Peoples and Cultures of Africa

Afrique, je te plumerai provides a devastating overview of 100years of cultural genocide in Africa. Director Jean-Marie Teno usesCameroon, the only African country colonized by three European powers,as the basis for a carefully researched case study of the continuingdamage done to traditional African societies by alien neocolonialcultures.

Describes the three very different regions of Nigeria ... Northern, Eastern, Western ... and the peoples and activities within each. Nigeria's steps toward unity; the influence of British occupation on its development; aspects of life among the Fulani nomads; traditional methods of various agricultural activities; the effects of education and modern technology; the influence of Christianity on the way of life in the southern regions; and the ways in which Nigerians have utilized their country's vast and varied natural resources are all recorded in detail. Also reveals what Nigerians are doing and have done to achieve national unity by benefiting from the vitality and resourcefulness of its people.

Africans : A Triple Heritage by Ali Mazrui.

In summer 2003, the University of California Research Expeditions Program sponsored a project called "Slave Traders of Lake Nyasa in Malawi." The project involved 13 international fieldworkers focused on past and present forms of slavery in Malawi. Short video (5 mins.) shows key project findings.
Producer Marty Otanez

African Encounters Series
Presents the way of life of the Akan people in today's world, including sections on living conditions, education, religion, art and popular culture.

Beauty and the Beast: Comparing Two Igbo Masquerades
By Herbert M. Cole
This video compares two quite different, separate masquerades in a single Igbo community: Ekeleke, a dance of several stilt maskers, along with a masked leopard and diviner, contrasting with Okoroshi, a more complex and lengthy masquerade featuring a few pretty white-faced maidens and a much larger contingent of dark masculine masks. Ekeleke, played twice daily over five days week, shows several types of virtuoso stilt dancing and a brief play in which the lead stilt masker, with the diviner’s help, subdues the leopard. Okoroshi plays night and day for six weeks, with as many as a hundred maskers, most of them the dark males, some powerful, with twisted and ugly faces. Ekeleke is primarily entertainment, whereas Okoroshi, at least a few decades ago, was a serious display of Igbo values under spiritual sanctions, with some maskers exercising social control by pressuring errant behavior. Beauty vs. Beast notions play out twice: first, in the contrast between the light, largely secular Ekeleke entertainment vs the stronger and deeper Okoroshi, with it emphasis on neutral or negative social values, and second, within Okoroshi, the white fine-featured female masks (representing the order and safety of the village) vs. the larger number of dark, often misshapen masks (standing for mystery, night, darkness, and less benign human values). All masks are danced by males only.