African Filmmakers Research Articles

African filmmaking: north and south of the Sahara

African cinema is a vibrant, diverse, and relatively new art form, which continues to draw the attention of an ever-expanding worldwide audience. African Filmmaking is the first comprehensive study in English linking filmmaking in the Maghreb with that in the 12 independent states of francophone West Africa. Roy Armes examines a wide range of issues common to filmmakers throughout the region: the socio-political context, filmmaking in Africa before the mid-1960s, the involvement of African and French governments, questions of national and cultural identity, the issue of globalization, and, especially, the work of the filmmakers themselves over the past 40 years, with particular emphasis on younger filmmakers. Armes offers a wealth of information and a unique perspective on the history and future of African filmmaking.

Bibliography

This bibliography lists items noted between January and March 2007. Akonor, KwameAfrica and IMF Conditionality. (London and New York: Routledge, 2006). xiii + 163 pp. £60. Amnesty InternationalA Guide to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights. (London: Amnesty International, 2006). 82 pp. £6. April, Kurt and Shockley, Marylou eds, Diversity in Africa: the coming of age of a continent. (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2006). xxiv + 316 pp. £57.50. Bailey, A.C. African Voices of the Atlantic Slave Trade: beyond the silence and the shame. (Boston: Beacon Press, 2006). 289 pp. $16. Barber, Karin, Africa's Hidden Histories: everyday literacy and making the self. (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2006). x + 451 pp. £18.99. Barnes, Roy, African Filmmaking: North and South of the...

The cinematic township: cinematic representations of the ‘township space’ and who can claim the rights to representation in post-apartheid South African cinema

This article seeks to analyse the cinematic representations of the ‘township space’ in post-apartheid South African cinema and television where the ‘township space’ is utilised as a central location to represent the narratives of authentic black South African stories. Cinematic representations (‘place-images’) of the ‘township space’ in post-apartheid South Africa subscribe to ‘place-myths’ that informed the space of the township during apartheid. Initially constructed through a process of ‘othering’ to suit a political ideology, the township was represented as the manageable part of modernity for ‘black identity’. In post-apartheid South African filmmaking there appears to be a ‘fixing’ or ‘freezing’ of an authentic black experience within the ‘township space’ which serves to essentialise black identity and the black experience. Filmmakers have embarked on a project to redefine the township in post-apartheid society, but there appears to be the reiteration of ‘place-images’ and ‘place-myths’ that are historically and politically outdated. The ‘cinematic township’ has become ‘fixed’ in its visual aesthetics and fetishised in the memory and representations of South African filmmakers. I argue that the township is a space of hybridity, an in-between space reflected through the intermediate position the township occupies in relation to the urban and rural spaces. In this paper I suggest that the township space has become a fetishised cinematic trope, and that the ‘cinematic township’ has similarities with ‘Township Art’ from the 1950's and 1960's. This article also speaks to issues of representation and who can claim the rights to representation in post-apartheid South Africa (Ngũgĩ 2000 and Axel 1999). The South African filmmaking landscape is unique because of the mix of ‘white’ and ‘black’ filmmakers. This raises questions about ‘racialised Africanness’ and the implications for ‘African whiteness’.

Postcolonial Images: Studies in North African Film, and: African Filmmaking: North and South of the Sahara

Postcolonial Images: Studies in North African Film, and: African Filmmaking: North and South of the Sahara

‘If we don't tell our own stories, nobody will’

Agenda editor Kristin Palitza spoke to three African women filmmakers about gender-stereotyping in film and their own standing in a male-dominated industry. Their films, which all investigate women's lives and women's rights, were shown at the 27th Durban International Film Festival in South Africa, in June of this year.

SOUTH AFRICAN CINEMA IN EXILE

In this overview article, I attempt to characterize a South African cinema of exile through a number of lenses. I begin by situating my study within general studies of cinema and exile before focusing on Hamid Naficy’s distinction between exilic and diasporic films and the notion of the “interstitial”. I use Naficy’s theories, as well as the words of South African filmmakers themselves, as a framework against which to measure South African exilic cinema (which I argue is constituted by films made both outside and within the country), showing that this cinema displays diasporic rather than exilic features. In tracing a South African cinema of exile from Come Back, Africa (1959), through Jemima and Johnny (1966) and A World Apart (1988), through to post‐apartheid exilic films, I argue that these films erode an insider/outsider dichotomy primarily through their alternative form, a subversive combination of documentary and fiction.

