Browse Exhibits (1 total)

A curation of Lagos-themed New Nollywood Posters

Jonathan Haynes's Nollywood in Lagos, Lagos in Nollywood Films offers an excellent representation of Lagos in Nollywood films, unpacking how Nollywood is geographically and commercially connected to Lagos. Haynes explains Lagos as exhibiting a postmodernist-inflected celebration of the coping mechanisms and creative forms of self-organization of a population whose ability to survive contradicts ordinary common sense.

He envisions the representation of the postcolonial African city in Nollywood as conventionally framed shots of streets and compounds, lavish parlors and ordinary bedrooms, hospitals, and offices in which common desires lard movies with standard images of luxury automobiles, huge houses, and expensive clothes. But what does Lagos look like when imagined through Nollywood paratexts like posters? This exhibition offers a visual representation of the city through recent New Nollywood films that focus on Nigeria's emerging tech hub.