Film In Africa Research Articles

The Spread of New Chinese Socialist Martial Arts Films in Africa

ABSTRACT In the 1970s, Hong Kong kung fu films were distributed across Africa and reached large audiences. Although the spread of Hong Kong films in Africa has received some scholarly attention worldwide, the African reception of Chinese films in the post-Mao era has rarely been analysed. Based on archival research and the collation of historical data and materials, this article discusses the background and advancement of the new Chinese socialist martial arts films across Africa and uses the acclaimed film Wudang as a case study to explore the spread of Chinese socialist martial arts films. This article argues that Mainland Chinese films’ imitation of Hong Kong films was a strategic choice made in the context of the Economic Reform and Opening Up policies, in response to Africans’ changing attitudes toward socialist ideology. The research contributes to the understanding of the historical exchanges between China and Africa in the post-Mao era, as well as to the topic of cooperation in the Global South today.

Dreams, Visions and the African Melodrama

Pentecostal films in Africa have gained the attention of humanitarians concerned with the societal effects of witchcraft preoccupation. As well, they are of interest to anthropologists examining Spirit movements. Humanitarians address the ethical problem perceived in the Pentecostal melodrama and its narratives, while anthropologists and proponents of religious studies focus on the social and technological aspects of Pentecostal filmmaking and the discourses produced by these films within the religious landscape. This essay brings another avenue of exploration. It supplements the anthropological approach by exploring the Pentecostal narratives found at the interface of cinematography and Pentecostal epistemology for their theological substance. It is argued here that the Pentecostal melodrama is not only unique for how it serves as an epistemological technique for “piercing the veil” to expose the true state of things. It is also unique for how its narratives, themselves, are often products of a similar piercing, that is, of the dream or vision experience which visioners experience as the phenomenon of piercing the veil beyond the mundane to the noumenal. Referencing data drawn from recent dream research, this article explores the interpretive processes inherent to Pentecostal mediation of the seen and unseen, the role of prayer in that process and the suggestion that cinematography embodies the liturgical expression of a distinct Pentecostal epistemology.

Film as /and Popular Social Text: The Reception of John Trengove’s Inxeba/The Wound and Wanuri Kahui’s Rafiki

This article is interested in popular and institutional or state responses to the representations of queerness offered in the films Inxeba/The Wound (South Africa, 2017) and Rafiki (Kenya, 2018). Aside from portraying the marked homophobia that continues to circulate on the African continent, the institutional and state responses to the films have overshadowed the positive popular reception which has characterised conversations around the films on social media and public spaces. This article shows how social media functions as animportant space of contestation for diverse issues relating to non-normative gender and sexual identities. As these films circulate in different spaces and are viewed by diverse audiences, they elicit equally diverse reactions and responses. The article examines how viewers, in Africa and beyond, receive and engage with the queerness represented in the two films. It argues that the multifaceted reactions to Inxeba/The Wound and Rafiki are central to articulating important questions about what it means to be queer in Africa,and particularly what it implies for black queers to inhabit heteronormative and patriarchal spaces on the continent. Through an analysis of the reactions and receptions of the two films in Africa and the global North, it is argued that it is possible to trace important inter-regional, intra-continental and intercontinental dialogues and conversations regarding the representation of queer African subjectivities. The intra-continental and inter-continental dialogues bring to light questions of gaze and viewing that are inherent in the circulation of queer-themed films.
 Kewords: Inxeba/The Wound, Rafiki, reception, popular culture, queerness

African Film Festivals in Africa: Curating “African Audiences” for “African Films”

