African cinema

Global Cinema Networks investigates the evolving aesthetic forms, technological and industrial conditions, and social impacts of cinema in the twenty-first century. The collection’s esteemed contributors excavate sites of global filmmaking in an era of digital reproduction and amidst new modes of circulation and aesthetic convergence, focusing primarily on recent films made across Europe, Africa, Latin America, Asia, and the Middle East. Moving beyond the digital as a harbinger of transformation, the volume offers new ways of thinking about cinema networks in a historical continuum, from “international” to “world” to “transnational” to “global” frames. 
Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Introduction: Global Cinemas in a Time of Networks
Elena Gorfinkel, King’s College London (U.K.)

Part 1: Cartographies, Geopolitics, Aesthetics

Chapter 2: Beyond and Beneath the Map of World Cinema
Dudley Andrew, Yale University

Chapter 3: Frame
Adrian Martin, Monash University (Australia)

Chapter 4: Abstraction and the Geopolitical: Lessons from Antonioni’s Trip to China
John David Rhodes, University of Cambridge

Chapter 5: The City of Bits and Urban Rule: Media Archaeology, Urban Space, and Contemporary Chinese Documentary
James Tweedie, University of Washington

Part 2: Global Ideality, History, Representation

Chapter 6: Toward an Archeology of Global Rhythms: Melodie der Welt (Melody of the World, 1929) and its Reception in France
Laurent Guido, University of Lille (France)

Chapter 7: When Cinema was Humanism
Karl Schoonover, University of Warwick

Chapter 8: African Cinema: Digital Media and Expanding Frames of Representation
N. Frank Ukadike, Tulane University, New Orleans

Chapter 9: Changing Circumstances: Global Flows of Lesbian Cinema
Patricia White, Swarthmore College

Part 3: Kinships, Identifications, Genres

Chapter 10: Hermano and La hora cero: Violence and Transgressive Subjectivities in Venezuelan Youth Cinema
Luisela Alvaray, DePaul University

Chapter 11: Between Love and the Moral Law: The Fatal Mother in Park Chan-wook’s Sympathy for Lady Vengeance
Peter Y. Paik, Yonsei University (Korea)

Chapter 12: The Queer Mexican Cinema of Julián Hernández
Gilberto M. Blasini, University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee

Chapter 13: The Gangster Film as World Cinema
Jian Xu, University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee

Chapter 14: Epilogue: 24 Frames: Regarding the Past and Future of Global Cinema
Tami Williams, University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee

https://www.rutgersuniversitypress.org/global-cinema-networks/9780813592725

O texto procura trazer reflexões sobre uma circulação, entre outras, do registro fílmico realizado por uma equipe francesa de reportagem em 1969, quando ela flagrou a emboscada de africanos anticolonialistas contra soldados do exército português na Guiné Portuguesa, atualmente conhecida como República de Guiné-Bissau. Como referência metodológica, recorremos a correntes historiográficas da França e do Brasil que valorizam a análise fílmica como forma para compreender o material fílmico em seu contexto de produção, ou seja, como forma de trabalhá-lo como fonte histórica. Assim, seguimos propostas indicadas nas obras de historiadores como Marc Ferro (1992), Pierre Sorlin (1985), Marcos Napolitano (2005), entre outros. Antes de apresentarmos as fontes audiovisuais a serem analisadas, iniciaremos com o contexto da produção das imagens. Texto originalmente apresentado no evento "Arquivos em movimento", em novembro de 2016 na FGV-RJ. Publicado em formato ebook homônimo: http://editora.fgv.br/arquivos-em-movimento-seminario-internacional-de-documentario-de-arquivo.

Review Essay: Abderrahmane Sissako’s Timbuktu and its Controversial Reception

Sissako, Abderrahmane, dir. Timbuktu. Original title, “Timbuktu, le chagrin des oiseaux.”  2014. 97 minutes. In French, Tamashek, Bambara, Songhay, Arabic (with subtitles in English and French). France/Mauritania. Worso Films.

