Critical Interventions

Journal of African Art History and Visual Culture

ISSN: 1930-1944 (Print) 2326-411X (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rcin20

African Cinema(s)

Alexie Tcheuyap

To cite this article: Alexie Tcheuyap (2011) African Cinema(s), Critical Interventions, 5:1, 10-26,
DOI: 10.1080/19301944.2011.10781397

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19301944.2011.10781397

Published online: 10 Jan 2014.

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 AfricAn cinemA(s):
Deinitions, Identity and Theoretical Considerations
Alexie Tcheuyap, University of Toronto
This essay re-examines the various cultural,
historical, as well as numerous political
considerations that have prevailed in film
scholarship since the inception of African cinema.
These paradigms deserve full reconsideration
in light of the completely transformed post-
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national landscape where goods, cultures, and
individuals tend to circulate with greater ease
between and around national borders. In addition,
contemporary directors, many of whom have not
experienced traumatic colonial experiences, do not
feel compelled to “ilm back” or to be politically
committed. Not only are they exploring completely
new genres, languages, forms, and systems, but
they also omit traditional conceptualizations of
nationhood, race, the continent, and political
contestations which appear at times to be almost
completely lacking from their ilms. In such a
context, the conception of “African cinema”
as essentially political, or rendered “authentic”
because of essentialist racial, geographical, or
cultural considerations, becomes problematic, if
not controversial.
In his latest book, African Film: New Forms
of Aesthetics and Politics (2010), Manthia Diawara
asks some pointed questions about the interest,
or rather lack thereof, vis-à-vis certain African
ilms by its spectators:
“African” ilmmaker or inversely denies her of
Why are we still drawn to ilms like Borom
Sarret and La Noire de…and less interested
in Afrique sur Seine (1957, by Paulin
Soumanou Vieyra), which is made in the
language of classical cinema and stars a
Critical Interventions 8, Spring 2011
professional actress like Marpesa Dawn?
Why are Sembène’s images of Africa
considered richer and more authentic than
those of his countryman Vieyra, who
seems to have mastered ilm language?
The same question could be asked when
comparing Sembène’s earlier ilms to
Jean Rouch’s Moi un noir (1958) and Les
Maîtres fous (1955). Why are Sembène’s
considered more authentically African than
Rouch’s ilms, which were also shot in
Africa and, in other respects, upheld as
groundbreaking in visual anthropology
and the French New Wave?1
This line of questioning which seeks to
problematize “authentic” versus “inauthentic”
representations of African cinema may apply
equally to Sarah Maldoror, a ilmmaker of West
Indian origin, married to an Angolan citizen, but
whose major work was about Africa. Although
her ilm Sambizanga (1972) has established her
as a major ilmmaker who best represented the
Angolan liberation, nationalist aesthetics, and has
been systematically discussed in studies on African
cinema, she was excluded from the meeting
of female film professionals at FESPACO in
1991.2 What, then, makes Sarah Maldoror, an
this appellation? While there also seems to be
little doubt about Sai Faye’s “Africanness,” quite
possibly because she is black and from Senegal,
one is also entitled to wonder how “African” for
example, her Ambassadrices nourrières (1984) is as a

ilm about Chinese, Indian, Hungarian, and other
“ethnic” restaurants in Paris.
In addition to Diawara’s and my own
questioning, Olivier Barlet, in reaction to the
increase of films on African immigration in
Europe, has asked this key question: “Are the
new ilms of Africa African?”3 It is a question
he does not explicitly answer but which is central
to this essay’s understanding of “African” cinema
or, rather, cinemas. What is at stake in Diawara’s
and Barlet’s concerns is the very deinition and
identity, or plurality of identities, of what is meant
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by African cinema in its singular form. What exactly
is African cinema? Or, rather, should we talk of
African cinemas? How “African” are ilms directed
by African directors in comparison to those by
Europeans whose work have chosen Africa as a
category of representation? Is a cinematographic
or cultural citizenship feasible, and can one deine
it in comparison to civil nationality? Is a cultural
identity conceivable, and could one deine it in
relation to a specific national, continental, or
racial framework? Is it possible to unequivocally
determine, in a way that is coherent and acceptable,
the fundamental constituents of an “African
cinema?” Should the plurality of the cinemas,
as Samuel Lelièvre suggests, be examined on
the basis of the external (versus inexistent
internal) sources of inancing available to African
ilmmakers?4 To complicate things further, one
may also consider the location of ilmmakers, the
global production of many “African” ilms, and
the multiple publics that are the audience for these
ilms. For example, how do we come to consider
Haile Gerima, Jean-Marie Teno, and Jean-Pierre
Bekolo, all of whom have been based in the west
for years, as “African” directors? Furthermore,
which spectators do they (successfully) target?
Where and how are these ilms distributed? What
is the most effective parameter to determine and
conceptualize “African” ilms?
