Programmed by Gallatin MA Candidate Eliel Peterson, join NYU’s Center for Black Visual Culture for a screening of the 2008 Nollywood film Caught in the Act, directed by Charles Inojie and co-presented by Nolly Babes. The film follows separated twin sisters (Genevieve Nnaji) whose lives collide when one sister kidnaps her unsuspecting niece.

The screening will be followed by a conversation featuring Venessa Appiah and Jediael Peterson, current doctoral scholars whose work engages questions of gender, the performance of identity, and Black visual culture. Together, the panelists will consider how Nollywood has represented women’s desire and agency, the cultural expectations attached to the figure of the “good woman,” and the ways African filmmakers use popular cinema to negotiate, and sometimes challenge, ideas of respectability, gender, and womanhood.

Rather than treating these questions as fixed or universal, the conversation will explore how ideas about womanhood are produced through cinema and how Nollywood provides audiences with a space to encounter the contradictions, desires, and negotiations that shape gendered life across African contexts.

The evening will begin with an introduction by Yasmin Gbaja and include a DJ set by Neema, creating space for gathering, conversation, and community before and after the screening.