English and film studies Professor Onookome Okome of the University of Alberta will discuss women in Nollywood, Africa’s most prolific cinema, at a lecture next week.
Nollywood has challenged assumptions about what African cinema should entail and it has rewritten the way Africa is seen and experienced. Okome will track the location that women occupy in this cultural enterprise.
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Left: Onookome Okome
Okome will give a lecture that builds on and expands the scope of an earlier essay, titled “Women, Religion and the Booming Nigerian Film Industry” on Monday, Nov. 30, from 11:30am to 1pm, in the Samuel Beckett Theatre, 112 Stong College.
Okome argues that although women are located in the narrative limbo of the Nollywood film, reading women in Nollywood as in other forms of popular arts in Africa, is a more complex and rewarding exercise than is suggested in many studies.
Okome earned his PhD at the University of Ibadan in Nigeria. He is co-author of Cinema and Social Change in West Africa (Nigerian Film Corporation, 1995) and editor of Before I am Hanged: Ken Saro-Wiwa: Literature, Politics and Dissent (Africa World Press, 1999) and Ogun’s Children: The Literature and Politics of Wole Soyinka Since the Nobel (Africa World Press, 2003).
He has published extensively on the Nollywood phenomenon in West Africa, including the co-authored essay with Jonathan Haynes, “Evolving Popular Media: Nigerian Video Films.”
For more information, visit the Stong College Web site.