AfricAn cinemA(s) 11
According to George Sadoul, for example,5 a
ilm is only “African” if it is produced, directed,
cast and edited by Africans and involving African
actors who speak African languages. 6 Such a
definition would exclude many films, which,
like those discussed by Diawara, may well be
considered “African:” Bronx Barbès (2000) by
Éliane De Latour; Lumumba (2001) by Raoul Peck;
or Chocolate (1987) by Claire Denis. Saddoul’s and
Lelièvre’s economic criteria would equally imply
that no film produced by African directors in
the last ifty years can be considered “African”
at all, since they were all funded primarily by
external European agencies. The problem with
this deinition, like the racial constituent implied
in Diawara’s inquiry, is that it is dificult to have a
rigorous theorization of the concept of “African
cinema;” the concepts available look lawed and
problematic, as critical conigurations range from
essentialism to racial or geographic considerations.
The earliest conceptualization of “African”
cinema is probably from Paulin Soumanou Vieyra
(1975) who links cinema to citizenship when he
contends, albeit rather simplistically, that for a ilm
to be “African” it should be directed by an African:
For a ilm to be African, is it enough for
it to be directed by an African? Certainly,
because when a ilm distinguishes
itself with its relationship to African
civilization, it can be called African.
That means a ilm directed by an African
about Europe is African as long as it
reveals a Black way of thinking.7
Vieyra further complicates this assertion by
adding, in a footnote, that whatever the merits
of a ilm directed by a non-African about Africa,
he calls it “of African inspiration/ilm d’inspiration
africaine,” a premise which would automatically
disqualify directors like Sarah Maldoror or
Interventions
 12 Tcheuyap
Raoul Peck who are too often, almost intuitively,
considered “African.”8 His signiicantly exclusivist
deinition is based on cultural manifestations of
African life brought to the screen in generally
realist modes and, in any case, which involve only
narratives about black culture and art. Vieyra’s
culturalist hypothesis is emphasized by at least
one contemporary critic. For example, Visages
de femmes (Désiré Écaré, 1984), the irst African
narrative with active athletic sexuality and frontal
nudity, and which was also a major commercial
success in France, was labelled “half-Western,
half-African” by Nwachuckwu Frank Ukadike.9
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However, it has become clear, with global
transformations and cultural circulations, that
ontological deliberations are no more adequate
to take on the task of examining postcolonial
identities. The concept of “Africa(nness)” is far
from being homogeneous, and several directors
resolutely distance themselves from it.
Burkinabe ilmmaker Idrissa Ouedraogo is
extremely critical of the very label of “African”
cinema which, to him, is nothing less than a
sort of theoretical ghetto, indeed a kind of
metaphorical straightjacket. Although such a
qualifier is necessary for the construction of
identity, the term “African” has become a trap,
because it relects exclusions:
The problem of African ilms is that
they are always homogenized by the
perception of the other, the West that
ends up thinking that we work neither
on the same data, nor on the same
values as theirs. In spite of its unique
philosophy and distinctive originality,
every ilm produced in Africa by an
African is lumped in advance in the box
‘African cinema.’10
Critical Interventions 8, Spring 2011
Gabonese director Imunga Ivanga equally rejects
the uniform “African box” into which all ilms
by African directors are relegated. For him, such
gross simpliications are unacceptable given the
continuing expansion of a borderless, mobile,
and diversified world, where “authenticity”
has revealed itself to be a theory fraught with
confusion and exclusion:
What can be said about ilms from
the south which by far outpace their
‘undocumented’ (‘sans-papier’) authors
in portraying the national character of
the north? As a matter of fact, initial
deinitions [relating to authenticity or
Africanness] quickly become inoperative
because these creators’ desires and
status cannot be yoked into an iron
shackle. The so-called ilmmakers from the
south deine themselves according to the same
terms as Truffaut, Godard, Rohmer, Chabrol,
all authors of the New Wave.11
Cameroonian director Jean-Pierre Bekolo is almost
disdainful of the designation because according
to him there is no such thing as “African cinema.”
In his interview with Nwachukwu Frank Ukadike,
he is even more adamant in his dismissal of any
generalized idea of “African cinema,” a notion that
he rigorously refutes. After openly acknowledging
what he calls his “inclination for Hollywood” as
well as the weight of Western influence and
rationalities on his work, he emphatically states: “I
don’t know about African cinema. I never studied
it, and it’s not my ield.”12 Furthermore, he adds,
“[…] having clearly examined what cinema is, I
feel there is no cinema. There are African ilms,
but I do not know if there is cinema in it.”13
Therefore, historically speaking, there
seems to have been several assumptions of

what “African cinema” is, where issues of
authenticity, race, nation, territory, funding,
identity, language, and many others ultimately
converge in order to define the cinema of a
continent. I, for one, contend that these concepts
are no longer adequate and they will therefore
be fully scrutinized and re-evaluated throughout
this essay. One of the points to be established
is that in spite of an apparent impression of
uniformity that has been collectively developed
by both critics and ilmmakers, African ilms have
tended, from the very outset, to be diverse in
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their discursive and aesthetic formations. This
phenomenon has become more marked in recent
decades with ilms by Jean-Pierre Bekolo, Moussa
Sene Absa, or Henri Duparc, where novel formal
experimentations now seem to be determined
by both local and more global concerns. I will
irst explore the inluence of nationalism in the
construction of film scholarship. Then, I will
examine new trends developed by ilmmakers
since the 1990s in order to challenge what they
perceive as a mummiied perception of “African
cinema” and, inally, I shall attempt to provide an
alternative theorization.