Françoise Pfaff, ed. Focus on African Films. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004. 327 pp. Photographs. Index. $65.00. Cloth. $24.95. Paper.

Francoise Pfaff, ed. Focus on African Films. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004. 327 pp. Photographs. Index. $65.00. Cloth. $24.95. Paper. The introduction and fourteen chapters of Francoise Pfaff's Focus on African Films address reader with very little exposure to or knowledge about African cinema. Many of essays include extended film summaries and fair amount of contextual and historical information newcomer to African might appreciate. Most authors opt to survey several films unified by theme or approach instead of reading one or two films closely. As result, students embarking on discovery of African in an undergraduate course will find collection informative and accessible. The scholar of African cinema, however, may find little that is new in Pfaff s volume and may be frustrated by its limited thematic and methodological scope. Although title of collection promises look at films from entire continent, majority of essays in Focus on African Films adopt much tighter focus on films from Francophone Africa. Among these, films of Sembene Ousmane receive disproportionately large amount of attention (seven of volume's fourteen essays discuss Sembene's films at length). Furthermore, many of authors included in Pfaff s book employ very similar, and by now very familiar, critical approach. Operating from within cultural-nationalist paradigm, contributors align themselves with, and locate film's significance in, filmmaker's intended and unified meaning, elucidating and celebrating union of artistry and political commitment African filmmaker achieves. Samba Gadjigo, for example, in an examination of Sembene's historical films, describes Sembene as a committed artist and activist for change (38). Brief discussions of Emitai, Camp de Thiaroye, and Ceddo serve to illustrate how Sembene's films established dominant Hollywood tradition of historical representation (37). Mbye Cham's survey of recent African films explains how films, based in the African heritage of oral traditions and memory (50), contest official, Eurocentric historical narratives. N. Frank Ukadike reads Allah Tantou and Afrique, jet te plumerai as examples of social documentary meant to combat false image of Africa presented by traditional cinema (160), and Brenda Berrian's article Manu Dibango and Ceddo's Transatlantic Soundscape examines how film's soundscape embraces two men's Pan African vision (153). In each analysis, critic stands beside filmmaker, amplifying his conscious intention through careful explication of important scenes in film text. Kenneth W. Harrow's provocative deconstructive reading challenges this approach, contesting claim that filmmaker can have last word on what his film means. …

Questioning African Cinema: Conversations with Filmmakers (review)

