VIDEOS IN MOTION - fasopo

and stable moral constituency whose stability is precisely the consequence of a measured controlover individual hubris.Through the specificity of their film language and their narrative structure, Nigerian video filmsoffer an answer to the social, cultural and economic crisis that defined the post-Structural-Adjustment era in Nigeria and in many other sub-Saharan African countries. In this sense theirappeal for the creation of a pan-African moral constituency is an antidote to the widespread anxietyand disillusionment that the suspension of modernization processes have generated. It is in thissense that videos’ film language and narrative structures are coherent and adherent to their time.This is probably one of the main reason of their transnational success.What, however, is left to understand is for how long the interpretation of reality, of modernity,and of society that videos have produced will still be relevant. For how long will these formula beable to speak to Nigerian and pan-African audiences? The crisis of production that have emerged inthe past few years and, more generally, the progressive audience’s disaffection toward a number ofthe defining elements of Nigerian videos’ main genres (which I have mentioned in the previouschapters) could be read as an answer to this question. New narratives are coming up, and new filmlanguages are being formulated in order to produce new, more relevant interpretation of theNigerian and pan-African present. It is probably too early to be able to read and understand thesocial and cultural transformations that new films are “speaking”, but their existence is the sign of aongoing, large-scale transformation. If classic Nigerian videos’ film language emerged from aspecific disillusionment with the promises of modernity, it is legitimate to imagine that new filmsare expressing new projections toward the future, projections which inevitably imply thereformulation of the ideal of modernity within the Nigerian and African context. 125125 For a further development of this discussion see the conclusion.168