Magister Artium - MA / The mbopo institution, popularly known as the “fattening room” is a cultural rite of passage for young virgins, who are being prepared for marriage among the Ibibio/Efik people of southern Nigeria. It is a complex cultural institution which marked the change of status from girlhood to nubile womanhood in Ibibio/Efik culture. This study examines the practice of mbopo ritual among the Ibibio/Efik people across the previous century. Through an engaged and detailed visual analysis, the study argues that in the first decade of the 20th century, the mbopo ritual had a degree of vibrancy with an attached sense of secrecy and spiritual mystery. But between 1920 and the present, this vibrancy and spiritual undertone has been subtly but progressively compromised. A buildup of tension on the ritual by modern forces, not only of the outside missionaries, but also indigenous converts set in motion a process that would eventually transform the ritual from a framework of an actual cultural practice into the realms of “cultural reinvention” and re-rendering. Feminist critiques of the 1980s and the 1990s led to the popular awareness of the damaging impact of clitoridectomy, just one core aspect of the ritual. As a direct result, clitoridectomy was outlawed across the country, leaving mbopo to be seen as a morally suspect practice. In recent year, the once vibrant, secret and spiritually grounded rite of seclusion for nubile women has been reimagined and reinvented through the public display in art, painting, cultural dance troupe, music and television shows.

This project examines the how camera movement as a stylistic element is used as a storytelling device in the films of select international filmmakers. The main intention of the study is to trace the changing function of the mobile frame to see how a specific stylistic element develops across different narrative paradigms, national industries and between “early” and contemporary periods of filmmakers. My primary assertion is that the norms guiding the development of the tracking camera expand gradually from normative functions toward figurative uses. In order to be able to differentiate between normative and figurative uses of the tracking camera with conceptual clarity, this project adapts Roland Barthes’s typology about the narrative function of distinctive textual/stylistic units. Barthes’ conceptual framework becomes functional by assigning specific codes (hermeneutic, the semic, the proairetic, the symbolic and the cultural codes) to the interactions of the elements of narration. When transforming and changing the function of stylistic elements across their films, artists respond to a wide range of industrial, technological, aesthetic, cultural factors, from which this study focuses on socio-cultural trends. The underlying assumption of this project holds that the mentioned trends can be detected in the stylistic choices of artists. This study takes a bottom-up route: starting with an analytical interpretation of a specific aesthetic device, it moves towards an explanation that connects camera movement to larger, dynamic signifying systems. The arch of my project traces the relation between normative and figurative textual codes through the prism of camera movement.