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Bollywood Comes to Nigeria : Indian Films and African Cultures, September 28
 In conjunction with the Barnard Forum on Migration, Assistant Professor of Anthropology Brian Larkin will be discussing " Bollywood Comes to Nigeria: Indian Films and African Cultures" on September 28. His talk will examine the migration of Indian films across national boundaries to see how global media operate and how culture is formed. The lecture will take place at 7 p.m. in the Julius S. Held Lecture Hall in Barnard Hall.
The many films of Bollywood have followed the path of Indian migration across the globe, connecting diasporic Indians to an archive of images, songs and memories of the homeland. More interesting is the longstanding popularity of Indian films with non-Indian audiences. The sight of a fifteen foot image of Sridevi, dancing on the screens of northern Nigeria, or of Amitabh Bachchan seen through the snowy reception of television have become powerful images within the culture of Hausa people of Nigeria. There, for over fifty years, Indian films, have been a dominant part of everyday life. This popularity is mimicked by the extraordinary global reach of Bollywood that has been truly successful in marginalizing Hollywood in many world markets yet which has, until recently, rarely been analyzed in discussions of global media. It is this migration across the boundaries of nation, language, culture and religion that makes Hindi films truly global media.
Brian Larkin writes on issues of globalization, media and culture. He is co-editor with Faye Ginsburg and Lila Abu-Lughod of Media Worlds: Anthropology on New Terrain . His research is based in Nigeria where he has written extensively on how media have facilitated new forms of globalization and cultural change.
Lectures offered through the Barnard Forum on Migration are supported by a bequest establishing the Weiss International Fellowship Fund to bring distinguished scholars in literature and the arts to Barnard. The Barnard Forum on Migration is being organized by Caryl Phillips, the Henry R. Luce Professor of Migration and Social Order, who joined the Barnard faculty in the fall of 1998 as a member of the English department. The College is grateful to the Henry R. Luce Foundation for its support of the distinguished professorship.
Forum on Migration events are free and open to the public. For more information, please e-mail mhand@barnard.edu, or call 212-854-3577.
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