West African VideoMovies and Their Transnational Imaginaries

Summary This chapter centers on West African (Nollywood) popular movies about travel. Produced in Ghana and Nigeria and in global cities like New York, London, and Amsterdam, the earliest West African travel movies such as Amsterdam Diary (2005) and Mr Ibu in London (2004) narrate the experiences of the first-time Ghanaian or Nigerian traveler who leaves Africa in search of prosperity abroad. They warn against the dangers and hardships found in Europe and North America while at the same time offering African audiences pleasures derived from imaginary travel. Focalized through the perspective of the African migrant, the spectator in Africa who watches a transnational travel movie virtually experiences global mobility and imaginatively consumes the tourist experience. A spatial binary between an African city and a foreign city structures the narratives of these transnational movies, and the movement back and forth between Africa and the West temporally and spatially constructs a relationship of proximity between the two locations and in this way expresses Africa's ?worldliness.? More recently produced travel movies such as London Got Problem (2006) and Love in America (2008) turn away from tourist views and chronicle the experiences of Africans who are well established in the diaspora.

West African VideoMovies and Their Transnational Imaginaries Chapter