African Film Festivals in Africa:Curating "African Audiences" for "African Films" Lindiwe Dovey (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution Figure B. An audience member overlooks the FESPACO ceremony. Courtesy of FESPACO. [End Page 12] The First Film Festivals in Africa: "Educating" the "African Audience" No celebration, no festival, could take place without a public, an audience, writes Odile Goerg.1 If this is the case, then it is quite remarkable that so little scholarly attention has been granted to considering audiences at film festivals.2 Although certain prestigious film festivals (Cannes, in particular) operate mostly as closed, industry events focused on the glamor and business of filmmaking, most of the thousands of film festivals around the world see their main beneficiaries as both filmmakers and audiences.3 In fact, "the curator Neil Young has questioned whether Cannes, which excludes the public from most of its screenings, qualifies as a festival at all" on this basis.4 As a field of study, film festivals offer an ideal opportunity to observe films playing out in public contexts, with live audiences and discussions. The contested meanings of films in these settings challenge the dominant hermeneutic practice of close film analysis as it takes place in professional settings, such as universities and newspapers, where the contexts of a film's screening are rarely taken into account in the critic's judgement of the film. There is particular potential for research on the (dis)sensus communis surrounding African-made films in this respect, given that festivals are among the few public arenas in which such films are screened. Along with the exhibition of Nollywood movies at thousands of video halls across the continent, festivals are among the public spaces awaiting more in-depth research.5 Although there are exceptions, the organizers of many film festivals in Africa put great emphasis on the central value of audiences to their festivals' worth and meaning. As I will show, many Africans have been motivated to found and run their festivals by the structural and institutional barriers to a certain kind of film being accessible to Africa-based audiences, and many curators of these festivals find ways of actually incorporating audience perspectives into their curatorial principles. The kinds of spectators [End Page 13] cultivated by many African curators are a world away from what Shweta Kishore, for example, describes of audience experiences at the first Ladakh International Film Festival in India in 2012: Audiences were restricted to the established position of "viewer," which allowed the consumption of film but excluded contributions to structural aspects of the festival. Opportunities for intervention, such as post-film discussions, interactions with filmmakers, and festival structures that included audience feedback were missing—especially significant given that LIFF was the first film festival in the entire region.6 As Witz explains, if no audience spontaneity is fostered by a festival, there will be little chance of festive excitement. Rather, the festival will assume a unidirectional pedagogical tone. As will become evident in the next few chapters of this book, where film festival directors and curators within Africa have not incorporated audience tastes and desires into their conceptualization of their festivals, audiences have frequently stepped up to claim this power and sense of authorship and ownership over the festivals. It is thus not only the festival organizers who determine whether a festival's culture is participatory or not. As Karin Barber's foundational work on popular culture and audiences in Africa has shown, there are especially porous boundaries between production and reception in many African contexts.7 Ways of thinking about audiences in Africa have come a long way since colonial times. A significant body of scholarship on the practices of colonial film units and missionaries who used film in Africa has revealed the extent to which "the African audience" was constructed by such groups as a homogenous and non-individuated mass to be feared and policed.8 While they did not call themselves film festivals, the mobile film screenings held in different parts of the continent by film units and missionaries from the early 1900s onwards satisfy my definition of a film festival, in that they brought together huge, live audiences at specific...

African Documentary Film: Jean Marie Teno and Hybridism in Afrique, je te Plumerai

Documentary film has been known for its capacity to interrogate issues of social, economic, cultural and political significance, but this interrogation has been at headlocks with African governments who use the documentary genre as showcasing and praising tool. This article examines the utilization of documentary films in Africa by African governments such as Tanzania, and by independent African filmmakers such as Jean Marie Teno. Jean Marie Teno’s film “Afrique, je te Plumerai” is examined and its role in the struggle for social, political, economic, and cultural emancipation of the Cameroonian, thus African people is revealed. Through the use of distinct mixed modes of cinematic address, Teno has created a hybrid documentary genre that invites and calls for a diversified filmic style that allows for self-expression, new images, and voices. Teno has created an African documentary film that juxtaposes two distinctive traditions; African oral narrative tradition and Western filmic technique to shake the African people to action. By artfully combining contemporary images with archival film footage, discontinuity narrative structure and fictionalized images the film challenges perspectives and offers viewers a far greater understanding of both history and present condition of misuse of political powers. Teno has pushed the envelope of documentary genre further and African documentary furthest.

