Video-making the city: Popular culture and urban life in Cameroon

This article considers the video production of Douala, Cameroon, as part of the wider "video boom" that has occurred in Africa during recent decades, in order to analyze the multiple interrelations between visual media and urban life. After showing that Cameroonian video makers use the city's resources to compose their videos, I argue that they win over the heterogeneous audience of Douala by centering their plots on the struggle for upward social mobility experienced transversally by the city dwellers, beyond ethnic, gender, and age differences. In the central section, I look at the videos as distorted "mirrors" of reality, which spread educational "messages" among the people, in order to reform their behavior and prompt social transformation. I conclude that the videos constitute a representational space for confrontation and change, where the identity of Douala is shaped and, at the same time, transformed.