Saro-Wiwa, Zina

Zina Saro-Wiwa (born 1976, Port Harcourt, Nigeria) is a Brooklyn-based video artist and filmmaker. She makes video installations, documentaries, music videos and experimental films. Saro-Wiwa is the founding filmmaker of the alt-Nollywood movement – a movement that uses the narrative, stylistic and visual conventions of the Nollywood film industry but for subversive, politically challenging ends. Formerly a BBC journalist, her artistic practice emerged from her interest in changing the way the world sees Africa, using film, art, and food. Her practice includes New West African Kitchen, a project where Saro-Wiwa re-imagines West African cuisine, each feast also featuring African video art presentations and a mini-lecture. On 22 March 2011, Saro-Wiwa was named as one of the top 25 leaders of the African Renaissance in The Times newspaper. In 2017, an article published on Norient highlighted that Saro-Wiwa's use of dubbing alt-Nollywood movies "subverts narrative, stylistic and visual conventions of the Nigerian cinema".