Skip to content
1981
Diaspora, Rethinking Praxis and Theory in Communication for Development
  • ISSN: 2632-5853
  • E-ISSN: 2632-5861

Abstract

This article examines the relationship between transcultural narratives and diasporic representation in New Nollywood cinema. As Nigeria’s film industry evolves, it is crucial to analyse how Nigerian youths are portrayed domestically and globally. The research explores themes like migration, identity, hybridity and cultural belonging using cultural studies, postcolonial theory and film studies. Examining selected films, the study investigates New Nollywood’s role in reshaping Nigerian diasporic experiences and its impact on transnational cultural exchanges. It contributes to discussions on globalization, cultural production and cinematic expression in Nigerian cinema, highlighting the representation of youths at the forefront of social, cultural and political change. New Nollywood’s global reach engages diasporic communities, challenges stereotypes and offers multifaceted representations of African identity. This study underscores the complexity of Nigerian cinema and its role in reflecting and shaping cultural narratives.

Loading

Article metrics loading...

/content/journals/10.1386/gdm_00050_1
2026-01-24
2026-04-12

Metrics

Loading full text...

Full text loading...

References

  1. Adejunmobi, M. (2015), ‘Neoliberal rationalities in old and new Nollywood’, African Studies Review, 58:3, pp. 3153, https://doi.org/10.1017/asr.2015.73.
    [Google Scholar]
  2. Afolayan, K. (dir.) (2009), The Figurine (Araromire), Nigeria: Golden Effects Pictures.
    [Google Scholar]
  3. Agina, A. (2021), ‘Netflix and the transnationalization of Nollywood’, Post 45, 26 April, https://post45.org/2021/04/netflix-and-the-transnationalization-of-nollywood/. Accessed 26 July 2024.
  4. Ahuja, H. D. (dir.) (2024), Postcards, India: Filmkar Productions.
    [Google Scholar]
  5. Anyanwu, O. S. and Sylvanus, E. P. (2022), ‘Music production technology in new Nollywood soundtracks: Context, application, and the effect of globalization’, Music and the Moving Image, 15:1, pp. 2237, https://doi.org/10.5406/19407610.15.1.02.
    [Google Scholar]
  6. Appadurai, A. (1996), Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  7. Ayakoroma, B. F. (2008), ‘Nigerian video films and the image question: A critical reading of Lancelot Oduwa Imasuen’s Home in Exile’, Ijota: Ibadan Journal of Theatre Arts, 2&4, pp. 7393.
    [Google Scholar]
  8. Bhabha, H. K. (1994), The Location of Culture, London: Routledge.
    [Google Scholar]
  9. Carroll, N. (2006), The Philosophy of Motion Pictures, Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.
    [Google Scholar]
  10. Castells, M. (1996), The Rise of the Network Society, Oxford: Blackwell.
    [Google Scholar]
  11. Crush, J. and Chikanda, A. (2015), ‘South–South medical tourism and the quest for health in Southern Africa’, Social Science & Medicine, 124, pp. 31320, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2014.06.025.
    [Google Scholar]
  12. De Genova, N. (ed.) (2017), The Borders of ‘Europe’: Autonomy of Migration, Tactics of Bordering, Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  13. Desai, J. (2004), Beyond Bollywood: The Cultural Politics of South Asian Diasporic Film, New York: Routledge.
    [Google Scholar]
  14. Ezepue, E. M. (2020), ‘The new Nollywood: Professionalization or gentrification of cultural industry’, SAGE Open, 10:3, pp. 110, https://doi.org/10.1177/2158244020940994.
    [Google Scholar]
  15. Fanon, F. (1952), Black Skin, White Masks, Paris: Éditions du Seuil.
    [Google Scholar]
  16. Fanon, F. (1963), The Wretched of the Earth (trans. C. Farrington), New York: Grove Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  17. Garnham, N. (2001), ‘The information society: Myth or reality?’, in L. Curran and J. Seaton (eds), Power Without Responsibility: Press, Broadcasting and the Internet, London: Routledge, pp. 8395.
    [Google Scholar]
  18. Gikandi, S. (2011), Slavery and the Culture of Taste, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  19. Goodluck, L. S. (2023), ‘Defining the Christian film in the Nollywood film industry’, unpublished doctoral dissertation, Lagos: Pan-Atlantic University.
    [Google Scholar]
  20. Gyang, K. (dir.) (2024), Òlòtūré: The Journey, Nigeria: EbonyLife Films.
    [Google Scholar]
  21. Haynes, J. (2007), ‘Nollywood: What’s in a name?’, Film International, 5:4, pp. 10608, https://doi.org/10.1386/fiin.5.4.106.
    [Google Scholar]
  22. Haynes, J. (2014), ‘Close-up: Nollywood – a worldly creative practice: “New Nollywood” Kunle Afolayan’, Black Camera, 5:2, pp. 5373, https://doi.org/10.2979/blackcamera.5.2.53.
