Features and Essays

Filmmaking
Filmmaking Within the Frame of Neglect

Infrastructure in Nigeria does not merely fail; it asserts itself as a constant condition, a…

Headies
What the Headies Awards Keep Getting Wrong: A Cursory Look at the 18th Edition Nominees List

If a category can be reopened and reshuffled hours after publication, what confidence does anyone…

Matt B
Matt B: The Water Remembered Him First

“When they found my living ancestral line, I said that it’s not enough for me…

Nollywood
Nollywood’s Political Unconsciousness and the Critic’s Quagmire

If films are inherently political, if all films have something to say, though they may…

VeryDarkMan
Who Needs the Government When You Can Tag Someone Else?

The ultimate measure of a functioning society is not how many generous citizens it can…

Nollywood
For How Long Can We Sustain This Thing of Ours?: On Bootstrapping and the Current Iteration of Nollywood

Nollywood filmmakers have proven their capacity for innovation under constraint, time and again, but there…

justice
Justice Needs an Audience: How Nigeria Turned Punishment Into Content

Once punishment becomes something to be watched rather than merely witnessed, the question is no…

workshop
The Workshop and the Invention of the Contemporary Reader

Yet what survives these intellectual revolutions within workshop culture, I believe, is rarely their philosophical…

African cinema
African Cinema’s Long Road to Freedom

African cinema can be regional, sure, just like any other cinema. But it is also…

Nollywood
How Contemporary Nollywood Uses Humour to Both Expose and Excuse the Politics of Marriage

Nollywood is mostly at its best when it deploys humour to laugh at retrograde values…