Abderrahmane Sissako made history with his most recent film Timbuktu that portrays the occupation of northern Mali by a radical Islamist group. Timbuktu became the most widely viewed African film in the history of cinema, with more than 1 million viewers in France, netting 10 million dollars at the box office.  At the same time, the film has been the subject of critical controversy over the filmmaker’s association with the current President of Mauritania and was almost not shown at FESPACO due to security concerns. The film’s reviews, reception and nominations for awards over the course of the last year have been marked by glorious praise and polemical attacks, which reveal significant cultural and political tensions about the depiction of Islam, freedom of expression and the radicalization of Muslims in France, Africa and beyond.

Criado em 1969, o Festival Pan-africano de Cinema e Televisão de Ouagadougou, o Fespaco, é parte fundamental na história do cinema africano. Os elementos que compõem sua história têm servido a cineastas, curadores, pesquisadores e estudiosos da temática tanto como um termômetro de tendências cinematográficas quanto de direcionamento das políticas de cultura presentes dos caminhos do cinema continente. Mais ainda, sua história se conecta diretamente com os acontecimentos e debates no âmbito das políticas do continente. O presente artigo  apresenta alguns dos elementos que entrelaçam o desenvolvimento do cinema africano à história do Fespaco, no intuito de montar não só um panorama histórico do Festival mas também fornecer meios para a compreensão do cenário de desenvolvimento da produção de filmes na África.

A cross-cultural survey on commercial and cultural exchanges that bounded Italian cinema and some cinemas from North and Sub-Saharan Africa, with remarks on the actual dimming of this dynamics. In Italian.

Excursus cross-culturale sui rapporti e scambi produttivi e culturali che hanno legato negli anni il cinema italiano e alcune cinematografie dell'Africa nord e subsahariana, con considerazioni sull'attuale affievolimento di queste dinamiche di scambio. In italiano.

This article analyses how Aristotle’s Plot reflects on the context of film-making and film reception in Africa. Aristotle’s Plot represents the relation between an African film-maker and African film audiences consuming foreign movies and disapproving African cinema. The problem of how the production and consumption of African cinema is affected by the importation of films crafted elsewhere cannot be reduced to the question how to make African films available for their audiences. Neither can the problem solely be posed in terms of the alienation of African audiences and film-makers. In Aristotle’s Plot, Bekolo caricatures both the African film-maker (E.T.) and African audiences (Cinema) and thereby translates two views on spectatorship. However, the film itself suggests a perspective on spectatorship and film-making beyond the opposition of appropriation on the one hand and alienation on the other.

Nel corso degli ultimi vent’anni, grazie all’introduzione di nuove tecnologie e alla trasformazione del contesto economico e politico locale, la Nigeria ha visto la propria industria cinematografica Nollywood divenire una delle più grandi del mondo. La sua emergenza ha trasformato il panorama della produzione cinematografica africana creando nuovi spazi di espressione, nuove forme di imprenditoria e nuovi modelli culturali, e dando vita, forse per la prima volta nella storia, ad un fenomeno culturale di massa su scala continentale. I saggi che compongono questa raccolta propongono una panoramica sul dibattito accademico che la nascita di Nollywood ha provocato, offrendo diversi spunti teorici ed etnografici per ragionare sulla produzione cinematografica in contesto postcoloniale.
Contributi di: Abdalla Uba Adamu, Anouk Batard, Jean-Paul Colleyn, Jonathan Haynes, Alessandro Jedlowski, MatthiasKrings, BirgitMeyer, Sara Pahor, KatrienPype, IkechukwuObiaya, Giovanna Santanera

Nearly all analyses of Ousmane Sembène’s novella La Noire de… (Voltaïque, 1962) and its eponymous film adaptation (1966) mention the fact that Sembène found inspiration for his text and film in a French newspaper report of a real suicide. However, scholars have not tracked down a copy of the original report or excavated the history of Diouana Gomis, the real woman whose suicide in 1958—on the heels of the 1958 Referendum and on the eve of Senegalese independence (1960)—served as the inspiration for one of the most iconic of African films. Indeed, the figure of Diouana has become synonymous with Sembène’s literary and cinematic character, in particular her “screen memory” as Senegalese actress’s Mbissine Thérèse Diop’s powerful performance in the film. Until now, traces of the “real” Diouana have remained buried in French police archives, her story receding from view. My essay makes a signifi-cant contribution to the study of Sembène’s art and to the memory of Diouana Gomis by reconstructing the backstory of her suicide through unstudied archival documents. Diouana Gomis (1927–58), a thirty-one-year-old, unmarried woman from Boutoupa in the Ziguinchor region of Senegal arrived in Antibes during the second week of April in 1958 and died by suicide less than three months later. The faint archival traces sewn in the wake of her suicide make it possible, and necessary, to reconstruct some of the details of her life and death so that the ghostly signature of this real woman might shadow the “Diouana” whom we see and hear on screen.

