The Ambivalence of French Funding

Abstract

African cinema, if we discount colonial cinema, began in the independence era. The 1934 Laval Decree forbade filming in the French African colonies without prior authorization.1 Even when made by Europeans, anticolonial films were banned, notably Rene Vautier’s Afrique 50 / Africa 50 (France, 1950) for its denunciation of colonial atrocities, and the admirable play of black and white lighting that is Les Statues meurent aussi / Statues Also Die by Chris Marker and Alain Resnais (France, 1955), whose crime was to show how colonial trade was killing black African art. While pioneers had begun making films in the 1920s in Tunisia and Egypt,2 the beginnings of sub-Saharan African filmmaking are generally dated back to the 1955 film Afrique sur Seine, shot in Paris. Other films preceded it, however. In Madagascar in 1937, Raberono filmed the commemoration of the centenary of the death of Rasalama Rafaravavy, the first Madagascan martyr.3 Under the auspices of the Congolese Film Club established in 1950, Albert Mongita shot La Lecon de cinema / The Film Lesson in 1951 on the lawn of the Leopoldville golf course in the Belgian Congo, and Emmanuel Lubalu shot Les Pneus gonfles / Pumped Tires in 1953 with the actor Bumba.4 In Guinea in 1953, Mamadou Toure shot the twenty-three-minute, 16mm short film Mouramani, based on a tale about this ancient Guinean king. It is striking to note then that one finds the same legend in film as in literature, for, rather than looking any further afield, black African literature is considered to have begun in 1921 with Batouala by the Martinican Rene Maran. The roots of this myth no doubt lie in the novel being awarded the Goncourt literary prize.