Nationalist African Cinema: Legacy and Transformations par by Sada Niang

Abstract

Reviews 205 Niang, Sada. Nationalist African Cinema: Legacy and Transformations. Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2014. ISBN 978-0-7391-4907-2. Pp. 131. $80. This book takes its place within a corpus of recent works that reexamine the very nature of African filmic practice and criticism. In contrast with scholars who look to the postcolonial and postnational eras for signs of fresh styles of cinematic expression, Niang invites his readers to reconsider the artistic qualities of films produced during the early years of African independence. For at the heart of this occasionally disjointed study lies the assertion that specialists have by and large failed to appreciate the significant esthetic innovations that mark Francophone African cinema of the nationalist period, the long decade running from 1959 until 1973, date of the Third World Filmmakers Meeting in Algiers. By reducing nationalist African cinema to its didactic function and anti-Western ideological stance, film scholars have, Niang holds, done a disservice to a body of work whose strident social messages of identity construction and nation building have overshadowed their esthetically hybrid nature. The six chapters comprising Nationalist African Cinema provide a timely corrective, focusing upon key links and affinities that inscribe African films of the 1960s and 70s within the main currents of world cinema. Following an initial chapter devoted to the historical, political, and creative forces at play in the creation of the Fédération panafricaine de cinéastes (FEPACI), the book draws our attention to African filmmakers who engaged with the esthetics of Italian neorealism, British animation, American western and gangster genres, and the French New Wave. Using an authorist approach, Niang incorporates a series of case studies illustrating how first generation trailblazers like Ousmane Sembène, Moustapha Alassane, and Djibril Diop Mambéty responded to Western cultural influences by borrowing and reappropriating the techniques and tropes of American and European cinema, only to recombine them with indigenous elements in surprising and inventive ways. Formal and thematic affinities between African cinematic praxis and the French New Wave, for instance, can be seen in the 1973 film Touki Bouki by Senegalese filmmaker Mambéty, who uses flashback as a narrative device in a fashion reminiscent of Jean-Luc Godard’s Pierrot le fou (1965) and makes intertextual references to À bout de souffle (Godard, 1960) that would have been easily recognized by a generation of urban Senegalese moviegoers raised on a steady diet of New Wave feature films, Looney Tunes shorts, and B movies from Hollywood of the gangster and western varieties.While Niang’s argument is persuasive, Nationalist African Cinema is not without its shortcomings. The book would have benefited greatly from some rigorous editing, as well as from careful proofreading by someone more proficient in English. Careless spelling and punctuation errors become irritating, and inattention to detail results in scholar Debra—or, alternately, Deborah—Boyd being omitted from the bibliography, even though her work is twice cited in chapter 5. Also absent are relevant excerpts from the 1975 FEPACI Charter referenced at length in chapter 1, as well as some sort of chronology or timeline to help readers navigate the book’s frequent temporal leaps between and within chapters. Davidson College (NC) Carole A. Kruger Phillips, Alastair, and Ginette Vincendeau, eds. A Companion to Jean Renoir. West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013. ISBN 978-1-4443-3853-9. Pp. 616. $200. Les études renoiriennes se dotent ici d’une nouvelle œuvre critique qui poursuit le constant travail de réévaluation de l’étendue de l’alluvion d’un artisan du cinéma, tâche d’une intarissable loquacité. Ouvrage collectif articulé autour de trois axes principaux avec un effet grossissant graduel passant du gros plan au plan d’ensemble, sans oublier le plan moyen, les contributeurs dressent un portrait exhaustif, innovant et audacieux de l’esthétique renoirienne tant par la sélection filmique—avec une alternance remarquable entre des films canoniques et emblématiques (La règle du jeu, La grande illusion) et des réalisations plus confidentielles (Tire au flanc ou Sur un air de charleston)—que par les approches théoriques mises en œuvre. Cette reconsidération de l’esthétique de Renoir engage la publication sur la voie...