Senegal has often been heralded as the capital of African cinema. As Claire Andrade-Watkins (1993:30) puts it, during the first two decades following the independence of African countries from France, Senegal was “at the epicentre” of the film production. The country is the home of Ousmane Sembène (1923-2007), known as the “father” of African cinema despite the filmmaker’s reluctance to the term. Sembène is the director of one of the first narrative films made in Africa, Borom Sarret (1963, French, 22 min.), and of the first postcolonial feature-length Black African film, La Noire De…/Black Girl (1966, Wolof and French, 65 min.), a milestone in his film career, whose release coincided with the celebration of the First World Festival of Negro Arts, following the independence of Senegal from France in 1960.

This essay proposes a framework for a typology of films produced in or about Africa from the 1950s to the present. It re-explores the controversial issue of Africanity that should neither be a theoretical ghetto nor another essentialist category. By considering African any cultural production that involves Africa as a category of analysis, the typology exposed here explores various avenues in the determination of African cinema. It also establishes new theoretical constructs that better reflect the various aesthetic and ideological permutations displayed in post-1990 film-makers by determining how, beyond various accompanying discourses, film-makers address issues and express them in a new cinematic language. Résumé Jusqu'ici, la question d'une typologie des films africains a été abordée dans la perspective des contenus, de l'origine géographique et des discours mis en oeuvre. La présente étude considère la problématique sous un angle qui dépasse les enjeux sémantiques pour prendre en compte la question de la signature, ainsi que celle de l'identité tant textuelle qu'idéologique. Il en ressort une redéfinition, un élargisse-ment de la notion d'africanité, dont la pluralité est fondamentale à l'intelligence des cinémas multiples incluant l'Afrique comme catégorie de création.

Il volume ricostruisce la genesi e lo sviluppo dell’industria video nigeriana detta Nollywood, un sistema che produce 1000-1500 film ogni anno e li distribuisce direttamente in formato home-video. I video di Nollywood circolano in quasi tutta l’Africa sub-sahariana, nei Caraibi, in Nord America, in Canada e nella maggior parte dei paesi europei. Hanno dato vita a nuove forme di pan-africanismo, grazie alla combinazione tra il modo con cui sono prodotti e distribuiti e i valori estetici, culturali e sociali che essi veicolano. È un tipo di pan-africanismo ben diverso da quello promosso dai grandi portavoce della lotta anticoloniale, ma non per questo si dimostra meno efficace e influente. Il grande successo internazionale di Nollywood ha riaperto il dibattito su cosa significhi «essere africani oggi» e sulle trasformazioni sociali e culturali che hanno attraversato l’Africa negli ultimi anni.

African Film Studies: An Introduction is an accessible and authoritative textbook on African cinema as a field of study. The book provides a succinct and comprehensive study of the history, aesthetics, and theory of sub-Saharan African cinematic productions that is grounded in the field of film studies instead of textual interpretations from other disciplines.

Bringing African cinema out of the margins into the discipline of mainstream film studies and showcasing the diverse cinematic expressions of the continent, the book covers:

Overview of African cinema(s):  Questions our assumptions about the continent’s cinematic productions and defines the characteristics of African cinema across linguistic, geographic, and filmic divides.
History of African and African-American cinema: Spans the history of film in Africa from colonial import and ‘appropriation of the gaze’ to the quest for individuality. It also establishes parallels in the historical development of black African cinema and African-American cinema.
Aesthetics: Introduces new research on previously unexplored aesthetic dimensions such as cinematography, animation, and film music.
Theoretical Approaches: Addresses a number of theoretical approaches and critical frameworks developed by scholars in the study of African cinema
All chapters include case studies, suggestions for further reading, and screening lists to deepen the reader’s knowledge with no prior knowledge of African cinema required. Students, teachers, and general film enthusiasts would all benefit from this accessible and engaging book.