Reviewed by: Questioning African Cinema: Conversations with Filmmakers Mary Jean Green (bio) Ukadike, Nwachukwu Frank, Questioning African Cinema: Conversations with Filmmakers. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002. xxi + 319 pp. $59.95 (cloth). Offering interviews with twenty African filmmakers from seventeen different countries, Frank Ukadike's Questioning African Cinema is an important resource, for its intelligent and sometimes quite animated discussions with directors as well as the useful biographical sketches and filmographies that frame each entry. The interviews are particularly interesting as a follow-up to Ukadike's important 1994 study, Black African Cinema.In that book and as an interviewer in the present volume, Ukadike reveals himself to be an opinionated film critic, and the interviews provide an interesting opportunity for the filmmakers to disagree with his previous interpretations of their work. This is particularly illuminating in his discussion with Malian director Cheick Oumar Sissoko, whom Ukadike had taken to task for his attack on female excision in Finzan (1990), a representation Ukadike saw as failing to consider the origins and history of African cultural traditions. In his interview, Sissoko, who shows himself well aware of Bambara cosmology, replies by contending that most people who practice excision are themselves unaware of the reasons why they do so. He vigorously defends Finzan as a depiction of women's struggle to take control of their own lives. Similarly, Ukadike gently criticizes Burkinabe filmmaker Idrissa Ouedraogo for making films whose primary appeal is to an international audience (according to Ukadike, Ouedraogo's Yaaba (1989) is "one of the few African films that have been widely received in international commercial screenings with good box-office returns," 152). Ouedraogo replies by emphasizing the realities of making films in a poor country like Burkina Faso, where, by his estimate, 85% of the population live in villages without cinemas or even electricity. Thus, he concedes that African films are condemned to be somewhat "elitist," made for an urban population, with a primary market outside the African continent. In the face of this almost insoluble problem, Ouedraogo urges each African country to adopt a national film policy that would reduce the cost of production and postproduction in order to make African films available to Africans themselves. Ukadike often points out in his interviews that "Africa" is not a single entity. Rather, it includes a diversity of perspectives shaped by its fifty-five different [End Page 141] countries and even more numerous languages and cultures. Filmmakers from former British colonies, as well as Francophones from Cameroon, are vociferous in their criticism of French support for African cinema, which they see as a continuation of French cultural domination. They also perceive French influence and a distinct Francophone bias in FESPACO, the biennial Pan-African film festival held in Ouagadougou (Nigeria's Brendan Shehu says of FESPACO, "anything that is not approved by their colonial masters is not to be allowed" [Ukadike, 163]). Some even go so far as to question the ability of Francophone cultural elites to make truly African films. As might be expected, Anglophone directors, who now receive little support from their former colonial masters, advocate greater reliance on market forces. This is at the center of a diatribe by Nigeria's Chief Eddie Ugbomah, who finances his own productions through Nigeria's large population base and its tradition of filming Yoruba theater (a form of popular cinema that is belittled by other directors interviewed). The economic optimism of the Nigerians is shared by Ethiopian Haile Gerima, who operates his Sankofa Organization, named after his own successful film, from his African diaspora base in the United States. Filmmakers from smaller and more linguistically divided countries, like Burkina Faso, on the other hand, are more likely to advocate multinational distribution networks and production facilities shared among Africans. Despite the continued discussion of such projects, however—Ukadike's interviews take place over the entire course of the 1990s—little seems to have come of these ideas, hampered by lack of funding as well as by radically differing government policies. If there is any consensus among the many divergent viewpoints, it is that African films should be made by Africans and based in African cultural values and practices. How this...

Melissa Thackway. Africa Shoots Back: Alternative Perspectives in Sub-Saharan Francophone Film. Bloomington: Indiana University Press/Cape Town: James Philip/Oxford: James Currey, 2003. x + 230 pages. Illustrations. Bibliography. Filmography. Index. $65.00. Cloth. $ 27.95. Paper.

LITERATURE AND THE ARTS Melissa Thackway. Africa Shoots Back: Alternative Perspectives in Sub-Saharan Film. Bloomington: Indiana University Press/Cape Town: James Philip/Oxford: James Currey, 2003. x + 230 pages. Illustrations. Bibliography. Filmography. Index. $65.00. Cloth. $ 27.95. Paper. Except for the enormous video production of Nigeria and Ghana that began in the early 1990s, filmmaking in Africa south of the Sahara has remained extremely constrained by scarce funding and severely limited distribution. Still, a substantial body of films has accumulated since the first feature films were directed by Africans in West Africa in the 1960s, and some of them have gained wide international recognition. Most of these film have been produced in the former French colonies, where filmmakers have had access to a measure of funding from French government agencies. Africa Shoots Back provides an excellent account of the films produced by filmmakers from Africa over the last four decades, even if the omission of Ngangura Mweze, the prominent Congolese (Kinshasa) filmmaker, is surprising. As Thackway explores various topics, she touches on a large array of films. Many she discusses in considerable detail, and these substantial accounts cover just about all the major films from the region, including those, quite numerous, that have been shot in an African language and are thus not Francophone stricto sensu. Her summary dismissal of Idrissa Ouedraogo's classic Yaaba, however, leaves a notable lacuna. Thackway provides a wealth of information, but the lack of references to the sources for some of it is a matter of regret. Throughout she draws on interviews she conducted with eight directors: Adama Drabo, Anne Laure Folly, Dani Kouyate, Fanta Regina Nacro, Idrissa Ouedraogo, Abderrahmane Sissako, Cheick Oumar Sissoko, and Jean-Marie Teno, all but two at FESPACO 1995. These interviews are presented in the French original with an English translation in an appendix. Thackway starts out with an accomplished overview of critical approaches to African film and their pitfalls. While highlighting their post-colonial character, she stresses the diversity of films from Africa and the need to evaluate them on their own terms rather than projecting preconceived ideas about what constitutes an African film. Adopting a contextualizing approach, she establishes cultural identity, representation, and voice as key issues in these films. She proceeds to argue the central importance of the tradition of orature and offers an extended analysis of the structural and stylistic influences of oral traditions on many films produced in the region. Her discussion ranges from the adoption of the tale structure in films that often feature griots and their craft, to the use of allegory and satire, narrative layering, circularity, repetition, and musical leitmotifs. She further explores the use of archetypal characters and thematic influences, in particular the theme of the quest and the introduction of supernatural elements. Thackway's analysis of the role of orature in African film will stand as the classic exploration of this important topic. However, her strong focus on the role of oral literature risks neglecting other models that African filmmakers draw upon. The temptation is twofold: an emphasis on elements that can be related to oral traditions tends to omit other elements derived elsewhere, and some of the elements taken to reflect oral traditions might just as well be traced to other sources. …