    [Google Scholar]
  23. Haynes, J. (2016), ‘Hostile takeover? Corporate interventions in Nollywood’, PAS working papers, Evanston, IL: Northwestern University, https://www.africanstudies.northwestern.edu/docs/publications-research/working-papers/Hostile%20Takeover%20Corporate%20Interventions%20in%20Nollywood.pdf. Accessed 28 June 2020.
    [Google Scholar]
  24. Hesmondhalgh, D. (2019), The Cultural Industries, 4th ed., London: Sage Publications.
    [Google Scholar]
  25. Jedlowski, A. (2013), ‘From Nollywood to Nollyworld: Processes of transnationalization in the Nigerian video film industry’, in M. Krings and O. Okome (eds), Global Nollywood: The Transnational Dimensions of an African Video Film Industry, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, pp. 2545.
    [Google Scholar]
  26. Karaganis, J. (ed.) (2011), Media Piracy in Emerging Economies, New York: Social Science Research Council.
    [Google Scholar]
  27. Larkin, B. (2008), Signal and Noise: Media, Infrastructure, and Urban Culture in Nigeria, Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  28. Lobato, R. (2012), Shadow Economies of Cinema: Mapping Informal Film Distribution, London: BFI Publishing.
    [Google Scholar]
  29. Lobato, R. and Thomas, J. (2015), The Informal Media Economy, Cambridge: Polity Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  30. Mahler, S. and Pessar, P. (2006), ‘Gender matters: Ethnographers bring gender from the periphery toward the core of migration studies’, International Migration Review, 40:1, pp. 2763, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1747-7379.2006.00002.x.
    [Google Scholar]
  31. Mbembe, A. (2017), Critique of Black Reason, Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  32. Mohanty, C. T. (1988), ‘Under western eyes: Feminist scholarship and colonial discourses’, Feminist Review, 30:30, p. 61, https://doi.org/10.2307/1395054.
    [Google Scholar]
  33. Naficy, H. (2001), An Accented Cinema: Exilic and Diasporic Filmmaking, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  34. Okome, O. (2014), ‘Neo-Nollywood and its other’, in A. Afolayan (ed.), Auteuring Nollywood: Critical Perspectives on The Figurine, Ibadan: University Press Plc., pp. 40921.
    [Google Scholar]
  35. Okuyade, O. (2011), ‘Revisiting the video film culture in Nigeria: Situating Nollywood within African literature and performance studies’, Postcolonial Text, 6:3, pp. 117.
    [Google Scholar]
  36. Robins, K. (2006), ‘The challenge of transcultural diversities: Transversalism and cultural policy’, UNESCO Report on Cultural Diversity, Paris: UNESCO.
    [Google Scholar]
  37. Rodney, W. (1972), How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, London: Bogle-L’Ouverture Publications.
    [Google Scholar]
  38. Ryan, C. (2015), ‘New Nollywood: A sketch of Nollywood’s metropolitan new style’, African Studies Review, 58:3, pp. 5576, https://doi.org/10.1017/asr.2015.75.
    [Google Scholar]
  39. Said, E. W. (1978), Orientalism, New York: Pantheon Books.
    [Google Scholar]
  40. Selbo, J. (2015), Film Genre for the Screenwriter, New York: Routledge.
    [Google Scholar]
  41. Sellors, C. P. (2007), Film Authorship: Auteurs and Other Myths, London: Wallflower Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  42. Shohat, E. and Stam, R. (2014), Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the Media, 2nd ed., New York: Routledge.
    [Google Scholar]
  43. Spivak, G. C. (1987), ‘Subaltern studies: Deconstructing historiography’, in D. Landry and G. MacLean (eds), The Spivak Reader, New York: Routledge, pp. 2058.
    [Google Scholar]
  44. Spivak, G. C. (1988), ‘Can the subaltern speak?’, in C. Nelson and L. Grossberg (eds), Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, Urbana and Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press, pp. 271313.
    [Google Scholar]
  45. Spivak, G. C. (1999), A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Toward a History of the Vanishing Present, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  46. Spivak, G. C. (2012), An Aesthetic Education in the Era of Globalization, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  47. Throsby, D. (2010), The Economics of Cultural Policy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  48. Tregde, D. (2013), ‘A case study on film authorship: Exploring the theoretical and practical sides in film production’, Elon Journal of Undergraduate Research in Communications, 4:2, pp. 515.
    [Google Scholar]
  49. Tyson, L. (2006), Critical Theory Today, London: Routledge and Taylor & Francis Group.
