Women and Sexuality inAfrican Cinema

Abstract

African cultures' views on intimacy and privacy have had an approach to sex, nudity, and eroticism that differs from the openness associated with that of most Western cultures. This is one of the factors that explains the relatively scarce displays of sexuality in African cinema. However, in the past two decades, an increasing number of films made by African filmmakers in the continent and the diaspora have featured stories by women with fluid sexual identities. In these films, women engage in same‐sex relationships as part of their assertion of freedom. The titles includeKarmen Geï(dir. Joseph Gaï Ramaka, 2001, Senegal),Les Saignantes(dir. Jean‐Pierre Bekolo, 2007, Cameroon),The World Unseen(dir. Shamim Sarif, 2007, South Africa), and, more recently,Stories of our Lives(dir. Jim Chuchu, 2014, Kenya) andRafiki(dir. Wanuri Kahiu, 2018, Kenya), whose lead actress, Samantha Mugatsia, won the best actress award in the 50‐year‐old film festival FESPACO (Pan‐African Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou) in 2019. African scholars, and more specifically African women scholars, are revisiting gender theories and concepts, in search of a de‐Westernization of the academic terminology able to address the complexity and intersectionality of women's sexuality in African cultures. Similarly, African women filmmakers are contesting patriarchal representations of women in relation to violence, illness, and as victims, with self‐representations of sexuality and redefinitions of identity revolving around pleasure and as subversive to different forms of oppression experienced by African women.