Reconfiguring the Audiovisual Heritage: Lessons from Nigeria

Abstract

Taking the recent rediscovery and restoration of Adamu Halilu’s 1976 Hausa-language film Shehu Umar as its point of departure, this article addresses the blind spot in the current debates about restitution: the question of Africa’s film heritage. The article offers a critical discussion of the conceptual framework of the heritage concept and highlights the challenges related to the three layers of African and specifically Nigerian film heritage: films from the colonial period, celluloid films from the early postcolonial period up to the 1990s, and the video- and digital-native films of the so-called Nollywood film industry produced after 1992.