Literature & The Arts - Femi Okiremuete Shaka. Modernity and the African Cinema: A Study in Colonialist Discourse, Postcoloniality, and Modern African Identities. Trenton, N.J.: Africa World Press, Inc., 2004. 453 pp. Bibliography. Index. $29.95. Paper.

Abstract

Femi Okiremuete Shaka. Modernity and the African Cinema: A Study in Colonialist Discourse, Postcoloniality, and Modern African Identities. Trenton, N.J.: Africa World Press, Inc., 2004. 453 pp. Bibliography. Index. $29.95. Paper. In this ambitious study, Femi Okiremuete Shaka takes up the challenge of examining what it means to be African in postindependence Africa through an analysis of the institutions on the African continent. He states categorically that this volume is part of the soul-searching process begun by other African intellectuals such as Anthony Appiah, Valentin Mudimbe, and Manthia Diawara (9). As result, the work is as much about the crisis of contemporary African identity and African as it is about African film. The volume is organized into nine chapters, including summary and conclusion, and spans variety of topics such as modern African identities, the problematics of African criticism, colonialist African discourse and cinema, production structures, and the historical background of post-colonial African historical Three chapters offer critical readings of key African films such as Ousmane Sembene's Borom Sârret (1963), Mandobi (1968), and Camp de Thiaroye (1988); Med Hondo's Sarraounia (1986); as well as two colonial instructional films: Men of Africa (Alexander Shaw, 1939) and Daybreak in Udi (Terry Bishop, 1949). Shaka defends this breadth of subject matter as an attempt to provide a proper definition and framework for the criticism of African (13). Shaka chides seminal writers on African cinema such as Diawara, Ukadike, Armes, and Pfaff for focusing too much on charting African history and not providing an appropriate framework for analyzing African (22). To redress this theoretical oversight, as he puts it, it is necessary to consider such concepts as Africanness, modernity and (22). Although he correctly points out that [one] of the major problems currently plaguing the criticism of African film... [is] lack of attention to the specificity of the cinematic medium, especially with regards to the nature of narration in film (111), he devotes long passages to explications of others' points of view. For example, in one lengthy section (111-23), he describes cinematic codes of narration and states that he will develop framework for the criticism of African film, but this project is never fully realized, nor is it made clear how it could be put to the test with filmic texts. Furthermore, his claim about the lack of attention to the nature of subjectivity and its attendant aspects (111) is problematic, since in many African films the African subject is explicitly expressed as function of ideology and aesthetics. …