Black looks/black light: Med Hondo's Lumière Noire1

Abstract

While ‘the gaze’ and ‘the look’ are familiar concepts in film studies, the idea of a postcolonial Black Gaze is more unusual and potentially more problematic. In dialogue with a range of theorists from both film and postcolonial studies, this article analyzes in detail one film by the radical African film maker Med Hondo which highlights the problems of looking. Renowned as a ‘difficult’ director, Hondo's first foray into more mainstream film making presents its own array of difficulties in its representation of the hidden face of the contemporary African diaspora.