- Home
- A-Z Publications
- Journal of African Cinemas
- Previous Issues
- Volume 4, Issue 2, 2012
Journal of African Cinemas - Volume 4, Issue 2, 2012
Volume 4, Issue 2, 2012
-
-
Aesthetic and narrative strategies in the films of selected African women directors
By Sheila PettyThis article explores the films of selected women directors, whose works span the breadth of African cinema. Focusing on Sarah Maldoror’s Sambizanga (1972), Safi Faye’s Peasant Letter (1975), Fanta Régina Nacro’s The Night of Truth (2004), Maria João Ganga’s Hollow City (2004) and Nadia El Fani’s Laïcité, Inch’Allah!/Neither Allah, Nor Master! (2011), this article examines some of the narrative and aesthetic approaches used by the film-makers and considers how these films contribute to the ongoing evolution of African cinema narrative and aesthetic strategies
-
-
-
The emergence of women’s film-making in francophone sub-Saharan Africa: From pioneering figures to contemporary directors
More LessThe socially and politically committed films of francophone West Africa have for decades been incorporating progressive representations of African women. Although female directors are hugely underrepresented in West African film-making, as they are the world over, the last two decades have seen the gradual emergence of female directors in francophone West Africa. An increasing number of women in francophone West Africa are directing their own films, building on the work of the pioneering, mostly male, West African film-makers. This article will discuss the emergence of female film-making in francophone sub-Saharan Africa, from the pioneering figures to a number of contemporary directors following in the footsteps of those female directors who have initiated the tradition of female film-making in francophone sub-Saharan Africa. Some of the key films made by African women will be discussed, with a focus on the themes, genres and styles that female film-makers employ in their work. The article conclude that African women’s film-making in francophone West Africa is an emerging tradition of plurality and multiplicity, with a diverse range of genres and themes being employed, informed by the lived experiences of the directors
-
-
-
A transnational feminist rereading of post-Third Cinema theory: The case of Maghreb documentary
More LessThe pioneering women making documentaries in the Maghreb – Selma Baccar, Assia Djebar, and Izza Génini – started their careers in the 1970s and 1980s. Their formative years as artists were rooted in an era in which global social movements took to the streets. Two vital manifestoes on film in the Third World and in the Arab world appeared in this context at the end of the 1960s. It is in this light that the early documentaries by Selma Baccar, Assia Djebar and Izza Génini are contextualized. Younger documentarists from the Maghreb have reacted against certain tendencies in their predecessors’ films, or have precisely taken on their politically engaged aesthetic directions. This article looks in detail at the developments of documentary making in the Maghreb since the 1970s, dispelling the myth that there is no freedom of speech or that there are no women making politically activist documentaries in this region
-
-
-
Women in Film in Cameroon: Thérèse Sita-Bella, Florence Ayisi, Oswalde Lewat and Josephine Ndagnou
More LessThere is a dearth of African women in prominent roles in the media, particularly females who work as directors in the motion picture industry on the continent. For a woman to build up a significant career in the media industry, she has to navigate through the archetype of the film director being a man’s privilege. This article, however, describes a political and socio-economical context in which the cinematic contribution of Cameroonian women is momentous. This is because of their relentless gaze and uncompromising self-introspection, probing the depth of their country’s insecurities and dysfunctions. This cinematic effort has a resonating effect on the larger Cameroonian society because it expresses the buried resentments of people long imprisoned by the ambient mediocrity of their governing elite. Hence, what gives this cinema power is not so much the symbolic order, but rather the ways in which this cinema formats real crises with narratives that evoke the police-state, the epidemic of political violence and the politicization of the judicial system. As such, Oswalde Lewat’s Black Business (2009) addresses narratives that evoke the police-state, the epidemic of political violence and the politicization of the judicial system. Josephine N’dagnou follows up in Paris or Nothing (2009) with gritty tales of a country’s socio-political economy featuring a battered and depressed youth driven to economic exile and aggravating issues of brain and muscle drain and de-facto condemning their country to perpetual underdevelopment. In response, Kim Longinotto and Florence Ayisi’s Sister-in-Law (2005) frames ordinary citizens’ access to law and a judicial system that is responsive to their needs. In aggregate, these cinematic techniques are reflective of the experiences of ordinary Cameroonians coming to sense with their own political worth, which fits the general narrative of defiance against the normative and self-destructive design of a modern dictatorship. Taken together, this cinema anticipates and propagates the decrepitude of this gratuitous and sterile form of domination
-
-
-
BOOK REVIEW
More LessSCREENS AND VEILS: MAGHREBI WOMEN’S CINEMA, FLORENCE MARTIN (2011) Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 277 pages, 978-0-253-22341-8 (paperback), $24.95
-
-
-
Towards an African women in cinema studies
More LessThe focus of this article is the conceptualization of an approach to the study of African women in cinema, proposing tenets for constructing a historiography, developing a theoretical framework and formulating a feminist critic of African women’s cinematic practices, as well as gendered representations as a whole. The article considers the extent that African transnational expression has influenced its makers from the very beginning of African cinema history. Avoiding reductive declarations of a monolithic African women in cinema studies, the article attempts to discern key components that are representative of African women and their cinematic gaze
-