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  1. Dartmouth Libraries
  2. Research Guides
  3. Dartmouth Libraries Guides
  4. Film Studies: National Cinemas
  5. Nigeria

Film Studies: National Cinemas

This guide highlights selected resources for various national cinemas.
  • Introduction
  • Streaming services
  • Afghanistan
  • Africa (General)
    • Africa, Northern
    • Africa, French speaking
    • Africa, Sub-Saharan
  • Argentina
  • Australia
  • Austria
  • Benelux
  • Brazil
  • Cambodia
  • Canada
    • Quebec
  • Caribbean area
  • Chile
  • Chinese cinema
  • Colombia
  • Cuba
  • Czechia (Czech Republic)
  • France
  • Germany
  • Great Britain
    • Northern Ireland
    • Scotland
    • Wales
  • Greece
  • Hong Kong cinema
  • Hungary
  • India
  • Indigenous films
  • Irish cinema
  • Italy
  • Japan
  • Korea
  • Latin America
  • Mexico
  • Middle East
    • Egypt
    • Iran
    • Israel
    • Turkey
  • New Zealand
  • Nigeria
  • Nordic cinema
    • Denmark
    • Finland
    • Iceland
    • Norway
    • Sweden
  • Pakistan
  • Palestine
    • Films by Director
    • Documentaries
    • Films by Title
  • Poland
  • Portugal
  • Romania
  • Russia & the Soviet Union
  • Slovakia
  • South Africa
  • South America
  • Spain
  • Switzerland
  • Taiwan
  • Thailand
  • United States
    • Puerto Rico
  • Vietnam
  • Yugoslavia & Former Yugoslav Republics
  • Transnational & diasporic cinema
  • Journals & magazines about film

Subject Librarian

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Lucinda M. Hall
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Contact:
Evans Map Room, Baker-Berry Library
Dartmouth College
25 N Main ST
Hanover, NH 03755
(603) 646-0962
Website Skype Contact: d1128r8@kiewit.dartmouth.edu
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Subjects: Film and Media Studies, Geography, Polar Studies

Internet resource(s)

  • Federation Africaine de la Critique Cinematographique
    • Link
    The aim of the federation is to stimulate and promote critical writing in Africa, to obtain greater recognition for African criticism within film criticism internationally, to provide training through meetings between critics, to encourage enthusiasm in film, and to provide information on and support for African productions through debate and reflection.
  • African Holocaust (Maafa)
    • Link
    Their mission is to produce accessible bodies of work, which inform about African culture and history, within an African-cultured framework. And within this framework they believe that African people should economically profit from their cultural capital and not be victims of cultural exploitation.

Keeping up with the journal literature

Want an easy way to keep up with the journal literature for a national or regional cinema? And you use a mobile device? You can install the BrowZine app and create a custom Bookshelf of your favorite journal titles. Then you will get the Table of Contents (ToCs) of your favorite journals automatically delivered to you when they become available. Once you have the ToC's you can download and read the articles you want.

You can get the app from the App Store or Google Play.

Don't own or use a mobile device? You can still use BrowZine! It's now available in a web version. You can get to it here. The web version works the same way as the app version. Find the journals you like, create a custom Bookshelf, get ToCs and read the articles you want.

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.

  • motion pictures nigeria
    Call number range PN 1993.5 .N55 on Baker Level 4.
  • motion pictures nigeria history
  • motion picture producers and directors nigeria
  • motion picture industry nigeria
  • motion pictures africa, west
  • motion pictures africa sub-saharan
    Call number range PN 1993.5 .A35 on Baker Level 4.
  • africa, sub-saharan in motion pictures
  • motion picture producers and directors africa, sub-saharan

Introductory reading(s)

  • Cover artNollywood: the creation of Nigerian film genres by Jonathan Haynes
    • Book
    Call Number: Baker-Berry PN 1995.67 .N6 H39 2016
    ISBN: 9780226387956
    Nigeria's Nollywood has rapidly grown into one of the world's largest film industries, radically altering media environments across Africa and in the diaspora; it has also become one of African culture's most powerful and consequential expressions, powerfully shaping how Africans see themselves and are seen by others. With this book, Jonathan Haynes provides an accessible and authoritative introduction to this vast industry and its film culture.
  • Cover artNollywood: the video phenomenon in Nigeria by Pierre Barrot; with Ibbo Daddy Abdoulaye ... [et al.], eds.; translations by Lynn Taylor
    • Book
    Call Number: Baker-Berry PN 1992.934 .N6 N6513 2008
    ISBN: 9781847015044
    With over 1,200 video films produced each year, Nigeria has become one of the most prolific producers of film fiction in the world. The majority of the films are of poor quality, made on very low budgets and in a very short time, but their production has a big impact on people in Nigeria and the industry's influence is extending across the continent.
  • Cover ArtNollywood central by Jade L. Miller
    • Book
    Call Number: Baker-Berry PN 1993.5 .N55 M55 2016
    ISBN: 9781844576920
    Nollywood is often portrayed by the popular press as an unruly industry, with mysteriously fast and cheap production and shadowy distribution networks. In the first overview of Nigeria's burgeoning video film industry, Jade L. Miller reveals that this portrayal is over-simplistic and often untrue. Investigating Nollywood's complete global production and distribution chain, Nollywood Central presents a full portrait of the Nollywood industry as both highly organised and strategically structured. In doing so, it interrogates the position and rise of new cultural industry hubs, demonstrating how a creative industry can emerge, be sustainable and circulate globally even though it exists outside of formal global networks and government-supported infrastructure. ...
  • Cover ArtTrends in Nollywood: a study of selected genres by Foubiri Ayakoroma
    • On Campus or VPN
    • E-Book
    Call Number: eBook
    ISBN: 9789789182015
    Trends in Nollywood: A Study of Selected Genres is a welcome addition to the growing body of works on the Nigerian cinema. It is part film history and part film theory and criticism. The history part traces the origin of the Nigerian cinema up to the present era of video productions. The work examines in detail, the contextual issues which have helped to define emergent trends within the industry.

