In this post, I argue that Iwájú (2024) redefines African futurism through animation by mobilizing the animated urban environment of Lagos as the primary site through which class inequality, technological unevenness, and futurity are made visible and materially legible. In addition, this piece treats Lagos city in Iwájú not as a backdrop but as an authored e...

African animation scholars have discussed the role of formal art institutions in producing auteurs like Moustapha Alassane, Jean-Michel Kibushi, and Ebele Okoye (Callus 2018, Sawadogo 2019). In this piece, I propose that the African animation studio is a creative and learning center, a workshop that produces animation as well as animators. While individuals can take ...

In the opening minutes, Nayola narrates a dream: a man runs naked through tall grass, gunshots crack, he collapses in mud, and a mulemba tree grows from the place where he falls. In the final sequence, a masked figure crosses a terrain scattered with abandoned weapons towards an uncertain horizon, while Bonga’s ‘Mona Ki Ngi Xica’ (1972) plays. These bookends frame war as inhe...

2026 marks the resurgence of animation’s most sophisticated anti-hero: Wile E. Coyote.

While he has spent decades in a cycle of recursive trauma, he recently moved from the desert to the courtroom in the film Coyote v. Acme1. This cinematic resurgence is based on Ian Frazier’s 1990 New Yorker humour piece2, where the Coyote...

In the years of 1953 through 1963 five hilariously funny Warners Brothers Looney Tunes were produced featuring the characters of Sam Sheepdog and his antagonist – coworker Ralph Wolf. The overarching theme of the series is the gag that Sam and Ralph are working a production line job and punch a time clock. Considering the issues of animation and labor, and more specifically, ...