Sexism, Stereotypes and Production Constraints in the Tanzania Video Film Industry

Abstract

In the current neo-liberal era, it is pertinent to interrogate the role of the video film industry in transforming societies beyond patriarchal and bourgeois gender stereotypes. The video film industry is popular in Tanzania, and bongo movies appear to focus on socio-cultural and economic issues, which largely pander to stereotypes as defined by patriarchy. In this article, I investigate the claim that “there are no female producers in bongo movies”. The statement invites analysis on gender roles in the film production industry in Tanzania as well as the content of the produced films. Meetings, participant observations and interviews were used to collect data and transformative feminism was employed as a tool for analysis. The analysis forms part of the process to document women’s struggles in various fields of occupation, linking products to means of production. The findings show that there are few female ‘producers’ in bongo movies. Depicted as ‘just actors’, they are substantially influential and have exhibited extensive survival mechanisms in the constrained film production environments in which they operate.