Riches (2001) is a short film directed by Zimbabwean filmmaker Ingrid Sinclair. The film is about a fiercely independent coloured woman, Molly McBride. She is a single-mother who is exiled from South Africa on an exit permit, with her young son Peter, at the height of apartheid in the mid-1980s. Hoping to find peace and a sense of ‘home’ in neighbouring Zimbabwe, Molly settles and finds a job as a primary school teacher in the country side. Before long, however, Molly feels exiled in her new home. Struggling to fit in with the other teachers and with the larger community due to her liberated, ‘city woman’ ways, Molly survives by incessant writing in her journal, and by heavy drinking and smoking. She fights the onset of poverty and mental breakdown by befriending an ostracised old woman from the village. Sinclair’s film draws on Bessie Head’s life and work, and significant parallels can be observed between the film and Head’s autobiographical novel A Question of Power (1974). This article examines Ingrid Sinclair’s short film as an adaptation. It argues that Riches not only draws on Bessie Head’s work, but also creatively re-imagines it.

La película "14 kilómetros" y la política de inmigración de la Unión Europea con África 1. Hace quince días fui a ver la película 14 kilómetros del director Gerardo Olivares. Tenía varios motivos para ver ese film. Por una parte, su temática, dado que explica la situación de la inmigración africana hacia Europa y la lucha de tres personas (dos hombres y una mujer) por conseguir el sueño anhelado de llegar al viejo continente. Mi interés por el mundo de la inmigración no es de ahora sino de hace ya muchos años, y se ha acrecentado con la actividad que he desarrollado durante más de seis años como Director de la Cátedra de Inmigración, Derechos y Ciudadanía de la Universidad de Girona hasta mi dimisión el pasado viernes día 21 de diciembre. Permítanme una reflexión previa: cuando me acerqué al estudio de la inmigración, a principios de los años noventa del siglo XX, la realidad internacional, europea, española y catalana era en términos cuantitativos sensiblemente diferente de la actual, pero los problemas con los que se encontraban muchos inmigrantes regulares para poder ejercer sus derechos en los países de acogida no diferían mucho de los problemas con los que hoy se encuentran los nuevos inmigrantes, y mucho más ahora si su situación administrativa es irregular, ya sea originaria o sobrevenida, en el país de acogida. Es decir, han cambiado los números, y no olvidemos que detrás de cada cifra hay una persona, pero se han mantenido muchos de los problemas y cuestiones litigiosas que ya se planteaban entonces. Probablemente sea cierto que estamos ante una realidad social que cuando la trasladamos al ámbito legal se encuentra con que la distancia entre el marco normativo vigente y su aplicación real y efectiva es muy lejana en muchas ocasiones. Por otra parte, el hecho de que se le haya concedido recientemente la espiga de oro a la mejor película delfestival internacional de cine de Valladolid 2007 me hacía pensar con fundamento de causa que se trataba de una buena película; en fin, dicho fundamento se incrementaba, y aquí está el último motivo de mi interés, por el hecho de que su director, Gerardo Olivares, lo fuera también de La gran final , una excelente, ágil y divertida película, que demuestra que los seres humanos, por mucho que estemos a miles de kilómetros unos de otros, tenemos los mismos intereses cuando se trata de ver un partido importante de fútbol, como ciertamente lo era la final del mundial de Corea y Japón-2002 entre Alemania y Brasil; o dicho de otra forma, como todos nos las ingeniamos, se trate de una familia de nómadas mongoles, una caravana de camelleros tuareg en el desierto del Sahara, o un grupo de indios amazónicos, para ver el partido. He de decirles que mi interés por el film quedó plenamente justificado, ya que creo que narra con precisión el drama, y la valentía, de tres personas para intentar mejorar su vida, y no obvia ninguna de las difíciles y arriesgadas situaciones que atraviesan a lo largo de su desplazamiento desde Níger y Malí hasta llegar (dos de los tres protagonistas, ya que el tercero fallece en el desierto) a la costa española de Tarifa. Quizás, la última escena del guardia civil español que (parece que) ve a los inmigrantes irregulares pero que no los detiene puede ser más un canto a la esperanza que no una manifestación de la actuación real (y obligada) de las fuerzas del orden público en casos semejantes, pero en cualquier caso la cinta transmite el dramatismo real de todo aquello que en muchas ocasiones sólo conocemos de forma ocasional y esporádica a través de los medios de comunicación. Desgraciadamente, la calidad de la película es, probablemente, su " peor " argumento para que

