Enjoying Sameness and Difference - Competition and Convergence of Latin American Telenovelas and Swahili Video Films in Tanzania

Since the early 2000s Latin American telenovelas have become a very popular and widely received genre in Tanzania. At the same time, a huge video film industry has developed with local films made in Swahili and released on DVD. Although very different from local culture and storytelling in style, aesthetics and language, telenovelas are likewise popular with the Swahili audiences. Their popularity lies both in their foreignness, as well as their sameness with cultural practices, and audiences take pleasure in comparing the lives of the characters with their own. Rooted in the appropriation of early development soap opera, telenovelas are commonly read as educative and as giving moral lessons. In this way they function as open spaces for the imagination of other possible life worlds. For Tanzanian filmmakers telenovelas are important influences on and inspirations for their work. The formal and aesthetic influence of telenovelas has left visible traces on video films as well as on soap operas in Tanzania, which thus contributes to the wider discussion of the two media formats' transnationalization.