Cultural NatioNalism as FouNdatioNal
disCourse
It is not possible to examine the role of
nationalism as a foundational basis for the
inception of African cinemas without establishing
the link between cinema and colonialism. It is
a troubling coincidence that cinema was born
at a time when Europe was at the peak of its
industrial revolution all the while building various
hegemonic discourses used to justify a need to
“naturally” subject peoples that were considered
inferior and, therefore, desperate to be “civilized.”
The encounter between Africa and cinema was
therefore heavily inluenced by this context. The
fact remains that European white male colonists
AfricAn cinemA(s) 13
arrogated political power to themselves, and this
power was consequently associated with the
power of narration and representation. This is
how the most vicious and lasting clichés about
“lazy Mexicans, shifty Arabs, savage Africans
and exotic Asiatics,” have developed into ilmic
depictions of Third World peoples. 14 The
speciic case of Africa is persuasively analyzed in
Nwachuku Frank Ukadike’s Black African Cinema
(1994), where the author contends that colonial
ilms “inverted African values by imposing the
language and culture of the colonizer on the
colonized. They also served to justify ‘military
escapades’ and white man’s ‘civilizing mission.’
[They provided] a false perspective through which
the continent was to be viewed.”15 Given such a
contentious historical and ideological context, the
emergence of any ilm production by Africans
could only necessarily consist in challenging
triumphant abhorrent representations of black
peoples. With the spate of violence and alienation
that colonialism imposed, Blacks were compelled,
as Frantz Fanon (1968) observed, to reconsider
the role of culture and its representation. For
him, culture ought to become “national” and
contribute to political liberation. This is how
cinema in Africa, or rather, “African” cinema
came to be viewed as essentially and only militant. In
other words, cinema could only be associated with
nation formation. In the wake of independence and
with the newly acquired power of representation
conferred by the camera, culture needed to be
part of nation building. That is why inherent in
the very concept of national cinema is imbedded
the concept of nation, founded upon the ruins of
colonialism. In several countries, cinema played a
part in the political strategy for liberation.
Cinema as a tool for social transformation
and political praxis in Africa was originally the
result of an institutional construction. The
revisionist stance of foundational African ilms
Interventions
 14 Tcheuyap
was determined by the various manifestos that
were put into place by ilmmakers and their sole
association, the Federation Panafricaine des Cineastes
(FEPACI) which published a set of manifestos
among which “The Resolution of the Third
World Film-Makers’ Meeting” in Algiers (1973),
“The Algiers Charter on African Cinema” (1975),
and “The Niamey Manifesto of African Film-
Makers” (1982) all documented in Imruh Bakari
and Mbye Cham’s (1996) African Experiences of
Cinema. In general, these manifestoes set African
ilms apart as having a strictly political agenda, as
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is illustrated by the following statement where
injunctions are numerous:
To assume a genuinely active role in
the process of development, African
culture must be popular, democratic and
progressive in character, inspired by its
own realities and responding to its own
needs. It must also be in solidarity with
cultural struggles all over the world.
The issue is […] to allow the masses
to take control of their own means of
development, giving them back the cultural
initiative by drawing on the resources
of a fully liberated popular creativity.
Within this perspective the cinema has
a vital part to play because it is a means
of education, information and consciousness
raising […] The stereotyped image of
the solitary and marginal creator which
is widespread in Western capitalist
society must be rejected by African ilm-
makers, who must, on the contrary, see
themselves as creative artisans at the
service of their people. It also demands
great vigilance on their part with regard
to imperialism’s attempts at ideological
recuperation as it redoubles its efforts to
Critical Interventions 8, Spring 2011
maintain, renew and increase its cultural
ascendancy.16
Such nationalism is echoed by at least two
scholars, mainly Nwachuku Frank Ukadike
and Ferid Boughedir. Boughedir, for example,
provides a remarkably simplistic typology that
deines African cinema in opposition to “Western”
cinema, which is deemed
the escapist cinema, the evasive cinema
that functions outside of real life and real
life problems. It is the opium cinema;
it is the cinema that lulls the audience
to sleep. 90% of commercial cinemas
operate in this way, and this explains
why cinema is universally considered as
entertainment. Entertaining also means
diverting or moving the audience away
from reality, granting them a momentary
escape which delays the conscientization
process.17
It is highly likely that this debatable perception
of cinema has singled out some films as not
really falling within the canon of “African”
cinema. Henri Duparc’s Bal Poussière, a popular
comedy, is known to have been a spectacular
success since it was released. However, it is
severely criticized by Ukadike in the following
terms: “On the surface, Bal Poussière is a social
comedy focusing on polygamy, making references
to corruption, contradictions of tradition and
culture, but cannot be taken seriously as the issues are
treated with only one thing in mind – amusement.”18
Ukadike’s opinion is based on the inference,
probably inherited from FEPACI’s rules, that
cinema’s role in Africa is certainly not to amuse
spectators. More importantly, but also a point
of contention, is the conjecture that every ilm

has a “supericial” and “deeper” function that
is the result of the intentions of the ilmmaker.