Pressoché assente sul mercato italiano, il «cinema africano» si riaffaccia all’attenzione della critica perlopiù solo in occasione dei festival. Eppure, tanti registi o anche interpreti, emersi sulla scena negli ultimi anni appartengono alla famiglia afrodiscendente e contribuiscono al consolidamento di un interesse crescente per le culture visuali nere. In crisi negli ambiti d’origine, gli studi postcoloniali stanno trovando nuova linfa nel dialogo interdisciplinare e in altre aree, compreso il nostro paese. Gli studi filmici e visuali cominciano appena a prendere le misure con questa nuova ondata d’interesse per le produzioni del Sud globale e di autori postmigranti e con la diffusione di strumenti critici che mettono in questione la prospettiva eurocentrica tuttora dominante. Il libro è una raccolta di saggi e interventi, nel quale De Franceschi delinea l’originalità di alcuni percorsi d’autore e d’attore o indaga alcuni luoghi privilegiati della riflessione teorico-critica, soffermandosi sullo sguardo altrui rivolto ad Africa e afrodiscendenti, per suggerire itinerari di contronarrazione al presente o controstoria del cinema, con un’attenzione privilegiata all’Italia. Lo spettro del titolo è il fantasma del colonialismo, inteso in un’accezione espansa che investe i rapporti di dominio fra l’Occidente e il resto del mondo, ma anche lo spettro variegato delle identità che articolano lo spazio discorsivo della nazione, negato da una narrazione egemonica che tende a sacrificare la pluralità di soggetti e gruppi subalterni.

Does a Zimbabwean film industry exist? The answer is complex. The answer depends on two issues. The first is one's chosen definition of a film industry. The second is the extent of one's knowledge of realities on the ground. This article discusses the state of the Zimbabwean film industry. It argues that the Zimbabwean film industry, like most in Africa, is necessarily a work in progress. Since the country's ‗flag' independence in 1980, the industry has been in a search for itself. A general feature has been the search for ways with which to replace thirty-year old colonial heritages of filmmaking, distribution and exhibition. Initially the industry sought growth through state support, a phenomenon that partially mirrored state support of the Ghanaian film industry under Nkrumah. Part of the state's ambiguous strategy involved growing the industry through marketing the country as a Hollywood set. Financial losses in the mid 1980s, however, caused the state to rapidly retreat from the idea of a state-supported national cinema. This withdrawal coincided with the imposition of World Bank sponsored austerity measures known as Structural Adjustment Programmes. The Zimbabwean film industry has been an orphan ever since. For about a decade, starting in the 1990s, the orphaned industry found a foster-mother in western-sponsored NGOs which used the film industry as a chalkboard to teach message-heavy morality films. The project to take back agricultural land from whites that started in the early 2000s, followed by the collapse of the Zimbabwean dollar, marked the end of a decade-old dominance of the NGO-film in Zimbabwe. The end of the NGO-film paved way for the current state of affairs which can be described as a three-layered coexistence. Middling state and NGO support of the film industry, on the one hand, co-exists with increasingly confident independent filmmaking clusters, on the other hand. Cheaper cameras and editing equipment, added to a nascent straight-to-DVD model somewhat mirroring the production of Bongo films in Tanzania and those of Nollywood, have seen the Zimbabwean film industry emerge anew in a digitally-based third coming. What was traditionally a minority activity is now open to broader participation. The future, though, remains an unknown x. Private investors are still reluctant to invest in the film industry. Funding, distribution and profitability are still sore points. Nevertheless, for the first time, what seem like true foundations are being laid.