Focus on African films

Focus on African Films. Edited by Francoise Pfaff. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2004. Pp. 327. $24.95 paper. As Francoise Pfaff indicates in her introduction, this collection of essays is not intended to be a critical panoramic view of African or an attempt at film taxonomy in the Far id Boughedir or Mathia Diawara vein. Rather, it aims at highlighting the new trends and developments occurring in the recent years, specifically how have moved away from dichotomous representations of idyllic precolonial on the one hand and the destruction and corruption of and Africans by European values on the other. Interestingly, Pfaff's choice of films rather than cinema in the title is never problematized. Yet it represents a conscious choice that raises several questions as to how we view the field and teach the subject. This is a point that should have been addressed further. Part I (on re-examining Official History) explores African filmmakers' renewed interest in bringing history to the screen and filling in some of the silences of the past. Robert Cancel's article Come Back South Africa on Apartheid captures the different stages of resistance and approaches by South African filmmakers. Samba Gadjigo delineates the new strategies introduced by Sembene vis-a-vis the representation of history. With Emitai, Ceddo, and Camp de Thieroye, Sembene produced a counter-narrative to both the usual Hollywood representation of history and the official Senegalese representation and popular memory of certain events of the past. Mbye Cham's article on recent narratives and representational strategies used in African feature and documentaries completes this picture of a revisionary construction of history. In that respect, Joseph Gugler's essay raises a key issue about the rapport between fictionality and historical representations in African and critics' responsibility to point out some of the discrepancies between the factual and cinematic representations. Part II (on the deconstruction of contextual space) is most compelling. It includes Pfaff's analysis of African cities as cinematic texts, Madeleine CottenetHage's exploration of images of France in Francophone African films, Kenneth Harrow's new take on Sembene's Xala, and Brenda Berrian's focus on Manu Dibango's soundtrack in Ceddo and what music enables Sembene to do. Cottenet-Hage analyzes the postcolonial implications of the choice of French space as the setting to several Francophone African films. Surprisingly, the issues of invisibility and assimilation for non-European immigrants, of blending into French society, are not really addressed, as for instance in her analysis of Le cri du Coeur. …

African Film: Re-Imagining a Continent (review)

