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Thunderbolt

Tunde Kelani director, producer.; California Newsreel (Firm), distributor.; Mainframe Productions, production company.

2000

Online access

  • Title:
    Thunderbolt
  • Author: Tunde Kelani director, producer.; California Newsreel (Firm), distributor.; Mainframe Productions, production company.
  • Description: The first half of the film is in a sense a retelling of the Othello story - except the protagonists are not Abyssinian and Venetian but Yoruba and Ibo. Yinka and Ngozi met in the National Youth Service Corps; Ngozi is finishing her stint as a teacher in a village while Yinka already works as a construction engineer in a nearby city. The seeds of jealousy are planted when a friend of Yinka, like Iago in the Shakespeare play, suggests that Ngozi is having a secret affair because "Ibo are untrustworthy." Adding to Yinka's suspicions, Ngozi has recently inherited some money and so is a financially independent woman. In this half, as in the Shakespeare play or any standard Western melodrama, the action is propelled entirely by psychological motivations. The emergence of a vital and prolific popular cinema in Nigeria could be regarded as an important African response to the encroachment of Western pop culture in this age of global information flows. On the other hand Nigerian video films, perhaps inevitably, reflect some of the less attractive features of post-colonial society. There is a fetishism of material prosperity often in imitation of Europe and America; Westernization seen through African eyes. And one can't help wondering what the public health impact of validating traditional over Western medicine might be in a continent fighting the AIDS epidemic. An indigenous popular cinema will inevitably transmit and reinforce the priorities and beliefs of the society that finances it. An art cinema based in essentially non-profit filmmaking, on the other hand, can risk interrogating that society's values and suggesting alternatives. Nigerian cinema may soon face the same problem confronted by the U.S.: how to nurture and finance a non-commercial cinema, which can act as a critique and complement to its commercial counterpart.
  • Publication Date: 2000
  • Publisher: San Francisco, CA : California Newsreel
  • Format: 1 online resource (104 minutes).
  • Subjects: AIDS (Disease) -- Nigeria -- Drama; Igbo (African people) -- Nigeria -- Drama; Man-woman relationships -- Nigeria -- Drama; Traditional medicine -- Nigeria -- Drama; Yoruba (African people) -- Nigeria -- Drama; Nigeria -- Drama; Feature films; Foreign films
  • Language: English
  • Source: 01DAL UDM ALMA
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