that Africans must determine if they are prepared to handle the consequences of their attempt to re-imagine the world and their place in it, for challenging marginality in their own spheres, for throwing their voice and for critique of power. | 