We can therefore presume that if the “deeper”
function is amusement, then any alternative
and coexistent functions are to be invalidated.
Similarly, Boughedir repudiates the genre of
comedy, which, in his view, is incompatible with
any African ilm project, because “[t]he implicit
ideology of these comedies […] is primarily a
conservative one,” in that it is always man rather
than the institution, which is at fault. 19 The
question to be asked is whether in Africa and
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elsewhere, institutions can be fully separated from
human beings. For too long it was dificult to
differentiate, in the speciic case of postcolonial
settings, between corrupt “fathers of the nation”
and postcolonial institutions.
It is therefore evident that foundational African
ilms determined their “Africanness” essentially by
way of political praxis. Cinematic production and
discourse were deined from above, by political
institutions, which, in fact, dictated what needed
to be produced. Fighting colonialism and its
aftermath was hence considered the unique raison
d’être, the necessary characteristic of ilms that
were paradoxically funded by the same colonial
powers they challenged. In any case, African
ilms differed from, say, European ilms because
of speciic historical and political circumstances.
In such a context, not to be politically engaged
for an African director was a sort of cultural
heresy, a clear lack of “Africanness.” It is almost
certainly with this mind-set that Ukadike criticizes
Sarah Maldoror’s Sambizanga as “deicient” for its
host of love or emotional scenes which uselessly
“romanticiz[e] what could have constituted a
forceful delineation of a liberationist uprising.”20
In such a context, a “true” African ilm could
only be nationalist in the Fanonian perspective,
that is, only when it is openly political. As
Kenneth Harrow astutely observes, “The terms
AfricAn cinemA(s) 15
of resistance were so powerfully set by Sembène
[Ousmane] and his generation, it became almost
impossible for any ilmmaker or novelist not to
take a politically engaged position.”21 By being
compelled to “ilm” or “shoot back” as formulated
in Melissa Thakway’s book (2003), speciic political
and historical circumstances positioned African
directors within what was later to be deined as the
main characteristic of postcolonial productions,
that is, that which challenges all imperial formal
and discursive representations.22
It is in this context that the aggressively
nationalist ilms of Sembene Ousmane, herein
called “the demigod of African cinema” by
Manthia Diawara, or those of Med Hondo, to
name just two directors, may be positioned. All
their ilms have a singular objective and this is
to challenge (post) colonial domination.23 As
Diawara puts it, “it is a cinema of good and evil
where the camera is turned against the colonial
and neo-colonial forces in Africa.”24 Whether we
consider Sembene Ousmane’s Black Girl (1966),
Emitai (1971), or Camp de Thiaroye (1988), Med
Hondo’s Sarraounia (1987), Kwa Ansah’s Heritage
Africa (1988), Sarah Maldoror’s Sambizanga (1972),
or even Mohamed Lakhdar-Hamina’s Chronique
des années de braise (1975), all these narratives are
concerned with revisionist strategies aimed at
contributing to the emancipation of ex-colonies.
Unfortunately, it did not take long to realize
that nation building and struggles for political
freedom were far from being entirely successful.
As Neil Lazarus asserts, national liberation
movements were not what they were expected
or claimed to be, namely organizations that aimed
at empowering dominated people.25 Instead, in
the words of Frantz Fanon, the main project of
the local bourgeois nationalists was “quite simply
[…] [to] transfer into native hands those unfair
advantages which are the legacy of the colonial
Interventions
 16 Tcheuyap
period.”26 A ilm like Xala (Ousmane, 1974) best
illustrates the postcolonial failures that followed
the ascension of African elites to political power,
namely the much anticipated transformative
results of euphoric nationalism. This is why
post-independence ilms and literature remained
as militant as they were during colonialism. In
other words, the perception of “African” cinema
as an ideological praxis remained unchanged, but
for different reasons.
As argued above, according to nationalist
ilmmakers, cinema in the West is used to distract,
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in the Pascalian sense of the word. It is important
in Africa, colonial terror notwithstanding, to
use cinema to “convert” the masses to political
action. The cinematographic experiment at
its outset is ideological before being artistic.
