Media, Migration and Religion. Notes on the Circulation and Reception of Nigerian Films in Kinshasa

The presentation deals with the circulation and reception of Nigerian films in Kinshasa, which relate dialectically to the establishment of a social and moral imagination that can be qualified as apocalyptic. The popularity of these imported films derives from the triangular of migration, religion and the liberalization of media. In order to theoretically refine the interaction between media and religion, I attempt to identify the different kinds of brokers who act as intermediairies between Kinois spectators and the Nigerian films, and the ways in which these brokers engage in the localization of these culturally foreign media texts. Pentecostalist leaders, who travel back and forth between Nigeria and Kinshasa, and Christian dubbers appear as fundamental in the process of appropriation. So, instead of privileging in my analysis the narratives of the Nigerian films, I treat practices of movement and the localization strategies performed by Christian media brokers as the primary sites of the intersection between the global flows and local reception of these narratives. The material enables us to correct persistent ideas on, first, African migration, which is not always south-north oriented or economically inspired. Apart from commerce, religion motivates Africans to move, and it inspires them in particular to travel within the continent. Second, the fact that south-south migration co-occurs with the circulation of electronic media, which in their turn modify local aesthetic regimes, challenges the assumed Western cultural dominance in postcolonial Africa.status: publishe