"Tracing the rise and development of the Ghanaian video film industry between 1985 and 2010, Sensational Movies examines video movies as seismographic devices recording a culture in turmoil. Birgit Meyer captures the dynamic process of popular filmmaking in Ghana as a new medium for the imagination and tracks its interlacing of technological, economic, social, cultural, and religious elements. Filling the void left by the defunct state film industry, video movies negotiate the imaginaries deployed by state cinema on the one hand and Christianity on the other. Exploring the format of "film as revelation"—and the debt these films owe to religious notions of divination and revelation—Meyer elucidates the affinity between cinematic and popular Christian modes of looking and demonstrates the transgressive potential that haunts images of the occult." (Back cover)