158 african appropriations
fear of the legal consequences, as the newspaper had not resolved copy-
right issues with the Nigerian producers. The form continued to exist,
however, in the weekly Kiu Movie Magic, although only locally produced
video films (understood as free promotion) were being remediated.
TURNING RICE INTO PILAU: THE ART OF DUBBINGAnother way to localize foreign films is through dubbing. In Tanzania,
this form of remediation dates way back, prior to the advent of video film.
An early forerunner was the colonial cinema narrator who interpreted the
film live while standing next to the screen. This form of remediation has sur-
vived in Kenya and Uganda, where so-called veejays (video jockeys) do live
commentary on foreign films shown in local video parlors (Krings 2009).
In Tanzania, live interpretation was also practiced in the past but seems to
have been completely replaced by its mediatized variant of “dubbed” vhs
cassettes. The development of this adaptation is closely linked to a single
person: Cpt. Derek Gaspar Mukandala, who until recently had a virtual
monopoly on dubbing foreign films into Kiswahili on vhs.^2
Born in the Bukoba District on the shores of Lake Victoria fifty-five
years ago, Mukandala has dubbed more than 1,000 films in his career so
far. These works are mostly American and Chinese action movies but also
include about ninety Nigerian films and a number of Indian productions.
Before he started dubbing on vhs in 1996, he had almost two decades
of experience as a live narrator, running his own mobile cinema show
(personal interview, September 8, 2007). Although Mukandala calls his
work tafsiri (translation)—and when we chatted in English, he said “dub-
bing”—what he actually does is much more than mere dubbing. Mukan-
dala is simultaneously an interpreter, a translator, and a voice mime. This
means that he offers his audience more than the simple illusion of foreign
film characters speaking Swahili. Technically speaking, he switches con-
stantly between voice-over translation of dialogue and commentary, using
an audio mixer to add his soundtrack to the “original” video, whereby he
constantly fades in an out (sometimes after every sentence) to preserve as
much of the original soundtrack as possible. As a translator, he interprets
the dialogue, changing his voice according to the gender and age of the