"Tracing the history of Africa's relationship to film festivals and exploring the festivals' impact on the various types of people who attend festivals (the festival experts, the ordinary festival audiences, and the filmmakers), Dovey reveals what turns something called a "festival" into a "festival ... experience" for these groups." (Publisher description) more

"This special issue aims to contribute to African film scholarship, popular culture studies, and broader cultural studies in four ways. First, the issue is one of the first publications to bring together scholars of African Cinema and scholars of African video film so as to encourage conversation an ... d debate about the iconography, themes, histories, and production, distribution and exhibition contexts of African screen media (my term of preference for African audiovisual productions). Next, in specifically exploring the themes of pleasure, politics, and performance in African film and video, the issue emphasizes the dialectical relationship between pleasure and politics, and the fact that – in much African screen media – this relationship is expressed in performative ways. Beyond this, there is a historical dimension to all of the contributions to the issue, which allow for not only an awareness of the prequels and precursors to contemporary African artistic and cultural products, but also a deepening of institutional memory within the field of African screen media scholarship." (Editorial) more