Because independence generated unexpected
disillusionment, filmmakers who were used
to challenging colonialism found themselves
denouncing post-independence leaders. In
doing so, some based their social function on
the reproduction of a traditional igure, that of
the griot or bard. For ilmmakers like Sembène
Ousmane, ilmic production is a political action
inspired by the role of the griot, which essentially
consists in denouncing the vices of (neo) colonial
society. Cinema is irst and foremost a venture in
uncovering. This is why Francoise Pfaff writes
that Sembène Ousmane is “a griot of modern
times.”27 The Senegalese director clearly associates
his role with African oral traditions:
The artist must in many ways be the
mouth and the ears of his people. In
the modern sense, this corresponds to
the role of the griot in traditional African
culture. The artist is like a mirror. His
work relects and synthesizes the
problems, the hopes and the struggles
of his people.28
Critical Interventions 8, Spring 2011
In addition to the discursive and ideological
determinants of African films, there are also
formal characteristics that have tended to be
associated with “African” cinema. The griot or
storyteller is irst and foremost a master of the
spoken word. However, there is ample evidence in
ilms like Wend Kuuni (Gaston Kabore, 1981), Keita,
the Heritage of the Girot (Dani Kouyate), Genesis
(Cheick Oumar Sissoko, 1999), Africa I will Fleece
You (Jean-Marie Teno (1991), or Ndeysaan, The
Price of Forgiveness (Mansour Sora Wade, 2002),
to mention just a few titles, that African oral
performance and aesthetics has significantly
inluenced the formal construction of several
ilms. As studies by Mbye Cham (1982), Manthia
Diawara (1989, 1996), Nwachukwu Frank Ukadike
(1994), and myself (2011) amply show, African
oral traditions have abundantly determined the
aesthetic language of cinema in Sub-Saharan
Africa. For example, Ukadike’s convincing
examination of Xala illustrates that Sembene
Ousmane’s narrative is “a comedy told in the
typical African storytelling tradition to illustrate
a simple moral tale.”29 As for Manthia Diawara,
he shows how formal patterns are inspired by
oral traditions. It appears, then, that identity and
culture have been (and remain) useful in reading
several African ilms.
However, in spite of its usefulness, using
oral traditions as a principal (and unique?) basis
for reading African cinema--especially today--can
also be highly controversial. For example, is it
quite appropriate to argue, as does Ukadike, that
films from the 1970s and 1980s are rooted in
traditional storytelling strategies “towards which
almost all ilmmakers now lean and to which the
level of [their] maturity is attributed?”30 Is there such
an “African” hermeneutics in “black” postcolonial
narratives that are said to be built around “African
traditions” and forms that utilize cultural
associations “in a unique fashion no foreigner is

capable of providing?”31 As indicated above, it is
useful to consider the role of the griot in formal
constructions of narratives, as Diawara does very
eficiently. However, his contribution can equally
be questionable, as illustrated below:
[t]o analyze African cinema, one must
irst understand that twenty-ive years of
ilm production has necessarily created
an aesthetic tradition which African
ilm-makers use as a point of reference which
they follow or contest. An African aesthetic
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does not come merely from European
cinema. To avoid making African cinema
into an imperfect appendix to European
cinema, one must question Africa itself, and
African traditions, to discover the originality
of its ilms.32
Although relevant, these views also appear
limited, if not essentialist. Such a perception
of “speciicity,” one ought to indicate, is only
true of a certain number of films, especially
those addressed in Diawara’s typology. The
“quest for social and economic justice” is mostly
illustrated in social realist ilms; the search for
identity appears in ilms that it the “return to
the source” category and seek to reject colonial
oppression.33 Along with nationalism, this idea of
“speciicity” is reductionist in at least two ways.
The irst, as indicated by Eileen Julien, is that
there is something fundamentally “oral” about
the African narrative praxis.34 The second, is
another kind of essentialism that would imply
that African filmmakers, like the novelists
analyzed by Mohamadou Kane in his study “Sur
les formes traditionnelles du roman africain” (1974),
have probably only been exposed to African tales,
and that the evening story sessions are the only
cultural experiences available to them. Such an
AfricAn cinemA(s) 17
argument implies that these traditional narratives
are the sole inluences on African productions,
cinematic or otherwise. Finally, we note the
persistence of an oppositional scholarship. Why
must postcolonial directors always refer to canons
or norms that they “follow or contest?”35 Can
African ilms only be “original” when echoing
indigenous “traditions?” Is it not possible to
come to terms with the fact that, to borrow from
Tommie Shelbie, various forces create an artistic
dynamism and hybridity and thus foreclose the
possibility of a homogeneous cultural identity?36
Is Africa one such isolated continent, even after
colonial traumas? Must African subjectivities be
situated only at one or the other end of a cultural
spectrum? Is there not on the contrary a point
of intersection, of mutual (and perhaps even of
a beneicial) cultural gain?
