Skip to content
1981
1-2: Marginality and Fragility in African Cinemas
  • ISSN: 1754-9221
  • E-ISSN: 1754-923X

Abstract

Drawn from a chapter in my current book project on , a term I use to designate the humanist vision that informs Femi Odugbemi’s cinematic output as a leading Nollywood film director/TV producer, my article demonstrates the humanitarian uses to which Odugbemi has put his screen media work as a socially committed filmmaker. Focusing specifically on his documentary, (2016), I argue that the film is a visual account of urban victims of postcolonial misgovernance. I suggest that what the documentary unveils is a Nigerian state that subjects its citizens to the power of social death. I contend that the real victims of Nigeria’s necropower that the film documents are the innocent and vulnerable children in the Makoko slum in Lagos. I also argue that as a social purpose documentary, documents and bears witness to a suffering humanity tucked underneath the underbelly of the resplendence of Lagos as a postcolonial megacity, and that the film is indicative of Odugbemi’s passionate and relentless socially conscious artistic efforts to challenge a failed postcolonial system that is indifferent to human suffering and other forms of social anguish.

Funding
This study was supported by the:
  • National Humanities Centre in Durham, North Carolina
Loading

Article metrics loading...

/content/journals/10.1386/jac_00138_1
2025-08-06
2026-04-13

Metrics

Loading full text...

Full text loading...

References

  1. Adenaele, Niyi (2013), ‘Femi Odugbemi: The golden boy of Nigerian documentary’, National Mirror, 24 May.
    [Google Scholar]
  2. Bloom, Peter (2008), French Colonial Documentary: Mythologies of Humanitarianism, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  3. Burton, Julianne (1990), ‘Toward a history of social documentary in Latin America’, in J. Burton (ed.), The Social Documentary in Latin America, Pittsburg: University of Pittsburg Press, pp. 330.
    [Google Scholar]
  4. Chanan, Michael (1990), ‘Rediscovering documentary: Cultural context and intentionality’, in J. Burton (ed.), The Social Documentary in Latin America, Pittsburg: University of Pittsburg Press, pp. 3148.
    [Google Scholar]
  5. Chanan, Michael (2007), The Politics of Documentary, London: British Film Institute.
    [Google Scholar]
  6. Chuks, Nwanne (2016), ‘The filmmaker as activist’, The Guardian, 29 May.
    [Google Scholar]
  7. Cohen, Rogers (1998), ‘Nigerian slum filth is a world away from capital’s glitter’, New York Times, 20 July, https://www.nytimes.com/1998/07/20/world/nigerian-slum-s-filth-is-a-world-away-from-capital-s-glitter.html. Accessed 24 April 2025.
    [Google Scholar]
  8. Comaroff, Jean and Comaroff, John (2012), Theory From the South: Or, How Euro-America Is Evolving Toward Africa, Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers.
    [Google Scholar]
  9. Davis, Mike (2006), Planet of Slums, London; Verso.
    [Google Scholar]
  10. Diawara, Manthia (1992), African Cinema: Politics & Culture, Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  11. Ellis, Jack C. and McLane, Betsy A. (2005), A New History of Documentary Film, New York: Continuum.
    [Google Scholar]
  12. Foucault, Michel (1997), ‘Society Must Be Defended’: Lectures at the College De France, 1975–76, New York: Picador.
    [Google Scholar]
  13. Frank, Ukadike Nwachukwu (1994), Black African Cinema, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  14. Gabara, Rachel (2019), ‘Realism, reflexivity and African documentary film’, in K. Harrow and C. Garritano (eds), A Companion to African Cinema, Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Blackwell, pp. 35878.
    [Google Scholar]
  15. Genova, E. James (2013), Cinema and Development in West Africa, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  16. Haynes, Jonathan (2016), Nollywood: The Creation of Nigerian Film Genres, Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  17. Iheka, Cajetan (2021), African Ecomedia: Network Forms, Planetary Politics, Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  18. Jedlowski, Allesandro (2014), ‘Report on the state of the African documentary film industry: Executive summary’, in Bertha Foundation (ed.), African Documentary Film Fund, Abingdon: Abingdon Square Publishing Ltd, pp. 114.
    [Google Scholar]
  19. Kahana, Jonathan (2008), Intelligence Work: The Politics of American Documentary, New York: Columbia University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  20. Krstić, Igor (2016), Slums on Screen: World Cinema and the Planet of Slums, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  21. Mbembe, Achille (2019), Necropolitics (trans. S. Corcoran), Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  22. Mbembé, Achille and Nuttall, Sarah (2004), ‘Writing the world from an African metropolis’, Public Culture, 16, pp. 34772.
    [Google Scholar]
  23. Mbembe, Achille and Nuttall, Sarah (2008), ‘Introduction: Afropolis’, in S. Nuttal and A. Mbembe (eds), Johannesburg: The Elusive Metropolis, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, pp. 136.
    [Google Scholar]
  24. Michelson, Annette (2016), ‘The man with the movie camera: From magician to epistemologist’, in J. Kahana (ed.), The Documentary Film Reader, New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 14862.
    [Google Scholar]
  25. Moran, Dermot (2000), Introduction to Phenomenology, London: Routledge.
    [Google Scholar]
  26. Mututa, Addamms (2022), Crisis Urbanism and Postcolonial African Cities in Postmillennial Cinema, New York: Routledge.
    [Google Scholar]
  27. Rosenthal, Alan and Corner, John (2005), New Challenges for Documentary, 2nd ed., Manchester: Manchester University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  28. Simone, AbdouMaliq (2009), Improvised Lives: Rhythms of Endurance in an Urban South, Cambridge: Polity Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  29. Stewart, David and Mickunas, Algis (1974), Exploring Phenomenology: A Guide to the Field and Its Literature, Chicago, IL: American Library Association.
    [Google Scholar]
  30. Wilson, Pamela and Stewart, Michelle (2008), Global Indigenous Media: Cultures, Poetics, and Politics, Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  31. Winston, Brian (1995), Claiming the Real: The Griersonian Documentary and Its Legitimations, London: British Film Institute.
    [Google Scholar]
  32. Winston, Brian, Vanstone, Gail and Chi, Wang (2017), The Act of Documenting: Documentary Film in the 21st Century, New York: Bloomsbury Academic, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Inc.
    [Google Scholar]
  33. Winston, Brian (2019), Claiming the Real II: Documentary: Grierson and Beyond, London: Bloomsbury Publishing.
    [Google Scholar]
/content/journals/10.1386/jac_00138_1
Loading
/content/journals/10.1386/jac_00138_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