ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at the relationship between location shooting and extractive industry. Approaching these interrelated phenomena from historical and theoretical perspectives, the chapter offers an overview of the Euro-American exploitation of African locations before centering on the mining of tin and coal and on the cinematic forms and practices that materialized around such extractive enterprises in colonial Nigeria. From romantic melodramas filmed in the tin fields of the Middle Belt to historical epics made in the collieries of Enugu, cinema has long benefited from the distinctive shooting locations (literally) opened up by extractive activities. But while exploiting the photogenic aspects of extraction, cinema has also directly participated in the degradation of Nigeria’s landforms, embodying and advancing their plunder for much of the twentieth century.
