عنوان

Piety in Production: Video Filmmaking as Religious Encounter in Bénin

Number

TL49886

.Language of Text, Soundtrack etc

انگلیسی

Title Proper

Piety in Production: Video Filmmaking as Religious Encounter in Bénin

General Material Designation

[Thesis]

First Statement of Responsibility

Brian C. Smithson

Subsequent Statement of Responsibility

Matory, James L.; Piot, Charles

Name of Publisher, Distributor, etc.

Duke University

Date of Publication, Distribution, etc.

2018

Specific Material Designation and Extent of Item

420

Text of Note

Committee members: Allison, Anne; Morgan, David

Text of Note

Place of publication: United States, Ann Arbor; ISBN=978-0-355-92655-2

Dissertation or thesis details and type of degree

Ph.D.

Discipline of degree

Cultural Anthropology

Body granting the degree

Duke University

Text preceding or following the note

2018

Text of Note

This dissertation considers the production of video films by Nàgó-Yorùbá creators along Bénin's southeastern border with Nigeria. There they find themselves at the margins of three better-funded arts industries with contrasting attitudes toward Nàgó-Yorùbá culture and aesthetics. In Nigeria, much of the Nollywood video film industry supports belonging to global religious movements, such as Pentecostal Christianity and Reformist Islam, all the while portraying indigenous religion as diabolical. The art-film scene of Bénin often dismisses West African video films as amateurish. Finally, Bénin's state arts programs promote the Vodun religion of the coast as a tourist attraction yet deny Nàgó-Yorùbá people compensation for the state's appropriation of their religious arts into the category of "Vodun." Against this backdrop, video filmmakers use movies to celebrate indigenous religion and culture, to promote religious ecumenism, and to seek new sources of material support. Nevertheless, Nigerian media saturates the marketplace in Bénin so that very few local video films can earn a profit. My study thus seeks to determine how Nàgó-Yorùbá media practitioners persist in the face of such precarious conditions. I ask how the production of media becomes a forum to debate and establish norms of community and religious practice, how national identity, religious affiliation, and professional prestige affect negotiations over religious attitudes and conceptions of community, and how the open style of production in Bénin allows a diverse group of people-media professionals and others-to participate in the debates and discussions that shape media projects.

African Studies; Religion; Film studies

Subject Term

Philosophy, religion and theology;Communication and the arts;Social sciences;Bénin;Media;Nigeria;Religious plurality;Visual culture;Yorùbá

Newlon, Brendan Peter

Matory, James L.; Piot, Charles

Subdivision

Cultural Anthropology

Duke University

Call Number

2040854492; 10750828

Electronic name

p

[Thesis]

276903

a

Y