Bisschoff, Lizelle. “From Nollywood to New Nollywood: The Story of Nigeria’s Runaway Success.” The Conversation, September 28,

2015. https://theconversation.com/from-nollywood-to-new-nollywood-the-story-of-nigerias-runaway-success-47959

“The video-film industry of Nigeria has been described as one of the greatest explosions of popular culture that Africa has ever seen. It is the first economically self-sustainable film industry in Africa. Initially through the use of video technology, and now affordable digital technology, Nigeria produces more than 2000 films per year. The industry, popularly called Nollywood, is currently ranked as the second largest in the world in terms of output after India’s Bollywood. Nollywood’s popularity has spread across the African continent, to the African diaspora in Europe, North America and Australia. It has even gone as far as the Caribbean and Pacific Islands.”

[Source: Excerpt from the article].

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Black Camera

Academic journal

Bloomington, IN, USA

blackcam.sitehost.iu.edu

Description:

An international scholarly film journal, Black Camera constitutes a  new platform for the study and documentation of the black cinematic experience in the world.

Black Fashion Week Paris

Event

Paris, France

blackfashionweekparis.com

Description:

Black Fashion Week promotes designers and models from Africa.

Visonà Monica Blackmun

Professor of African Art, University of Kentucky

202 Fine Arts Building

465 Rose Street

Lexington, KY 40506-0022

M.B.Visona@uky.edu

859-257-1398

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Blair, Dorothy S. African Literature in French: A History of Creative Writing in French from West and Equatorial Africa. Cambridge University Press, 1976.

This 1976 book provides both a historical survey and acritical analysis of the literature in French from West and Equatorial Africa. Professor Blair begins by discussing the social, educational and political influences which led to the formation of the Negritude movement and to a flowering of French-African creative writing. This historical approach is then complemented by a study of the different literary genres. She traces the evolution of the first manifestations of literary activity in French by African writers, the written folktale, fable and short story, from the oral tradition of the indigenous culture, and the eventual appearance of the novel with a legendary or historical theme. The origins of French-African drama are considered for the first time, and the work of the minor poets analyzed. Finally, Professor Blair attempts a definition of the French-African novel, and studies examples from three major periods from the 1930s onwards.

[Source: Cambridge University Press].

Suzanne Preston Blier

Professor, Fine Arts and African and African American Studies, Harvard University

Sackler Museum, Harvard  University, 485 Broadway Cambridge, MA 02138, Phone: 617 497-1464 , email: blier@fas.harvard.edu

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Blier, Suzanne Preston.  African Vodun: Art, Psychology, and Power. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995.

In this first major study of its kind, Suzanne Preston Blier examines the artworks of the contemporary vodun cultures of southern Benin and Togo in West Africa as well as the related voudou traditions of Haiti, New Orleans, and historic Salem, Massachusetts. Blier employs a variety of theoretically sophisticated psychological, anthropological, and art historical approaches to explore the contrasts inherent in the vodun arts—commoners versus royalty, popular versus elite, "low" art versus "high." She examines the relation between art and the slave trade, the psychological dynamics of artistic expression, the significance of the body in sculptural expression, and indigenous perceptions of the psyche. Throughout, Blier pushes African art history to a new height of cultural awareness that recognizes the complexity of traditional African societies as it acknowledges the role of social power in shaping aesthetics and meaning generally. This book will be of critical importance not only to those concerned with African, African American, and Caribbean art, but also to anthropologists, African diaspora scholars, students of comparative religion and comparative psychology, and anyone fascinated by the traditions of voudou and vodun.

[Source: Harvard.edu]

Blier, Suzanne Preston. Art and Risk in Ancient Yoruba: Ife History, Power, and Identity, c. 1300. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015.

In this book, Suzanne Preston Blier examines the intersection of art, risk, and creativity in early African arts from the Yoruba center of Ife and the striking ways that ancient Ife artworks inform society, politics, history, and religion. Yoruba art offers a unique lens into one of Africa’s most important and least understood early civilizations, one whose historic arts have long been of interest to local residents and Westerners alike because of their tour-de-force visual power and technical complexity. Among the complementary subjects explored are questions of art making, art viewing, and aesthetics in the famed ancient Nigerian city-state, as well as the attendant risks and danger assumed by artists, patrons, and viewers alike in certain forms of subject matter and modes of portrayal, including unique genres of body marking, portraiture, animal symbolism, and regalia. This volume celebrates art, history, and the shared passion and skill with which the remarkable artists of early Ife sought to define their past for generations of viewers.

[Source: Harvard.edu]