African cinema

African Cinema and Nollywood: contradictions

ECAScreening7: Almost from the moment of cinema’s invention, Africa has been inserted into its global system, but on the most unfavorable terms: it has been the dumping ground for second-run “B” movies from Hollywood, Bollywood and Hong Kong, films that are often racist and always estranged from African realities and purposes, while the formidable technical, infrastructural, and capital requirements of making and distributing films made it nearly impossible for Africans to respond in kind with their own films. Because of these steep infrastructural and capital requirements, cinema everywhere depends on state support, and postcolonial African states have proved indifferent, timorous, corrupt, and inept at providing it; the postcolonial African elite has been as philistine as Fanon predicted, without the power or interest to invest in culture (Fanon).

Afroscreen

25.06.2013 | by Jonathan HAYNES

The woman in Contemporary African Cinema: Protagonism and Representation

The variety of techniques and approaches to film in use in the present day impedes overarching judgments. Women’s increasing esteem and importance within the world of cinema has led to a diversity of intentions and perspectives; moreover, the character of global culture is such that the lines separating Africa from the West are no longer so clear as before.

Afroscreen

06.12.2011 | by Beatriz Leal Riesco

The Role of Music in African Cinema

Even today, an analysis of the complex role of music in film is often forgotten by critics, many of whom remain prostrate before the dictatorship of the image. Yet as a manifestation of culture, music has a privileged position with respect to the study of representations of identity and ideology; moreover, in its subversive and dialogic aspects, it can reveal significant directorial decisions related to dynamics of power and exclusion.

Afroscreen

16.05.2011 | by Beatriz Leal Riesco

Cinema in francophone sub-Saharan Africa: from “Monstration” to contemporary storytelling

Documentary cinema in Africa more or less follows the same trajectory as African Literature. The methodologies and forms of expression are certainly different but the discourse on Africa remains the same, evolving with the continent’s history. In the 1920s, colonial reportage and ethnographic films were already a success. Africa and Africans were filmed subjects.