Challenging established views and assumptions about traditions and practices of filmmaking in the African diaspora, this three-volume set offers readers a researched critique on black film. Volume One of this landmark series on African cinema draws together foundational scholarship on its history and evolution. Beginning with the ideological project of colonial film to legitimize the economic exploitation and cultural hegemony of the African continent during imperial rule to its counter-historical formation and theorization. It comprises essays by film scholars and filmmakers alike, among them Roy Armes, Med Hondo, Ferid Boughedir, Haile Gerima, Oliver Barlet, Teshome Gabriel, and David Murphy, including three distinct dossiers: a timeline of key dates in the history of African cinema; a comprehensive chronicle and account of the contributions by African women in cinema; and a homage and overview of Ousmane Sembene, the "Father" of African cinema.
Michael T. Martin is Professor of Cinema and Media Studies at the Media School at Indiana University, Bloomington. He is editor or coeditor of several anthologies, including (with David C. Wall) The Politics and Poetics of Black Film: Nothing But a Man and Race and the Revolutionary Impulse in The Spook Who Sat by the Door. Martin directed and coproduced the award-winning feature documentary on Nicaragua, In the Absence of Peace, distributed by Third World Newsreel. Gaston Jean-Marie Kabore is a film director, producer, and screenwriter and the former director of the Centre National du Cinema in Burkina Faso.
Dedication Acknowledgments African Cinema and the Diasporic: Introductory Considerations, by Michael T. Martin and Gaston Jean-Marie Kabore Part I: Colonial Formations Colonial Cinema, by Roy Armes The Colonialist Regime of Representation, 1945-1960, by James E. Genova Politics of Cultural Conversion in Colonialist African Cinema, by Femi Okiremuete Shaka The African Bioscope: Movie-House Culture in British Colonial Africa, by James Burns From the Inside: The Colonial Film Unit and the Beginning of the End, by Tom Rice The Independence Generation: Film Culture and the Anti-Colonial Struggle in the 1950s, by Odile Goerg Part II: Constituting African Cinema What Is Cinema for Us?, by Med Hondo A Cinema Fighting for Its Liberation, by Ferid Boughedir Where Are the African Women Filmmakers?, by Haile Gerima The FEPACI and Its Artistic Legacies, by Sada Niang New Avenues for FEPACI: Interview with Seipati Bulane-Hopa, by Monique Mbeka Phoba The Six Decades of African Film, by Olivier Barlet Africa, The Last Cinema, by Clyde R. Taylor The Pan-African Cinema Movement: Achievements, Misadventures, and Failures (1969-2020), by Ferid Boughedir Part III: Theorizing African Cinema African Cinema(s): Definitions, Identity, and Theoretical Considerations, by Alexie Tcheuyap Theorizing African Cinema: Contemporary African Cinematic Discourse and Its Discontents, by Esiaba Irobi The Theoretical Construction of African Cinema, by Stephen A. Zacks Toward a Critical Theory of Third World Films, by Teshome H. Gabriel Africans Filming Africa: Questioning Theories of an Authentic African Cinema, by David Murphy Tradition/Modernity and the Discourse of African Cinema, by Jude Akudinobi Toward a Theory of Orality in African Cinema, by Keyan G. Tomaselli, Arnold Shepperson, and Maureen N. Eke Film and the Problem of Languages in Africa, by Paulin Soumanou Vieyra In Defense of African Film Studies, by Boukary Sawadogo Part IV: Articulations of African Cinema Dossier 1: Key Dates in the History of African Cinema, by Olivier Barlet and Claude Forest Dossier 2: Ousmane Sembene, by Sada Niang and Samba Gadjigo Dossier 3: African Women in Cinema, by Beti Ellerson
"African Cinema: Manifesto and Practice for Cultural Decolonization combines theory and praxis as a means to explore the social, cultural, political, economic and gendered dynamics of African cinemas within a global context, all of which are determining factors in how African filmmaking practitioners and stakeholders negotiate their place as directors, producers, organizers, activists, scholars, distributors, cultural readers. The collection is an important addition to African Cinema Studies in particular, and the library of Film Studies in general."-Beti Ellerson, Founder and Director, Centre for the Study and Research of African Women in Cinema "Setting out, African Cinema positioned itself at the intersection of a theory and practice of cultural self-apprehension, with all the contradictions that come with that position. In this three-volume compendium, Martin, Kabore and their various collaborators have provided a comprehensive, almost exhaustive, account eventuating in a third, element-history. A more comprehensive account will be hard to find anywhere else."-Akin Adesokan, Indiana University "This is a long-awaited volume of detailed, and analytical information and commentary that maps the development of the cinema of a large continent and the background ideas that have influenced its formation."-June Givanni, Director of the June Givanni Pan African Cinema Archive (JGPACA)
