Abstract
As a transnational cinema event, the release of Marvel Studios’ Black Panther (2018) is arguably a monumental moment in the African experience of cinema. Coincidentally, this is followed in 2019 by the 26th edition of the bi-annual festival of Pan-African cinema, FESPACO, which will mark fifty years of the festival’s existence. In addition to the programme of screenings, African filmmakers, critics, theorists, among others, are expected to gather in Ouagadougou to engage with issues of memory, identity and the economy in relation to the idea of a sustainable and diverse Pan-African cinema. These issues have long been prominently placed on the agenda of those concerned with African filmmaking. That they remain a preoccupation of current debates, suggests their persistence, and perhaps, an urgent need for these debates to move beyond the metaphorical polarities of ‘dog eat dog’ and ‘dog eat nothing’. These ‘notes’ are therefore, in anticipation of new perspectives that would shape the futures of African filmmaking. Importantly, a perspective will be sketched to help frame an approach to the idea of Pan-African cinema as a global and transnational economy – cultural, financial and ideological.
Highlights
In the attempt to discover an agenda for African Film Studies as an institutional practice within Pan-African cinema, the position of films or filmmakers will have to be accounted for within the inescapable factors of Africa’s history and ongoing social transformation
Too is the coming into being of the Carthage Film Festival (1966), FESPACO (1969) and FEPACI (1970)
This approach distinctly goes beyond some of the apparent limitations in Boughedir’s work, in engaging with the complexity of various texts, including issues of modes of address, spectator positions and narrative structure. Another important contribution is made by Teshome Gabriel, who can be credited with globalising the idea of Third Cinema. Through his writings (Pines & Willemen 1989, Gabriel 1982), Gabriel developed the formative ideas articulated by Solanas and Getino (1969) in relation to Latin America, to encompass concerns of African cinema in particular, and ‘Third world’ films in general
Summary
In the attempt to discover an agenda for African Film Studies as an institutional practice within Pan-African cinema, the position of films or filmmakers (where ever that might be located across the years since the exhibition of the first moving images) will have to be accounted for within the inescapable factors of Africa’s history and ongoing social transformation. His focus is on films made up to 1989 and their ‘thematic diversification’ which makes categories of recognizable narratives, as an element which offers significant appeal to different audiences This approach distinctly goes beyond some of the apparent limitations in Boughedir’s work, in engaging with the complexity of various texts, including issues of modes of address, spectator positions and narrative structure. Through his writings (Pines & Willemen 1989, Gabriel 1982), Gabriel developed the formative ideas articulated by Solanas and Getino (1969) in relation to Latin America, to encompass concerns of African cinema in particular, and ‘Third world’ films in general It is within this second period that issues of ‘national cinema’ become significant as the politics of the postcolonial unfolds, and the ideological influence of Pan-Africanism takes on an urgency. Even as ‘Africa is not a country’, the deterministic labelling of one type or brand of films as being representative of, or authentic to an African cinema, is misplaced
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