However, in another essay, Diawara clearly
indicates that it is difficult to establish the
constituents of a mythical “authentic” or “African”
ilm language. As he puts it,
[…] I do not believe that here is such
a thing as an authentic African ilm
language, whether it is deined in
terms of commonalities arising from
liberation struggles against colonialism
and imperialism, or identity politics or
Afrocentricity. […] there are variations,
and even contradictions, among ilm
languages and ideologies, which are
attributable to the prevailing political
cultures in each region, the differences
in the modes of production and
distribution, and the particularities of
regional cultures.37
This is particularly true of the post-1990 ilms,
which have almost completely moved away from
Interventions
 18 Tcheuyap
the dogmatic stands and the nationalist rhetoric
of early narratives. These narratives, together
with the scholarship that examined them, created
the illusion of an “African” cinema, that is, a
cinema of assertive nationalism or of cultural
anthropology, which was excellent for exotic
western television programs. Contrary to what
journalists and critics have tended to believe, in
spite of the commitment of most directors to
political struggles, there were also many African
ilms and directors with non-political agendas.
They developed genres that were essentially
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aimed at entertaining viewers desperate for
amusement. For example, why is it that a country
like Cote d’Ivoire never developed a cinema of
systematic (and systemic) contestation, as did
other countries? Why has most of the scholarship
on African cinema been relegated to the shadows
of militant narrative directors like Moustapha
Allasane or Oumarou Ganda who clearly never
shot the kind of nationalist ilms à la mode since
colonialism? Another interesting case is that of
Cameroon, where directors like Daniel Kamwa
and Jean-Pierre Dikongue Pipa concentrated
on soporific issues like forced marriage and
dowry at a time when the country was being
heavily ruled by one of African’s most ugly
dictatorships. Clearly, they did not it within the
nationalist deinition of truly “African” cinema
as outlined by the Fepaci norms. In fact, the
question of “authenticity,” of “African” cinema
is overtly historical, controversial, and unstable.
Speaking precisely about “authenticity,” David
Murphy pointed to the dificulty of grasping the
apprehension of the true African. According
to him, “the reality of Africans ilming has not
produced a uniied ‘authentic’ African cinema.
Rather, it has produced a series of complex and
often contradictory visions of a continent.”38
That is why the notion of “African” cinema
has recently been subject to several attacks by
Critical Interventions 8, Spring 2011
directors whose perception of cinema does not
it into 50 years of dated liberationist imperatives.
New aFriCaN CiNemas
It is perhaps due to Sembène Ousmane’s
lasting inluence on African cinema that Manthia
Diawara also asks, in African Film, what a “post-
Sembène” African cinema will look like.39 Will it
be populist as is the case with Cheick Fantamady
Camara, Moussa Sène Absa, and in the Nigerian
Nollywood? Will it shift towards the postcolonial
art cinema of Jean-Pierre Bekolo and Abderamane
Sissako or rather towards the still pan-Africanist
cinema of Jean-Marie Teno, Ramadan Suleman,
and John Akomfrah? Diawara’s questions are
based on the fact that the cinematic landscape is
undergoing major, if not radical transformations.
It is now obvious that liberationist aesthetics have
become somehow obsolete. In fact, in many
respects, political African cinemas happened to
have been a relative failure and a “cinema of the
elite” in several respects. This cinema has helped
to develop auteur ilms, which, although useful,
appear to have systematically alienated African
ilmgoers. Such is the extremely critical view of
Congolese director Mewze Ngangura, according
to whom any public, including African, go to the
cinema for enjoyment and not for ideological
subjugation. For Ngangura, it is this perception
of “African” cinema which has led to the absence
of any “genre” in African cinema and, especially,
the absence of comedy:
[…] in Africa, for many years now almost
all African ilm-makers have regarded
themselves as authors, as people with a
mission, charged with carrying a mission
to their people. […]
In fact, the infatuation with a “cinema of
authors”, because it did not emanate from

a broad, mainstream cinematographic
current (which did not exist anyway)
addressed to the bulk of audiences, has
only succeeded in alienating the African
audience from its own cinema, which
even today it tends to regard as too
“cultural” in the pejorative sense and
too didactic rather than a spectacle. It is
revealing, for instance, that comedies, a
popular genre, if there ever was one, in
Africa just as much as elsewhere, have
only been rarely attempted in African
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cinema.40
In the same perspective, Idrissa Ouedraogo
fustigates militant cinema notorious for its
conidential distribution and its lack of viewers:
In no way do I claim to represent my
people or African values. One easily
becomes pretentious when one claims
to be an instructor or teacher... ‘The
evening school’ by Sembène, is not
ictional cinema! Why speak about an
African cinema that perverts itself at
fashion’s will? When one decides to make
iction, one shoulders the responsibility
and one says that one is making it for
oneself, that it is not necessarily a luxury,
that it can usher in a possibility for the
African youth to dream!41
Jean-Pierre Bekolo is also clear about this issue:
Why do we make ilms if people would
not go to see them? Most of [my
students feel] that most African ilms
are like tools for teaching and that is
why I started having problems with
that deinition. Film is a medium of
AfricAn cinemA(s) 19
expression and an art form. […] I do
not know if African ilmmakers can use
the ilm medium to teach […], or if they
have the right background. I think it is
wrong for us to teach, even if we feel we
have learned something. Film could be
a good medium for a type of education
that is different from teaching. I do not
pretend to be a teacher. I do not know
how to do that very well.42
In an interview with Michael T. Martin, Senegalese
director Joseph Gai Ramaka is far from being
enthusiastic or laudatory about a cinema that is
only mindful of a politically motivated agenda. He
is very skeptical about nationalist claims that have
become uncertain in a world of transnational
circulations:
I belong to no cinema organization, or
structure, African or non- African. I view
myself as a global human being and not
in relation to a nation. I am interested
in things that are made by an individual.
