Skip to Main Content

Film Studies: National Cinemas

This guide highlights selected resources for various national cinemas.

Introduction to Nigerian cinema

The earliest recorded film screenings took place in Lagos on 12 August 1903; and in 1913 the British South Africa Company made a series of short films showing Nigerian tin mines and the countryside. In 1935 the British Colonial Office launched the Bantu Educational Kinema Experiment (BEKE), producing a number of instructional health and information films (with titles such as Post Office Savings Bank, Tax, and Infant Malaria) that were taken on lorry tours of east and central Africa. Perhaps the best-known documentary film in this tradition is Daybreak in Udi (Terry Bishop, 1949), which shows life in a maternity hospital and was designed to show the progress made by the Colonial Office in implementing community projects in eastern Nigeria.  ...

Kuhn, A., & Westwell, G. (2020). Nigeria, film in. In A Dictionary of Film Studies. Oxford University Press. Retrieved 22 May. 2021

Searching the online catalog

You can use the subject heading below to find resources in the online catalog. The call number range is also included. Please note: these are not the only call number ranges, but they have the majority of items.

Introductory reading(s)

Selected book title(s)

Other Library resource(s)

Bibliographies

Finding journal articles

You can search various publications to find articles on Nigerian cinema. Our collection does not have journals that cover the area exclusively. You can use Film & Television Literature Index to find articles or use the search box at the top of the page.

Selected film titles

Find more Nigerian film titles in the library's online catalog.