Reviewed by: African Film: Re-Imagining a Continent James Burns Gugler, Joseph . 2004. African Film: Re-Imagining a Continent. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 200 pp. $ 24.95 (paper), $ 59.95 (cloth). Joseph Gugler's African Film: Re-Imagining a Continent examines how contemporary motion pictures represent Africa and its peoples. The book's main focus is Black African cinema, though it provides a brief discussion of several films about Africa made in Hollywood and in apartheid-era South Africa. In focusing on films made by and about Africans, Gugler introduces readers to a lesser-known version of the continent's past, one that provides a corrective to a century of negative Western cinematic representations. Well-organized and clearly written, this book will be an invaluable resource for the growing community of scholars using film to teach about Africa's past. The book loosely organizes seventeen films into six thematic chapters, titled "Recovering the African Past," "Fighting Colonialism," "The Struggle for Majority Rule in South Africa," "Betrayals of Independence," "The Exploited and Neglected Peasantry," and "Between the African Mass Market & International Recognition." Each chapter begins with a brief historical overview that provides context for the discussion of the films. This overview is followed by a close reading of several films that share a common theme. Gugler devotes most of his attention to movies made in African countries by African directors for African audiences. However the book integrates a discussion of three movies that were aimed at the Western market—Out of Africa, The Gods Must be Crazy, and A Dry White Season—as well as two films made by European directors working closely with African writers and actors, the antiapartheid drama Mapantsula, and the Zimbabwean Chimurenga film Flame. The readings of the films are informed and frequently insightful. For the most part, the book synthesizes the works of film scholars such as Peter Davis, Frank Ukadike, and Oliver Bartlet; however, Gugler makes an original contribution to film scholarship by documenting the process whereby many of these stories were transformed from literary works into motion pictures. Throughout the book, he demonstrates a firm understanding of [End Page 82] African history and a thorough knowledge of African literature, cinema history, and film theory. The ambitious scope of this book means that teachers looking to use it in class will want to supplement it with other materials. For example, the book's discussion of Sidney Pollack's Out of Africa does not adequately locate that film in the history of imperial epics that scholars like Gugler and African filmmakers are responding to. Likewise, the chapter on apartheid can only scratch the surface of the history of cinema in the struggle for majority rule in South Africa. Fortunately, Gugler has included for each film thorough bibliographies, which will prove invaluable to instructors looking to expand on his treatment of these topics. These bibliographies are supplemented by many large, clear, and useful illustrations, as well as several maps. African Film: Re-Imagining a Continent will be most useful if read in tandem with viewings of the films discussed. Unfortunately, this may prove difficult for many readers. Only three of the seventeen films are readily available at most video rental stores. The remainder range in price from expensive to very expensive, or are not available at all. Gugler acknowledges this challenge in his introduction, though the text is still written for an audience that has presumably seen some of the films discussed. Gugler has provided a service to the field by creating a concise, thoughtful, and accessible work. The fact that there is no similar book alone would recommend it. The clarity of Gugler's prose and his enthusiasm for the subject make it highly recommended. James Burns Clemson University Copyright © 2005 Indiana University Press

African Film: Re-Imagining a Continent (review)

Reviewed by: African Film: Re-imagining a Continent James E. Genova African Film: Re-imagining a Continent By Josef Gugler Bloomington: Indiana UP; Cape Town: David Philip; Oxford: James Currey, 2003. xiv + 201 pp. ISBN 0-253-21643-5 paper. Josef Gugler's African Film: Re-Imagining a Continent provides a succinct and thoughtful introduction to seventeen of the most widely known films produced in Africa over the past four decades, including Xala, Keïta, Finzan,and La Vie est belle. This book indicates the prominence achieved by African cinema since the independence era of the 1960s, the role of filmmakers in the postcolonial (re)construction of Africans images of themselves and Africa's image to the extra-African world, as well as the [End Page 124] immense difficulties African cineastes confront in producing their product and (even more importantly) having it shown. Gugler has not sought to provide a comprehensive study of African cinema or its historical development, but rather to introduce the reader to some background for the emergence of African filmmaking and to highlight some elements in recent films that help to define a specifically African film language. Consequently, African Film provides an excellent synopsis of the films it treats while centering on the question of the image of Africa. Gugler opens with an introduction that emphasizes the fundamental problematic in the construction of images of Africa throughout the twentieth century as well as the significant place of film in that process. He notes that some of the earliest films were made with African references or were actually filmed on the continent in the early years of European colonialism. During the colonial period documentaries about Africa as well as commercial productions emphasized the exoticness of Africa, its peoples, and societies. This served to denigrate or eliminate African cultures and histories, radically "othering" the continent to provide a justificatory space for colonialists' self-proclaimed civilizing missions. Consequently, the dominant image of Africa projected to the extra-African world (there were only very limited opportunities for Africans to view films in the colonial era) was that captured in the Tarzan epics. The image of what Gugler describes as "the white superman in Africa and the white woman he saves" combined with the erasure or stereotyping of the African served as the model that had to be both deconstructed and transcended by African filmmakers when they began to appropriate the genre for their own ends after colonialism. (2) However, as Gugler explains and the works analyzed in African Film attest the project of (re)constructing a post-colonial image of Africa for Africans and extra-African audiences has been difficult at best. Factors such as the technological deficiencies inherited from the colonial era, bilateral trade accords that favor ex-metropolitan cultural exports and allocate significant control over African film production, and the lack of Africa-based distribution networks have hindered African cineastes in their efforts to develop a truly responsive and representative African cinema. Those difficulties are only compounded by the continued generation of colonial-era images of Africa in Hollywood and elsewhere that garner much larger audiences throughout the world, including in African movie houses. African Film, then, presents the reader with an important introductory synopsis of the genre while also hinting at the significant study of its history and sociotemporal context of possibility still to be done. James E. Genova The Ohio State University Copyright © 2005 The Indiana University Press