My concerns are not as a ilmmaker,
but rather as a citizen who happens to
be a ilmmaker […] I do not conceive
my commitment to social justice as a
ilmmaker. I am not a ilmmaker engagé.
I am an ordinary citizen engagé. I want
the rank-and ile, the policeman, the
ilmmaker, administrator, and judge to
be engagé as self-conscious citizens.43
The above statements from Ramaka, Bekolo,
Ngangura, and Ouedraogo indicate that there
is shift in the paradigm and contemporary
postcolonial ilm praxis. Filmmakers now view
themselves as citizens of the world, and do not feel
compelled to be ambassadors of speciic “African”
Interventions
 20 Tcheuyap
values or cultures. Like several others, especially
since the 1990s, these directors have abandoned
the ideologically oriented aesthetics of the pioneer
African ilmmakers, which they severely criticize.
They have come up with innovative aesthetic and
narrative strategies best suited to communicating
increasingly complicated socio-political cultural
contexts. Whereas pioneer ilmmakers obsessively
focused on a critique of (post)colonial Africa or
on the rehabilitation of a mutilated identity and
distorted history, post-1990 directors resolutely
go beyond nationalism and situate their discourses
in the turbulent lows of globalization. As Teresa
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Hoefert de Turégano points out about the speciic
case of Burkina Faso, contemporary ilms are not
only technically superior, but also signiicantly
“less moralizing, less didactic, less concerned with
legitimizing the nation,” than previous ones.44 In
Burkina and in other countries, narratives that
have “[left] the nation behind” fully participate
in a transnational experience and move beyond
the realism characteristic of early “traditional”
African iction.45 In any case, these directors have
realized that “in this world of genders, ethnicities
and classes, of families, religions, and nations, it
is as well to remember that there are times when
Africa is not the banner we need.”46 In such a
context, a stable or monolithic conception of
“African” cinema becomes not only less desirable,
but more challenging because of the ways in
which ilmmakers succeed in positioning their
work within a global framework and even in
regards to a certain spectatorship.
In the past two or three decades, “African”
cinema has therefore become a cinema that is
either concerned with projects different from
open nationalism, or which address the same
issues differently. Although films like Bamako
(Abderrahmane Sissako, 2006) or The Colonial
Misunderstanding (Jean-Marie Teno, 2004) make
it seriously contentious to categorically state, as
Critical Interventions 8, Spring 2011
Achille Mbembe does, that “the thematics of
anti-imperialism is exhausted,”47 it is nevertheless
evident that for directors like Mahamed Camara,
Mansour Sora Wade, Jean-Pierre Bekolo, Daniel
Kamwa, Sai Faye, Henri Duparc, Desiré Ecaré,
Henri-Joseph Koubi Bididi, Dani Kouyaté, and
Mwenze Ngangura, to name just a few, “the
nation” is a less important, if not a totally absent
signiier. The need for nation building has been
somewhat overshadowed by a shift in focus to
more quotidian priorities. This does not, it must
be stressed, imply that directors are no longer
interested in the nation. Far from abandoning
it, they have simply shifted their priorities to
different components of national and social
identities that have little to do with militant
discourse. Nevertheless, their respective oeuvres
put into practice Paul Gilroy’s arguments about
black expression by deconstructing the myth of a
unitary or “pure” culture. Motivated by conscious
and unconscious influences, these directors,
like several others, illustrate Arjun Appadurai’s
argument that
We need to think ourselves beyond the
nation. This is not to suggest that thought
alone will carry us beyond the nation or
that the nation is largely a thought or an
imagined thing. Rather, it is to suggest
that the role of intellectual practices is to
identify the current crisis of the nation
and in identifying it, to provide part of
the apparatus of recognition for post-
national social forms. Although the idea
that we are entering a postnational world
seems to have received its irst airing
in literary studies, it is now a recurrent
(if not unconscious) theme in studies
of postcolonialism, global politics, and
international welfare policy. But most
writers who have asserted or implied

that we need to think postnationally
have not asked exactly what emergent
forms compel us to do so […].48
Given this transformed context due to the
change in demographics, cultural dispersion
and appropriation, migrations as well as global
economics, African ilms have become less fraught
with nationalist heroes. In fact, most protagonists
are not only ordinary men and women; they also
appear to be mostly young people as in Jean-Pierre
Bekolo’s Quartier Mozart (1992) or even Sembène
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Ousmane’s Faat Kine (2000). In lieu of freedom
ighters and radical social critics, we now have
drunkards and other comic characters as in Henti
Dupar’c Bal Poussière (1988). Dakan (Mohamed
Camara, 1999), for example, is a simple narrative
about two young African gays who are unable
to fully experience and enjoy their sexuality in
a hostile “conservative” environment. The same
may be said about Joseph Gaye Ramaka’s Karmen
Gei (2001), which is also the story of a lesbian/
bisexual Karmen, a femme fatale who generates
chaos around her. Mossane (Safi Faye, 1996),
Ndeysaan, the Price of Forgiveness (Mansou Sora Wade,
2001), and Idrissa Ouedraogo’s Tilai (1990) depict
tragic love stories where Africa is used to portray
human emotion. Mwenze Ngangura’s La vie est
belle (1987) is strictly about popular enjoyment of
what life has best to offer--music and dance--in
a devastated Zaire where citizens expect nothing
from a corrupt government. In the same vein,
Quartier Mozart is about life in a neighborhood
where sexual politics is embedded with witchcraft
in the most hilarious of ways.
