dar 2 lagos 151and in the traces Nolly wood videos had left in Tanzanian cultural produc-
tion more generally. I was also curious about Bongo movies in particular
(as the films produced by the emerging Dar es Salaam–based video film
industry are called—after a nickname for the city).
New local forms of media production in Tanzania have used Nige-
rian video films as “scripts,” drawing on them to varying degrees. Ear-
lier forms, such as photo novels, essentially a “remediation” (Bolter and
Grusin 2000) of videos (based on screen shots, with Swahili in speech
bubbles) or vhs cassettes that present audio dubbing, into Swahili, were
attempts at translating and thus making Nigerian video films more ac-
cessible to Tanzanian audiences. Other forms of localization, such as
those observed in Bongo movies, aim rather at appropriating the “aura” of
Nigerian video film. In a bid to cash in on Nolly wood’s fame, a number of
local video producers have adopted a Nigerian video film style or, in the
case of one producer, established direct contact with Nigeria and started
producing films featuring Nigerian actors and directors. On the basis
of several examples, I shall demonstrate how these processes of adapta-
tion work and how specific tropes—motives and plots—are translated
between Nigeria and Tanzania.
NIGERIAN FILMS IN TANZANIANollywood videos only began circulating widely in Tanzania in 2000.
Early distribution relied solely on pirated material, and this had not changed
much in 2007, when I gathered the data for this chapter. Only one distributor
was legally importing Nigerian films on vcd—Mtitu Game, who owned and
still owns the film production company Game 1st Quality. During the hey-
day of his import business, Game received consignments of up to 3,000 vcds
by air from Nigeria each week. They were sold not only in Tanzania but also
bought by traders from Zambia, Mozambique, and the Democratic Republic
of the Congo. As Mtitu Game told me, he reduced the volume of his imports
only in 2006, partly because of inflation and a hike in the Tanzanian import
tax, and partly because the demand for Nigerian videos declined as the local
video industry expanded (personal interview, August 8 and 31, 2007).