Being young and African in elite America
A new film follows the lives of four African students at MIT, where youthful idealism gets tested by the realities of American racism and inequality.
23 Articles by:
Noah Tsika
Noah Tsika is Professor of Film and Media Studies at Queens College and the CUNY Graduate Center. His books include Nollywood Stars: Media and Migration in West Africa and the Diaspora (2015), Cinematic Independence: Constructing the Big Screen in Nigeria (2022), and the forthcoming Nollywood Geographies: African Media in an Age of Extraction.
A bracing form of political cabaret
‘Neptune Frost,’ written and co-directed by Saul Williams, knows that extraction is everyone’s problem.
Imagining new stories, new freedoms, and new joys
Lindsey Green-Simms’ book “Queer African Cinemas” explores the intersections of postcolonial thought, queer theory, and screen media.
Netflix Nollywood tackles political corruption in Nigeria
King of Boys: The Return of the King, a seven-part limited series of Netflix, is a sustained—if ultimately pessimistic—critique of Nigerian corruption.
The Cold War’s unfinished legacy
Journalist Vincent Bevins’ new book, The Jakarta Method, shows that some of the 20th century’s ugliest episodes are still unfolding.
Out of the pigeonholes
A Nigerian play and its leading man confront western misrepresentations.
Can an American TV sitcom get anything ‘right’ about Nigerians?
After having a heart attack, a white American falls in love with his Nigerian nurse in the CBS TV sitcom, Bob Hearts Abishola. It is also about Nigerian-Americans’ visibility on mainstream US television.
How Africa shaped Immanuel Wallerstein
Africa and its peoples were central to the great Immanuel Wallerstein’s intellectual development and political activism.
A remarkable celebration of African cinema
At this year’s New York African Film Festival, we saw films united by key thematic concerns, some of them quite unexpected.
Nollywood Tackles #MeToo
Director Dare Olaitan’s Knock Out Blessing (2018), is nothing less than a meditation on rape culture.
Reanimating mobile cinema
Sunshine Cinema is repurposing a tool of 20th century European colonial and neocolonial capitalist domination.
Sidney Poitier and Capitalist Decolonization
Poitier is a pioneer in Hollywood (the first black male actor to win an Oscar), but, like in most of his US acting roles, he also played it safe in African roles he took on.
The Gall of the West–On State Visits to Nigeria
Emmanuel Macron’s Lagos visit came and went in a long tradition of diversionary state visits by Western politicians who condescend to Nigerians.
Nollywood 3.0
Dare Olaitan’s film Ojukokoro gets some room to breathe in New York, after being stifled at the box office in Lagos.
The making of a film empire
The book ‘Nollywood: The Making of a Film Empire’ takes a journalistic approach to that industry without falling back on the bombast of most popular accounts.
The golden age of the Nigerian short film
Nigerian filmmakers are embracing the short form as more than just a cinematic calling card.