Cinema and Social Discourse in Cameroon (review)

Reviewed by: Cinema and Social Discourse in Cameroon Françoise Pfaff Tcheuyap, Alexie , ed. 2005. Cinema and Social Discourse in Cameroon. Bayreuth, Germany: Bayreuth African Studies. 342 pp. Indigenous sub-Saharan African filmmaking began some fifty years ago. Initially studied within historical, sociopolitical, cultural, linguistic, or thematic paradigms, it was analyzed later from semiotic, structuralist, postmodern, and postcolonial perspectives. A number of books and journals have treated films by Cameroonian directors, but no volume on Cameroon appeared in the country series on African cinema edited by Victor Bachy in the 1980s and 1990s, and the only book on Cameroonian cinema was Guy Jérémie Ngansop's Le cinéma camerounais en crise (1987). [End Page 97] Cinema and Social Discourse in Cameroon, edited by Alexie Tcheuyap, professor of French and Francophone Studies at the University of Calgary, Canada, brings a timely contribution, especially on post-1980 films. The collection includes fourteen articles, most previously unpublished, by African and Western specialists in various fields. Tcheuyap's introduction describes the precariousness of Cameroonian film production and distribution under postcolonial autocratic governments intolerant of spoken, printed or cinematic challenges. Emphasizing the lack of coherent cultural policy and infrastructure such as film schools or postproduction facilities, Tcheuyap states that "producing a film in Cameroon, as in many African countries, is still something of a miracle" (p. 2). Films selected for inclusion were directed by Cameroonians, consider Cameroon as a category of analysis, or were filmed there. The chapters "attempt to address the aesthetic, ideological, and social problems related to images and their political significance in what is left of this rich country" (p. 4). Opening the first section, "The State, Images and Cultural Discourses," Gilbert Doho establishes a clear delineation between two groups of Cameroonian directors: (1) A self-censoring first generation, including Jean Pierre Dikongue-Pipa, Daniel Kamwa, and Alphonse Beni, that produced propagandistic documentaries celebrating the "father of the nation" or the prowess of soccer players, politically benign feature films on marriage and the dowry, and escapist action movies—all of which "refused to engage with burning national issues. This cinema was the site of a vicious collaboration between the state and independent filmmakers" (p. 22). (2) A second generation—Jean-Pierre Bekolo, Bassek Ba Kobhio, Jean-Marie Teno, and others "who deliberately use the camera not only to decolonize the gaze but also to deconstruct neocolonial political monsters" (p. 29). In contrast to the older, "apolitical" or "amnesic" directors, they question the past and present, and contribute to national reconstruction. Bole Butake explores local and cable television shows and the impact that imported Hollywood, Bollywood, Nigerian video, and Latin American telenovela productions have had on viewers' expectations. In the field of television, Butake foresees the success of private enterprise over government-sponsored initiatives. In contrast to these studies, other chapters consider individual films that, for multiple reasons, are screened more often at African, European, and U.S. festivals than in Cameroon, where U.S., French, and Asian movies predominate, except for an occasional commercial success, like Kamwa's Pousse Pousse (1975). Using semiotics and postmodern Western theories, Boulou E. de B'béri provides an interesting explanation of Duala cultural connotations in Dikongue-Pipa's Muna Moto (1975). Edmond Mfaboum keenly investigates self-censorship, "social cries," and "political silences" in the early films of Kamwa and Dikongue-Pipa. [End Page 98] In section two, "Postcolonial (De)Constructions," Jonathan Haynes and P. Julie Papaioannou offer informative postcolonial explorations of stylistically innovative works by Bekolo: Quartier Mozart (1992) and Aristotle's Plot (1996). Alain Patrice Nganang skillfully analyzes Teno's documentaries and feature films as "essays on power and authority in postcolonial Africa" (p. 140), and Sheila Petty aptly explores Teno'suse of space and camera angle as expressive vehicles in Clando (1996). Tcheuyap presents an innovative discussion of the occult in Bekolo's Quartier Mozart and Kamwa's Le cercle des pouvoirs (1997). He concludes that Kamwa "reveals the dark side of modernity and the invisible dynamics at work in the (dis)function of the postcolonial state, a veritable witch state" (p. 190). In the third section, "Writing Back and Theoretical Challenges," Sarah B. Buchanan convincingly demonstrates Bekolo's untraditional cinematic...