Selected book title(s)

  • Cover ArtAuteuring Nollywood: critical perspectives on The Figurine by Adeshina Afolayan, ed.
    • On Campus or VPN
    • E-Book
    Call Number: eBook
    ISBN: 9789780698287
    Beginning from an auteur standpoint, this book interrogates extant cinematic re-presentation of African and Nigerian postcolonial realities in Nollywood. It makes a case, using Kunle Afolayan's The Figurine, for a critical space-clearing gesture around the notion of a neo-Nollywood, which transcends the formulaic cinematic re-presentation of African and Nigerian realities to embrace a visionary and philosophic re-articualtion of the role of filmmaking, and of Nollywood, in the Nigerian imagination. ...
  • Cover artNollywood stars: media and migration in West Africa and the diaspora by Noah A. Tsika
    • On Campus or VPN
    • E-Book
    Call Number: eBook
    ISBN: 9780253015754
    In this comprehensive study of Nollywood stardom around the world, Noah A. Tsika explores how the industry's top on-screen talents have helped Nollywood to expand beyond West Africa and into the diaspora to become one of the globe's most prolific and diverse media producers.
  • Cover ArtRepresentation of Nigerian women in Nollywood films by Naomi Brock
    • On Campus or VPN
    • E-Book
    Call Number: Electronic dissertation
    The Nollywood industry, the third largest film industry in the world was created in the early 1990s. It follows behind Hollywood in the United States and Bollywood in India. This research analyzes the ways in which women are portrayed in film and how the media contributes to this influence. It explores certain themes such as sexual objectification, social constructions of gender, modernity, religion/morality, beauty and love and compares them with reality of life for women in Nigeria. ...
  • Cover ArtViewing African cinema in the twenty-first century: art films and the Nollywood video revolution by Mahir Saul; Ralph A. Austen, eds.
    • On Campus or VPN
    • E-Book
    Call Number: eBook
    ISBN: 9780821443507
    African cinema in the 1960s originated mainly from Francophone countries. It resembled the art cinema of contemporary Europe and relied on support from the French film industry and the French state. Beginning in 1969 the biennial Festival panafricain du cinéma et de la télévision de Ouagadougou (FESPACO), held in Burkina Faso, became the major showcase for these films. But since the early 1990s, a new phenomenon has come to dominate the African cinema world: mass-marketed films shot on less expensive video cameras. These "Nollywood" films, so named because many originate in southern Nigeria, are a thriving industry dominating the world of African cinema. Viewing African Cinema in the Twenty-first Century is the first book to bring together a set of essays offering a comparison of these two main African cinema modes. ...

Other Library resource(s)

  • Resource logoAfrican cinema from Oxford Bibliographies Online by Frank Ukadike
    • On Campus or VPN
    Call Number: Electronic resource
    ISBN: 9780199791286
    The term “African cinema” generally refers to film production in Sub-Saharan African countries. Compared to the other national cinemas in the world, African cinema can be said to be a recent phenomenon that for many countries within this region only began to materialize after independence in the 1960s. ...
  • Resource logoLibrary of African cinema by Various directors
    • Video
    • On Campus or VPN
    Call Number: Streaming video - there are other formats in the Jones Media Center
    Films from Africa made by Africans offer restorative images and a new film language. The beautiful and sometimes challenging films in this collection not only showcase the works of master filmmakers but also innovative new talents who are embracing video technology. To see Africa through African eyes will break stereotypes and enlighten viewers about life in Africa.
  • Resource logoRepresentations of Nigerian women in Nollywood films by Naomi Brock
    • On Campus or VPN
    Call Number: Digital thesis
    The Nollywood industry, the third largest film industry in the world was created in the early 1990s. It follows behind Hollywood in the United States and Bollywood in India. This research analyzes the ways in which women are portrayed in film and how the media contributes to this influence. It explores certain themes such as sexual objectification, social constructions of gender, modernity, religion/morality, beauty and love and compares them with reality of life for women in Nigeria. It seeks to look at Nollywood from a traditional and modern perspective. ...
  • Movie poster artThis is Nollywood by Franco Sacchi
    • Video
    • On Campus or VPN
    Call Number: Streaming video
    First came Hollywood, then Bollywood and now Nollywood, Nigeria’s booming film industry, which released 2000 features in 2006 alone. Where else can you shoot a full-length dramatic film for $10,000 in 7 days? Until recently little known outside its own country, This is Nollywood explains why Nigerian video production is becoming recognized as a phenomenon with broad implications for the cultural and economic development of Africa.
  • Whats is in a name by Feisal Malik
    • Video
    • On Campus or VPN
    Call Number: Streaming video
    What is in a name? This documentary talks about Nigeria's film industry.

