dar 2 lagos 159screen characters, thus imitating voices of women and men, young and
old. As commentator, he takes on the role of a narrator who interprets
those actions and images he thinks his audience cannot understand. He
is thus a guide through foreign audiovisual terrain.
The following examples from Mukandala’s narration of Super Love
(2003) highlight some of the peculiarities of his art. Super Love is a Cinder-
ella story set in rural Igboland, involving a prince called Obinna (Ramsey
Nouah Jr.), who has returned from abroad and—despite being introduced
to many other women—falls in love with Amaka (Genevieve Nnaji), a
poor girl who is suffering at the hands of her stepfather (Pete Edochie). On
every tape, Mukandala starts by introducing himself and locates for the
audience where the the film comes from (sometimes even undertaking an
imaginative journey from Dar es Salaam to the place where the film was
shot). Accompanied by the opening credits of the film, he says:
My beloved viewers, my beloved relatives, Captain Derek Mukandala
Lufufu who is available at Aggrey Street, Kariakoo, in the center of Dar
es Salaam city, brings to you one good film from the nation of Nigeria in
this season of 2004—from the nation of Nigeria which is ruled by Gen.
Obasanjo. (0:00:26–50)This is followed by an introduction to the plot:
Our film begins at a time when young Obinna returns from Europe,
where he went to study. Obinna was a prince, as it is normal in a family of
the chief. If your son is from that family, you are supposed to prepare his
future. A mong the things you should prepare for him is a girl to marry.
And that should be arranged while the girl is still very young. Therefore,
even three-year-old girls are prepared early for their marriage to the son of
a chief. This is what happened in this place. (0:00:51–01:55)In order to bridge the distance between the strange and the familiar, Mu-
kandala makes explicit comparisons, helping his audience transfer the
meaning of the film to the audience’s own cultural realm. In the following
example, Mukandala comments on a scene in which young women dance to
different drum beats, using Tanzanian names to refer to the Nigerian tunes:
The beautiful girls who wanted to become the wife of the chief ’s son
were passing in front of the chief one by one in order to get a chance. The
tune that was beaten in that place is Chunda doka. This dance of Chunda