Prabhu Anjali / Wellesley College, USA

Resistance in African Cinema, or Révolution du langage cinématographique

To state that African films recuperate dominant cinematic techniques to Africanize film itself posits something of an “African” worldview and, at the same time, shifts the emphasis of our evaluative gestures from content to form. This, then, is the premise of my argument. The ambition of African films – at least of a particular repertoire of African films – is indeed to universalize that worldview in a counter revolutionary act that gives a nod to Julia Kristeva’s notion of the revolutionary. That act is “counter” or contrary to the discontinuous wave of colonialism and the particular form of capitalism it boosted, both of which revolutionized African life and social structures. It is first and foremost aesthetic in its language; it is also intellectual in its pursuit while utopian in its futuristic projection of what the “social” might be. African filmmakers working through the 80’s and 90’s inherited a generation of spectators in Africa who were familiar with not just Hollywood cinema but also Egyptian melodrama and Indian cinema, where the schism between commercial and art films did not have the sharp, mutually exclusive language that has pervaded (the study of) African film. This presentation isolates and examines specific techniques that operate a particular interpellation of today’s spectators of African film in order to explore the larger ambitions of contemporary African cinema.

Ricci Daniela / Université Paris 3 Sorbonne Nouvelle, France

Forms of Resistance in the Contemporary African Films / Forms of Resistance in the Contemporary African Films

Parmi les plus jeunes au monde, les cinémas d’Afrique et de ses diasporas témoignent aujourd’hui d’une grande vitalité et variété, non seulement de thématiques, mais également de genres, de styles et de formes.
Bien que de façon différente de l’engagement politique des pionniers, moins dans un mouvement collectif que dans une démarche individuelle, les cinéastes contemporains apportent un regard multifocal et politique sur les enjeux, les complexités et les évolutions des sociétés actuelles.
Dans cette communication j’analyserai comment l’engagement sociopolitique des films diasporiques “d’auteurs” passe à travers une recherche esthétique. A l’aide de séquences choisies – d’oeuvres telles L’Afrance, (A. Gomis, 2001), Juju Factory, (B. Bakupa-Kanyida, 2007), Teza, (H. Gerima, 2008), Va pensiero, storie ambulanti, (D. Yimer, 2013) – je veux montrer à quel point à l’heure actuelle le combat se joue sur le terrain de la représentation.
Ces récits filmiques, que je définis “accentués” au sens de Hamid Naficy (Naficy 2001) ou “mineurs” au sens de Gilles Deleuze (Deleuze, 1985), par des esthétiques composites mais sobres et des styles inédits et novateurs, offrent un contrepoids iconique et narratif à la représentation dominante. J’analyserai comment, mêlant individuel et collectif, privé et politique, ils deviennent des actes de résistance.

Onookome Okome / University of Alberta, Canada

Popular Transnational Nollywood

Nollywood film production is essentially artisanal and has remained largely local, with the predominant cinematic gaze of its cultural product, the Nollywood film, consciously transnational. A careful reading the Nollywood film text also shows that this film promotes the desires of its director as the apostle of the transnational ideal, blending local desire with transnational aspirations. I wish to argue that this desire comes from the fact that Nollywood directors are deeply cosmopolitan. I was deeply reminded of this cinematic desire at the Nollywood Rising Conference (2005), which was called to work out ways of bringing actors and directors from Nollywood to Hollywood. Lancelot Emasuen, one of the key directors in Nollywood, was upfront about what he expects from Hollywood. He wants enduring collaborations between the two industries. My contribution tracks the complex notion of what I read as “popular transnational” transactions in the Nollywood film and its connection to the local aspiration of its audience. I argue that even though this regional cinema does not fall within the political partisanship of the so-called “postcolonial African cinema,” there are moments in the “collective utterance” that it proposes for its audience that can be read as political or subversive.

Niang Sada / University of Victoria, Canada

Generic intrusions in African cinemas

Generic intrusions in African cinemas
Critical approaches on African cinema which appeared in the first decade of the 21st century have instituted “une ère du soupçon”(Sarraute, 1956) that is both disruptive and beneficial to the field. It is disruptive because it purports the death of the liberationist narrative, beneficial because, through a radical questioning, new critical inroads are being ploughed. In particular the question of cinematic genres and of the popular in African cinema are becoming front and center in the present critical discourse. Key among these new directions in African film analysis are the publications of Murphy (2000), Gbanou (2002) Garritano (2003), Harrow (2007) Oscherwitz (2008), Niang (2008), (Naudillon, 2009), Adesokan (2011), Tcheuyap (2011), Onookome & Newell (2013). In all these publications, the popular and genre based filmmaking are built into distinctive features of a new wave of filmmaking on the continent.
This paper argues that genre and the popular were present in African cinema from the very beginning. The pronouncements of the “fathers” of African cinema notwithstanding, the gangster, the western, the animation genre and artifacts of various western film schools have permeated nationalist African cinema at its margins.