Mestman, M. “Estados Generales del Tercer Cine. Los documentos de Montreal, 1974”. Publicado en el Cuaderno número 3 Rehime, Buenos Aires, 2013-2014.
This book includes unedited and previously unpublished material that provides insight into world political cinema in the 1960s and 1970s: the conferences, workshops and debates of the Rencontres Internationales pour un Nouveau Cinéma, a conference held in Montreal, Canada from June 2-8, 1974. The conference was attended by filmmakers, producers and ’68 film groups from France and the first world, along with Latin American political filmmakers and representatives of burgeoning African cinema. The title proposed for this book, Estates Generals of Third Cinema, highlights the revolutionary nature of the projects that characterized these times.
Several fragments of the audiovisual recording of the conference (never before released) are included on the DVD that accompanies this book. These images allow us to reconstruct the debates of this intense political moment, debates among Latin Americans like Miguel Littín, Julio García Espinosa, Fernando Pino Solanas and Walter Achugar; Africans such as Med Hondo, Tahar Cheriaa, Férid Boughedir and Lamine Merbah; European critics like Guido Aristarco, Guy Hennebelle, Lino Micciché and Jean Partick Lebel; Canadians such as Fernand Dansereau, Gilles Groulx, André Paquet and Yvan Patry; as well as independent film distributors and groups like Slon/Iskra, Tricontinental, Mk2, The Other Cinema, and many others.
After this research, André Pâquet prepared a Dossier with lot of another Documents and video recordings of the Conferences of the meeting for the Cinématheque Québécoise:
http://collections.cinematheque.qc.ca/dossiers/rencontres-internationales-pour-un-nouveau-cinema/preambule/
There we can see two TV programs about the meeting (with english subtitles) that Mariano Mestman, Andrés Habegger and Fernando M. Peña made in Argentina, following the original research:
http://collections.cinematheque.qc.ca/dossiers/rencontres-internationales-pour-un-nouveau-cinema/documentaires-tv/
During 2015 M. Mestman and Masha Salazkina prepared a Special Topic on the Rencontres… for the Canadian Journal of Film Studies / Revue Canadienne d´Études Cinématographiques (V.24, N.2), including articles by Vicent Bouchard, Marion Froger, Michael Chanan, Ignacio del Valle, Jonathan Buchsbaum, Irene Rozsa and Viviane Saglier, and an interview with André Pâquet and Carol Faucher by André Habib. (In english and French):
http://www.filmstudies.ca/journal/cjfs/archives/24.2-fall-2015

Motion picture technology developed at the dawn of the 20th century, just as the formal colonization of Africa was launched at the Berlin Conference of 1884–1885. While it took a few decades for cinema houses to spread in West Africa, by mid-century the colonial administrations began to use film as a means for conveying colonial culture to African subjects. For the British and French colonials, film was a means to shape public opinion. Both British and French colonial administrations criminalized indigenous filmmaking for fear of the subversive potential of anti-colonial messages—film communicated in one direction only. When West African nations became independent in the late 20th century, these restrictions vanished and Africans began to make films. This process played out differently in Francophone Africa than in Anglophone countries. France cultivated African filmmakers, sponsored training, and funded film projects. Talented and determined filmmakers in Anglophone Africa also struggled to produce celluloid films, but unlike their counterparts in former French colonies, they received little support from abroad. A significant number of excellent celluloid films were produced under this system, but largely in Francophone Africa. Though many of these filmmakers have gained global recognition, most remained virtually unknown in Africa outside the elite spaces of the FESPACO film festival and limited screenings at French embassies. Though West African filmmakers have produced an impressive body of high-quality work, few Africans beyond the intellectual elite know of Africa’s most famous films. This paradox of a continent with renowned filmmakers but no local film culture began to change in the 1990s when aspiring artists in Nigeria and Ghana began to make inexpensive movies using video technology. Early works were edited on VCRs, but as digital video technology advanced, this process of informal video production quickly spread to other regions. The West African video movie industry has grown to become one of the most prominent, diverse, and dynamic expressions of a pan-African popular culture in Africa and throughout the global diaspora.

This article explores ways to bridge the critical divide between African cinema and the commercial, digital video films being produced on the continent, focusing specifically on the Amharic-language films of the Ethiopian film industry. Cinema in Ethiopia is distinct from other experiences of cinema in Africa and yet largely unstudied because of the inaccessibility of Amharic to many Western-based scholars. This article will present original research into the (video) film experience in Ethiopia by offering localized perceptions and exploring specific Ethiopian films from a broad film studies perspective. After suggesting possible aesthetic comparisons between African cinema films and locally made popular films in Ethiopia and acknowledging both local and global influences on filmmaking in Ethiopia, I argue that African film and media studies should start to look beyond the moralizing discourse that has long dominated the scholarship and learn from the pleasure and popularity generated by video films in diverse African contexts.