Our panel explores the current state of African Cinema, including questions of intellectual and aesthetic developments, film criticism, and the material conditions of filmmaking in Africa. Papers will range from general evaluations of the state of African cinema today to the analysis of a single film.
In a 2003 FESPACO interview, Souleymane Cissé claimed that African cinema was "going to the dogs." What did he mean by that and does the current situation give any credence to his polemical statement? For this panel, we invite papers ranging from general evaluations of the state of African cinema today to the analysis of a single film in the light of one or more of the questions raised below. The plural in our title reflects our desire to accommodate divergent developments within the continent.
With its roots in Third Cinema and earlier commitments to either national cinemas and/or pan-Africanism, how has African cinema responded to the era of rampant globalization and the coming of the 21st century? What is the current relationship between so-called "auteur cinema" and commercial film production and what impact does the growing body of scholarship on commercial cinema have on the critical literature on African film in general?
On the material side, what are the current contexts of production (economical, political, geographical) distribution and exhibition? And how do the local and global contexts influence the kinds of films that are being produced? What impact is digital technology having on African cinema? And does it allow for the inclusion of previously excluded groups such as women filmmakers, and what are the ramifications for the (r)evolution of film aesthetics?
In discussing the debates, polemics and trends represented in and surrounding African cinema today, speakers’ topics may include but are not limited to the questions raised here.
Founders of FESPACO, like their counterparts in Latin America, envisioned creating cinemas to promote social justice while offering alternative representations of themselves. The recent documentary Kuxa Kanema, documents the birth of cinema in revolutionary Mozambique, providing a starting point to revisit Third cinema and its relevance to today’s African filmmakers.
An exploration of the current state of African cinema criticism has to be undertaken in relation to the critical paths that have been taken in past years. What changes have occurred, especially with the ascension of video filmmaking, with the shift in cultural studies? Has past African filmmaking practice been generated a comparable body of critical studies, formerly associated with nation building, national liberation, and oppositional politics, whose momentum has limited new developments both in the practice and in the criticism today? This paper will attempt to assess the groundings of current critical practices so as to ask whether they have changed adequately so as to deal with the exigencies demanded by current filmmaking and by current approaches in film criticism.
Raoul Peck attempted twice to capture the tragic story of Patrice Lumumba, Congo's first Prime-Minister assassinated in 1961: in the documentary 'Lumumba, mort d'un prophète' (1991) and in the near Hollywood-style historical thriller, 'Lumumba' (2000). The paper explores to what extent this second film represents a new direction in African film making.
In this paper I analyze the images of women paradoxically guardians of the traditions and avant-garde warriors of social mutations in Sembene’s filmic discourse. Three works by the Senegalese filmmaker: Ceddo, Faat-Kine and Moolaade will help unveil the
'Superwoman' and enunciate the various filmic aesthetics which define and elevate the woman-warrior.The paper will attempt to decode the iconography of male anxiety about masculinity, as imaged in the loss of potency/the penis in a range of African films. It will suggest that this iconography (the magical disappearance of the penis, the inability to perform sexually) is metonymic of the unstable relationship between manhood and the state in the countries concerned, and speaks to the question, not only of gender, but of power relations in the wider sense. The relationship between visible attributes of masculinity and their imagined or actual loss is heightened by the intervention of the occult. The bewitching of subjects and the need for propitiation and restoration function as a metaphor for new inequalities brought about by social change, and the need for new strategies of survival and self-assertion.
Musical soundtracks in African cinema from the 1960s to the present reflect a complex evolution of musical praxis and musical values in a rapidly urbanizing social context. In addition to providing emotional mood underscoring, music also has symbolic agency that matches the many themes and concerns of contemporary African filmmakers.
Currently there are over 30 film festivals in Africa. A consumer technology era that has seen the closing of movie theatres across the continent, has also witnessed the evolution of a festival circuit that creates a counterbalance to piracy and informal screenings. These festivals offer African filmmakers a window of opportunity to further launch their work into regional entertainment sectors and among a community of international film professionals. With emerging themes such as human rights, sexual identity and the environment; advancing technological media; a growing range of professional market activities and youth-training opportunities; and the generational shift to student and short film festivals, the landscape for screening of African films holds not only a pan-continental significance, but one more broadly crucial to human and economic development.
At least since the 70s, an important documentary "tradition" has appeared in South Africa. However, from the anti-apartheid movement up until today one can observe an evolution of the social, political and cultural topics which were traditionally apprehended by such films (in relation to an apartheid and national context) as well as an evolution in the way to apprehend such topics. The aim of this paper is to describe this evolution and so to provide an image of the present situation of South African documentary practices (in relation to a post-apartheid, continental and global context).
In this paper I offer a historical reading of the early years of local video production in Ghana, a period marked by economic uncertainty, the weakening of the nation-state, and the importation of new media technologies, including video. I argue that transformations in the cultural ecology of film exhibition and production in the late 1970s and 1980s provoked a symbolic struggle within the cultural field. I map the emergence of the notion of "the authentic" as an aesthetic criterion at this historical juncture.
In this paper I intend to present the Penc the Dakar Media Centre (Senegal) is experimenting since 1997 through "the cinema de quartier" (films of the hood).
In every village of Senegal you will find a special tree, known as a 'pench' , at its centre. It is a place where all-important subjects are diplomatically debated and solved with great wisdom. It's with this sensitive community approach that MCD attract and involve the highly conscious youth who get actively involved and express themselves through digital media which represent a powerful tool to improve their social and economic conditions. The paper will introduce to a digital revolution and an alternative approach on cinema which takes place today and which unveils various interesting process in promoting community knowledge through mass media, freedom of expression and genuine cultural exchanges within our country, between African countries and beyond with the other continents.