Global Voices Online

A few glimpses of Africa through citizen media videos. From BoB winners, to storytellers, documentaries on artists, Nigeria´s Nollywood movie industry and more.

Usnico´s other video stories are interesting and well done: one video tells the plight of African flood refugees, and another, well, it´s title tells it all: Fighting leaves Chad in Gruesome State.On LookingGlassLand, a varied sample of videos selected from the Internet Movie Archives can be found, including a Cameroonian storyteller at Yaoundé [FR], a promotional video for a Ugandan beauty pageant contestant [EN], and Italian photographer Carla Cinelli tells of her experience photographing woman in Burkina Faso [IT].

Nigerian VCDs at kwakoe by Paul Keller.

In many African countries, there are thriving movie industries. Such is the case with Nollywood, the Nigerian film industry. Kulture Klash International presents the following video of the Nigerian Film industry organization convention, where US distribution of Nollywood films is discussed. If you are interested in knowing more about Nollywood and its videos, journeymanpictures has a documentary from 2005 where the unique and low-budget movie-making process is explained.

YouTube user rippleat uploaded the following 2 part documentary on artist Issa Nyaphaga from Cameroon. The film by Chris Hill lets the artist himself tell the story of how he learned to paint in a rural village in the traditional style, how he became a political cartoonist and was prosecuted for ignoring censors and then how he found asylum in France, where he later spoke in front of the French parliament for the 50th anniversary of the Geneva Convention on behalf of refugees.