Message films in Africa: A look into the past

AbstractMessage Film-making has characterised much of films produced in post-independent Kenya. The country produced very few films in the 1980s, when indigenous film-making actually began to take root. Liberalisation of the economy, embracement of the digital technology and democratization in the 1990s paved way for a more stable film culture in the decade. A more promising growth of the film industry has been largely witnessed since the turn of the 21st century. Through this period, I note a strong tendency to produce films that are loaded with social messages deemed urgent and important to the target audience. In making these films, the film-makers hope to make a positive impact in the lives of the target audiences. These films tend to valorise the message, sometimes, neglecting the basic filmic codes, a practice that renders the films less entertaining. This endangers the growth of the industry since local films find very stiff competition from foreign films that are common on Kenyan screens. This stu...

‘Tradition and colour at its best’: ‘tradition’ and ‘heritage’ in Ghanaian video-movies1

This essay focuses on the representation of ‘tradition’ and ‘heritage’ in Ghanaian video films, which are frequently critiqued by accomplished filmmakers (as well as global audiences accustomed to ‘African Cinema’) for offering a negative image of Africa. Film is shown to be situated in the midst of tensions and cleavages about ‘tradition’ and ‘heritage’, between state and Christian-Pentecostal views that hark back to the colonial era. With the commercialization of film production in the aftermath of democratization, movies have increasingly come to depend on audience approval. Two modes of depicting ‘tradition’ and ‘heritage’ and the ways in which they offer pleasurable experiences to audiences are explored. First, I show that a great number of video films surf along with the popularity of Pentecostal churches that view ‘tradition’ and ‘heritage’ as devilish legacies from the past that need to be overcome, instead of being cherished as a repository of cultural values. Secondly, focusing on the so-called ‘epic’ genre and other recent attempts to picture ‘tradition’ and ‘heritage’ in a more positive light, I identify a subtle shift from an understanding of ‘tradition’ and ‘heritage’ in binary terms of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ towards a visual aestheticization of ‘the past’ that produces nostalgic pleasure. Based on these explorations, I argue for a performative (rather than essentializing) approach to ‘tradition’ and ‘heritage’ that takes into account video filmmakers' creative use of traditional repertoires. This approach challenges the opposition of ‘African Cinema’ and ‘video movies’ that still underpins much scholarly work on and debates about film in Africa.

Nollywood and the home video revolution: implications for marketing videofilm in Africa

PurposeIn the last 15 years, Nigeria has developed a feature film industry based on video and video compact disc distribution which currently produces over 600 films a year making Nigeria (in terms of numbers) one of the largest film producing nations in the world. English language films (Nollywood) have become a dominant media form all over the African continent. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the implications of this phenomenon for marketing video film in Africa, and examine the structure of the industry.Design/methodology/approachUsing the case study method, the paper examines how a technological innovation such as video home system (VHS) is being used in ways never imagined or intended by the innovators. Consequently, the emergence and proliferation of inexpensive VHS video tape recorders have led to the growth of video‐based movie production in several African countries, especially Nigeria.FindingsIt is hoped that findings of this case study will provide the basis for future scholarly analysis of the economy of the Nollywood industry, and also provide a template for practitioners to engage in future research in video film in Africa.Originality/valueThere have been no studies of Nollywood published to date.

The Struggle for a South African Film Audience

IN THIS ARTICLE, the author aims to discuss the historical process which led to the fragmented nature of film audiences in South Africa presently. He examines the current status of film audiences and stresses the importance of audience development as an important option for the commercial growth of South African film industry. 1. Background and ContextThe years 1959 to 1980 had been characterised by an artistic revival in filmmaking throughout the world, ranging from exciting political films in Africa and Latin America to examples of great art cinema in Europe and Asia. National cinemas(1) emerged in Australia, West Germany, Iceland and New Zealand. In 1977 Iceland, for example, was nearly invisible on the map of world cinema. Few films were made there, but since the establishment of a national film commission similar to our NFVF (National Film and Video Foundation) an independent cinema emerged. Following the establishment of...

Health Education By Film in Africa

Health Education By Film in Africa