    [Google Scholar]
  50. Ugochukwu, B. (2022), African Cinema and Narratives of Change, Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.
    [Google Scholar]
  51. Welsch, W. (1999), ‘Transculturality: The puzzling form of cultures today’, Theory, Culture & Society, 16:4, pp. 194213, https://doi.org/10.1177/02632769922050176.
    [Google Scholar]
  52. Adebanwi, W. and Obadare, E. (2020), Democracy and Prebendalism in Nigeria: Critical Interpretations, Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.
    [Google Scholar]
  53. Agina, A. (2019), ‘Cinema-going in Lagos: Three locations, one film, one weekend’, Journal of African Cultural Studies, 32:2, pp. 13145, https://doi.org/10.1080/13696815.2019.1615871.
    [Google Scholar]
  54. Agina, A. and Hediger, V. (2020), ‘Nollywood and Netflix’s burgeoning relationship’, The Nation Online, 17 July, https://thenationonlineng.net/nollywood-and-netflixs-burgeoning-relationship/. Accessed 26 July 2024.
  55. Akpabio, E. (2007), ‘Attitude of audience members to Nollywood films’, Nordic Journal of African Studies, 16:1, pp. 90100, https://doi.org/10.4314/njas.v16i1.57439.
    [Google Scholar]
  56. Canclini, N. (1968), Cortázar: Una antropología poética, Buenos Aires: Editorial Nova.
    [Google Scholar]
  57. Dipio, D. (2007), ‘Religion in Nigerian home video films’, Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture, 4:1, pp. 6582, https://doi.org/10.16997/wpcc.74.
    [Google Scholar]
  58. Ezepue, E. M. (2021), ‘From Living in Bondage to Queen Amina: An aesthetic evaluation of contemporary Nollywood’, SAGE Open, 11:3, pp. 110, https://doi.org/10.1177/21582440211032620.
    [Google Scholar]
  59. Hall, S. (1990), ‘Cultural identity and diaspora’, in J. Rutherford (ed.), Identity: Community, Culture, Difference, London: Lawrence & Wishart, pp. 22237.
    [Google Scholar]
  60. Haynes, J. (1997), ‘Introduction’, in J. Haynes (ed.), Nigerian Video Films, Ibadan: Kraft Books Limited, pp. 137.
    [Google Scholar]
  61. Haynes, J. (2000), Nigerian Video Films: Revised and Expanded Edition, Athens, OH: Ohio University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  62. Haynes, J. (2011), ‘African cinema and Nollywood’, Situations: Project of the Radical Imagination, 1:1, pp. 6790, https://doi.org/10.13169/situations.1.1.0067.
    [Google Scholar]
  63. Haynes, J. (2017), Nollywood: The Creation of Nigerian Film Genres, Ibadan: Bookcraft.
    [Google Scholar]
  64. Haynes, J. and Okome, O. (1998), ‘Evolving popular media: Nigerian video films’, Research in African Literatures, 29:3, pp. 10628, https://doi.org/10.2979/ral.1998.29.3.106.
    [Google Scholar]
  65. Jedlowski, A. (2010), ‘Beyond the video boom: New tendencies in the Nigerian video industry’, ASAUK Writing Workshop, Birmingham, 16 April.
    [Google Scholar]
  66. Larkin, B. (1997), ‘Indian films and Nigerian lovers: Media and the creation of parallel modernities’, Journal of the International African Institute, 67:3, pp. 40640, https://doi.org/10.2307/1161446.
    [Google Scholar]
  67. Obiaya, I. (2019), ‘New Nollywood and the digital turn’, Journal of African Cinemas, 11:2, pp. 15772, https://doi.org/10.1386/jac_00002_1.
    [Google Scholar]
  68. Ogunsuyi, S. (1999), ‘Style and medium in African folk film’, The Performer, 3:1, pp. 3240.
    [Google Scholar]
  69. Olayiwola, A. (2007), ‘From celluloid to video: The tragedy of the Nigerian film industry’, Journal of Film and Video, 59:3, pp. 5861, https://doi.org/10.2307/20688569.
    [Google Scholar]
  70. Onishi, N. (2002), ‘Step aside, L.A. and Bombay, for Nollywood’, New York Times, 16 September, p. A3, https://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/16/world/step-aside-la-and-bombay-for-nollywood.html. Accessed 1 April 2024.
    [Google Scholar]
  71. Quijano, A. (2000), ‘Coloniality of power, Eurocentrism, and Latin America’, Nepantla: Views from South, 1:3, pp. 53380, https://doi.org/10.1177/0268580900015002005.
    [Google Scholar]
  72. Servaes, J. (1999), Communication for Development: One World, Multiple Cultures, New York: Hampton Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  73. World Bank (2019), The Creative Economy: A Growth Driver in Emerging Markets, Washington, DC: World Bank Publications.
    [Google Scholar]
/content/journals/10.1386/gdm_00050_1
Loading
/content/journals/10.1386/gdm_00050_1
Loading

Data & Media loading...

This is a required field
Please enter a valid email address
Approval was a success
Invalid data
An error occurred
Approval was partially successful, following selected items could not be processed due to error
Please enter a valid_number test