Abstract
In this article I offer a historical reading of the early years of video production in Ghana between roughly 1987 and 1992, a period characterised by radical transformation put in motion by developments generally associated with globalisation. The erosion of state support for filmmaking, coupled with the ready availability of video technology allowed individuals situated outside of the networks of official cultural production, firstly to import and exhibit pirated copies of imported films and television programming, and later to produce their own features unregulated as commodities and artistic objects. This article focuses on this paradigmatic shift in local cinema culture and the critical discourse of ‘authenticity’ it generated. The last section of the article interrogates the dominant theoretical paradigm that has guided African film criticism since its inception -a paradigm that relies on and naturalises ‘authenticity,’ which the early history of video in Ghana demonstrates is a historical invention and an ideological product.
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