Nego‐Feminism: Theorizing, Practicing, and Pruning Africa’s Way

Nego‐Feminism: Theorizing, Practicing, and Pruning Africa’s Way

Troubled Men and the Women Who Create Havoc: Four Recent Films by West African Filmmakers

In African Cinema: Decolonizing the Gaze, Olivier Barlet describes shift of purpose and technique in recent African filmmaking. African filmmak? ers, he writes, reveal concern now for ideological legitimization than was evident in their early years (138). Unlike the first generation of African filmmakers, who considered themselves part of an emerging Third Word cinema and used film as a tool of revolution, means of political education to be used for transforming consciousness (Barlet 34), this new generation of filmmakers have been freed from the obligation to convey an ideological (11). The African filmmaker, no longer revolutionary, has become a cultural energizer who uses the language of images to create a new speech in which modern humanity, both African and non-Africa, can recognize (156). The films discussed in this review, Dole, Ainsi meurent les anges, Faat Kine, and Karmen might exemplify less didactic cinema, but they are by no means representative of less ideological cinema. The filmic employed in the films more closely resemble what Teshome Gabriel describes as Western dominant conventions (354), or Third Cinema labels bourgeois aesthetics, than the alternative aesthetics of early African cinema, but as Third Cinema set out to demonstrate, such produce cinematic real that is wholly ideological. The difference Barlet identifies as newness points to what I will describe, imperfectly, as melodramatic aesthetic that reveals itself in different ways in the films. Imunga Ivanga's Dole and Moussa Sene Absa's Ainsi meurent les anges are melodramatic in that they focus on the individual in the private realm from fixed perspective. This act of tightening the frame is also an act of erasure that eclipses the political and historical issues that are central to the films' conflicts and characters. What is ignored or obscured discloses the ideological investments ofthe films. Directors Sembene Ousmane in Faat Kine and Joseph Gai Ramaka in Karmen create melo? dramatic character types. The protagonists for whom the films are named are intended to model resilient and defiant African womanhood, but the films fail to reconcile the ideological tensions generated by the strength and sexuality of their heroines. The figure of woman signifies the contradiction and excess that preclude closure and certainty, and, therefore, she troubles the message her image is meant to impart. Set in Libreville, Gabon, decades after independence, Imunga Ivanga's film Dole (2001) follows the exploits of four young rap artists with large dreams and limited prospects. The opening segment of the film, lively musical sequence composed of skillfully edited quick cuts, finds the rap

