dar 2 lagos 165Mtitu Game’s production company Game 1st Quality, which has become
a major player in Dar es Salaam since 2005, is associated with a Nigerian
video film style. Most of his films are set in huge mansions peopled by
characters dressed in fancy clothes and driving luxury cars while sorting
out the melodramatic twists of their lives.^5 Knives or guns are their weap-
ons and cause bloodshed among lovers and characters, who tend to shout
at the tops of their voices while quarreling heatedly with one another.
Although a number of these details of film style may also be associated
with the Latin American telenovelas, which are broadcast daily on Tan-
zanian television (cf. Ratering 2014), Mtitu Game’s films were perceived
as “copying” Nigerian movies. This critique has been launched by cultural
elites who began casting a critical eye toward the local video industry,
complaining that Game’s films did not reflect the Tanzanian social and
cultural reality. W hatever the case may be, the effect of this mimetic ap-
propriation is that quite a number of Tanzanian dramas look just like
Nigerian dramas set in urban Tanzania. Perhaps this is one of the main
reasons (despite language) Bongo movies were able to supersede Nolly-
wood videos in Tanzanian shops, rental outlets, and video parlors in just
one year. Despite the nagging critique by cultural elites, however, Mtitu
Game’s films were and still are best sellers, a fact that reflects their popu-
larity. Even a cursory glance at the trailers and vcd covers of numerous
other Bongo movies produced between 2006 and 2009 shows that Mtitu
Game was certainly not the only producer who shaped his movies after
an acclaimed foreign model (see figure 5.2).
DAR 2 LAGOS: 4 RE-UNIONIn 2006, Mtitu Game took the relationship between Nolly wood and
the Bongo movie industry a step further and produced Dar 2 Lagos, a film
partially shot in Nigeria and starring both Tanzanian and Nigerian actors.
The story is a twenty-first-century version of the biblical parable of the
prodigal son: Mr. Maganga (David E. Manento) sends Kanumba (Steven
Kanumba), a young man he raised as his foster son, to Nigeria to trace
and bring back his biological son, Raymond (Emmanuel Myamba), who
fled to Nigeria after a serious quarrel with his father. Since Mr. Maganga