Bibliographies

  • Cover artBlacks in film and television: a Pan-African bibliography of films, filmmakers, and performers by John Gray
    • Book
    Call Number: Baker-Berry Z 5784 .M9 G72 1990
    ISBN: 9780313274862
    This is a comprehensive guide to the black experience both on film and behind the camera. More than 6,000 entries documenting global film activity from 1919 to 1990 offer historical perspective on the black image in film, bibliographical material on filmmakers and individual artists, and exciting information on newly emerging talent throughout the world. ...
  • Sub-Saharan African films and filmmakers, 1987-1992: an annotated bibliography by Nancy J. Schmidt
    • Book
    Call Number: Baker-Berry Z 5784 .M9 S32 1994
    ISBN: 9781873836217
    Both an update to Schmidt's previous work & a stand-alone reference, this index furnishes 3,000 citations on literature published after 1987, much of which was originally published in African newspapers & magazines & is not cited in other bibliographies. In addition to more detailed & lengthy annotations, the guide features six indexes & two introductory essays.
  • Sub-Saharan African films and filmmakers: an annotated bibliography = Films et cinéastes Africains de la région Subsaharienne: une bibliographie commentée by Nancy Schmidt
    • Book
    Call Number: Baker-Berry Z 5784 .M9 S337 1988
    ISBN: 9780905450322
  • Cover artTwenty-five Black African filmmakers: a critical study, with filmography and bio-bibliography by Françoise Pfaff
    • Book
    Call Number: Baker-Berry PN 1998 .A2 P477 1988
    ISBN: 9780313246951
    An invaluable work on black African cinema has at last appeared in English. Françoise Pfaff's volume synthesizes relevant information, devoid of hagiography, about twenty-five sub-Saharan African filmmakers, according a separate chapter--consisting of a biography, filmography, and thematic analyses of individual films--to each. Varying critical viewpoints are brought to bear from both African and non-African perspectives. The author has gone beyond translation and compilation to explore the decades of black African cinema within the historical context of the continent's problematic emancipation. Twenty-Five Black African Filmmakers offers enormous insight along with valuable data heretofore unavailable in English. ...

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.

  • Resource logoFilm & television literature index by EBSCO Publishing
    • On Campus or VPN
    • Database
    Call Number: Electronic resource
    Use this index to find articles about Nigerian national cinema.
  • Resource logoScreen studies collection by ProQuest
    • On Campus or VPN
    • Database
    Call Number: Electronic resource
    A comprehensive survey of current publications related to film scholarship alongside detailed filmographies. This collection includes the FIAF International Index to Film Periodicals Database and the detailed and complementary filmographies created by the American Film Institute (AFI) and the British Film Institute.
  • Resource logoThe web of science citation databases by ISI (Institute for Scientific Information)
    • On Campus or VPN
    • Database
    Call Number: Electronic resource
    The online version of 3 separate ISI indexes: Arts & Humanities Citation Index, Science Citation Index and, Social Sciences Citation Index.

Selected film titles

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

  • Cover ArtHalf of a yellow sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
    • DVD
    Call Number: Jones Media DVD #18403
    ISBN: 9781569943847
    A beautiful sweeping story of two sisters caught up in the events of the Nigerian civil war, ending in chilling violence which shocked the entire world.
  • Cover ArtNé quelque part = Homeland by Mohamed Hamidi
    • DVD
    Call Number: Jones Media DVD #21597
    Twenty-six-year-old French law student Farid has to go to Algeria to try and save his father's house from demolition. He discovers a country where he has never set foot and is gradually won over by a gallery of extraordinary characters whose humor and straightforwardness go straight to his heart. Among them is his cousin, a quick-witted wheeler-dealer who dreams of making it to France.
  • Movie poster artThunderbolt by Tunde Kelani
    • Video
    • On Campus or VPN
    Call Number: Streaming video
    The first half of the film is in a sense a retelling of the Othello story - except the protagonists are not Abyssinian and Venetian but Yoruba and Ibo. Yinka and Ngozi met in the National Youth Service Corps; Ngozi is finishing her stint as a teacher in a village while Yinka already works as a construction engineer in a nearby city. The seeds of jealousy are planted when a friend of Yinka, like Iago in the Shakespeare play, suggests that Ngozi is having a secret affair because "Ibo are untrustworthy." ...
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  • Last Updated: May 15, 2025 12:12 PM
  • URL: https://researchguides.dartmouth.edu/nationalcinemas
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