Audience Reception of Benin Cinema in Nigeria

Book excerpt: This book signposts Benin (Edo) cinema as one of the vibrant new frontiers in the performing arts of Nigeria, underscoring this with critical empirical evidence. It is among the pioneering studies in this area of media production in African indigenous popular culture. In a very concrete sense, Benin cinema is a contemporary visual encyclopedia of Benin culture that can be used to consolidate the relevance of indigenous language films in Nigeria as a potential tool for national integration and international cultural diplomacy. The book interrogates the Benin-speaking audience’s reception of Benin films in Nollywood, covering both its history and its robust filmography, which is largely unexplored in present African film and media literature. Undergraduate and postgraduate students of film, theatre arts, mass communication, cultural studies, and African studies will find it an invaluable companion. Film and media studies scholars, global Nollywood practitioners, cultural archivists, and organizers of film festivals and book fairs will also find it useful.