Kanda’s Grounds and the Ritual Experience of Rural Cinema in Narok, Kenya

Film Exhibition in Crisis

“…However, in bringing together the research that follows, we also sought out scholarship that looked beyond the notion that exhibition is always and only a highly systematized commercial practice. In this, we recognize the work of scholars like Anat Helman (2003), Nicholas Balaisis (2014), Donna De Ville (2015, Solomon Waliaula (2018), and James Burns (2021), who have drawn attention to cinemagoing practices that often take shape outside the traditional movie theater industry or film festival circuit. This framing does not preclude moments of loss, degradation, or failure in particular modes of cinemagoing, but nonetheless allows us to grasp crises as coinciding with moments of transition and adaptation instead of the collapse so often predicted in popular narratives about film exhibition.…”