African Cinemas: Decolonizing the Gaze

LITERATURE AND THE ARTS Olivier Barlet. African Cinemas: Decolonizing the Gaze. Translated by Chris Turner. London and New York: Zed Books, 2000. Distributed by Palgrave. xii + 315 pp. Photographs. Bibliography. Appendix. Index. $69.95 Cloth. $29.95 Paper. relationship between the Western gaze and the Other is the main concern of Olivier Barlet's African Cinema: Decolonizing the Gaze. Much like Keyan Tomaselli's Appropriating Images and E. Anne Kaplan's Looking for the Other, Barlet's text reconsiders the relationship between the gaze and its object, relationship that has been explored thoroughly by scholars of film studies and feminist theory but only recently examined in work on African film. Barlet suggests that African cinema offers another way of looking, one that has revealed the African's belonging to humanity (x). It is this universal humanness, for Barlet, that provides an alternative to the binary logic of Self and Other, which continually positions the African as the inferior and exotic object of Western derision and desire. Barlet contends that to dissemble this polarity, the Western subject must learn to look differendy. Yet, in his efforts to define the ephemeral Africanness that encapsulates African film's difference, Barlet secures the very polarity he wants to dislodge. African Cinema describes Barlet's personal and intellectual encounter with African film. His approach is neither historical nor entirely thematic, but rather playful, employing a degree of uncertainty, in order to focus on films as they come to mind and take the reader with me on journey in which we don't always know what lies around the next corner (ix). book is divided into three parts: part 1, The Origin Akin to Passage (chapters 1-6), sketches an African film tradition; part 2, At the WeIlSprings of Narration (chapters 7-11) describes the stylistic features of African film; the third and strongest section, Black Prospects? examines the financial limitations and obstacles that African filmmakers must learn to navigate in order to produce their art. book offers wealth of information on African film and would be valuable resource for both readers new to African film and film scholars. Concise plot summaries of rarely exhibited films are accompanied by rich visual archive, including location snapshots, photographs of filmmakers, and reproductions of film posters. book draws from variety of sources, including interviews with filmmakers, newspaper reviews, critical analyses, and, most interesting of all, well-selected stories from Barlet's experiences with African film and filmmakers culled from years of writing and research. Also of use is an appendix entitled Where to see African Film, which lists information about African film festivals and theaters all over the world. Barlet's text promotes African film and filmmakers, advocating certain filmic, critical, and funding practices. It is liberal humanist celebration of pluralism underwritten by the assumption that the histories and cultures of Africa and the West are not distinct, but entangled. Indeed, perhaps the most interesting, and troubled, premise Barlet articulates is that African film theorizes conception of identity based on synergy (201), hybridization, (201) or cross-fertilization (156) from which we might begin to plot social change and undo the destructive logic of binary oppositions. …

Troubled Men and the Women Who Create Havoc: Four Recent Films by West African Filmmakers

Troubled Men and the Women Who Create Havoc: Four Recent Films by West African Filmmakers

"I am a storyteller, drawing water from the well of my culture": Gaston Kabore, Griot of the African Cinema

Framed by narratives of the precolonial past, decolonization struggles, and postcoloniality, filmmaking practices and cinema cultures in Black Africa are neither monolithic nor limited to Western genres. 1 Distinguished by national, cultural, gender, and ideological concerns, differences among Black African filmmakers are perhaps most evident and accented in films concerned with defining African identities. However, the dissimilarities between these filmmakers are seemingly bridged in the universalizing concerns distilled from the African specificity by the Burkinabé director Gaston Kaboré.

Africans filming Africa: Questioning theories of an authentic African cinema

ABSTRACT The question of 'authenticity' has been at the heart of much critical thinking about African cinema. During the colonial era, cinematic images of Africa effectively served to reinforce the Western vision of the 'dark continent,' viewing Africa as a wild and savage place, existing outside of history. When African filmmakers began to emerge in the 1960s and 1970s, they set out to counter these demeaning Western representations of their continent. However, although there was widespread agreement that colonial representations were distorted and 'inauthentic,' the definition of an 'authentic' African cinema has remained deeply problematic. What should an African film look like? How should it differ from Western cinema? This debate about the 'authenticity' of African cinema has not been limited to filmmakers. Both African and Western critics have readily applied themselves to the task of defining the nature of a truly African cinema. At the forefront of these debates are questions of cultural identity and critical subjectivity. Does the African critic understand African films in a way that is simply closed off to the Western critic? Is it possible for a Western critic to give a 'true' reading of an African film? This article will examine the notion of 'authenticity' in relation to a number of African films ‐ Mambety's Touki-Bouki (1973), Sembene's Xala (1974) and Cissé's Yeelen (1987) ‐ examining the attitudes of both directors and critics. The article will also investigate the role of postcolonial theory in the analysis of not only African cinema, but contemporary African culture in general.

Narrative Style in Oscar Micheaux's Within Our Gates

Within Our Gates is the title of Oscar Micheaux’s rediscovered 1919 feature film. Restored in 1993 from a single known surviving print from Spain, the film adds new insight into the workings of Oscar Micheaux, an incredibly prolific African American filmmaker, writer, producer, novelist, and businessman. Since so few of Micheaux’s estimated forty-eight feature films survive, it is difficult to generalize about the entire oeuvre. However, Within Our Gates is a stunning film, the first surviving feature by an African American director, and an example of his silent-era work. I wish to concentrate exclusively on Within Our Gates not as a fragment from an elusive career, but as a complex, self-sufficient text that stands alone.