Abstract
Abstract This article analyses selected ‘forces for change’ in contemporary Bongowood: Tanzania’s Dar es Salaam-based popular cinema industry. It focuses on cases embedded in what I term ‘core Bongowood’: the production and distribution of Swahili-language movies, produced on low budgets, released on DVD and targeted at local (Tanzanian, and by extension Swahili-speaking) audiences. The ‘forces for change’ discussed are individuals or organizations in the industry, working to influence or alter it. The change they aim for can be creative in kind, i.e. related to the movies produced, or it can be related to Bongowood’s value chain and inherent power relations. These organizations and individuals face several obstacles, most of them related to characteristics of the industry itself: a quasi-monopoly perpetuating an established imbalance of power, protected and reproduced by the most powerful players in it.
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