When a character summarizes all African
ilms in Jean-Pierre Bekolo’s Aristotle’s Plot as being
“shit,” it is certainly because they are often realist,
linear, Manichean, and of rudimentary technical
standard. After Djibril Diop Mambety’s aesthetic
“dissidence” in all of his ilms since the late 1970s,
AfricAn cinemA(s) 21
Jean-Pierre Bekolo demonstrated with Quartier
Mozart and more recently with Les Saignantes
(2005) that African directors could both be
exceptionally creative in formal constructions and
take advantage of possibilities now available to
cinema with technological transformations. Fast
editing, jump cuts, sophisticated lighting, complex
narrative construction, complete transformation
of character psychology, intertextuality, visual
and special effects, as well as noise manipulation
are now essential features of several of his ilms.
Narratives are now shot away from the “bush”
or dry villages where half-naked old women,
domestic and wild animals, or dry landscape are
used to constitute the sole and unique decor.
One other way in which contemporary
directors have redirected and redeined “African”
cinema has been though the experimentation
and proliferation of new genres. David Murphy
and Patrick Williams indicated that African ilm
scholarship is dominated by what they call a form
of exceptionalism, a term they use to indicate
that African cinema is too often evaluated in very
different terms from those generally seen in ilm
studies; productions are regarded as signiicantly
separate from other forms of cinematic expression,
emphasizing their specificity.49 While such a
paradigm may be valid, such “exceptionalism” is,
among other categories, characterized by the lack
of genre study in African cinema. Most African
ilms are irst of all “African,” but rarely comedies,
crime ilms, melodrama, tragedies, westerns, or
musicals, for example. It is signiicant that the
post-1990 directors seem to experiment more
with new genre cinema. Although Les Saignantes
is full of captions delineating the impossibility
of developing genre-specific films in chaotic
and corrupt postcolonial Cameroon, this ilm
certainly has features of crime, sci-i, porn, and
even horror movies. Sylvestre Amoussous’s
Africa Paradis belongs to both sci-i and comedy.
Interventions
 22 Tcheuyap
Ndeysaan, Tilai and Mossane are classic tragedies.
Karmen Gei and Madame Brouette are not only a
musicals as illustrated by Sheila Petty (2009), but
also, together with ilms like Guelwaar (Sembene
Ousmane, 1992) and even Black Girl (1966), can
be interpreted as crime ilms.
The rise and development of genre in African
films signals a shift in artistic practice on the
continent where for too long, the director felt
compelled to “shoot back” as Melissa Thackway’s
book suggests. 50 It is important to note that
what may be called “popular” African cinema
seems to focus very much on genre speciic ilms,
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especially detective iction, a genre popular not
only in the huge Nigerian video film industry,
but also in Francophone Africa, where crime is
becoming a major plot driver. Mamady Sidibé’s
Inspecteur Sory, le Mamba (2005) is organized around
the investigations and heroism of a detective;
Mahamat Saleh-Haroun’s Daratt (2006) traces the
itinerary of a boy who is unable to ire his gun at
his father’s murderer. Even Idrissa Ouedraogo’s
Samba Traoré, with its robbery and killings, is a
classic thriller set in an African village. However,
the most noticeable developer of crime plots is
Boubacar Diallo, from Burkina Faso, whose ilms
attract large crowds. Apart from the sentimental
comedy Soia (2004), his repertoire of ilms is
comprised entirely of detective and Western
genres: Open Water (2005), Traque à Ouaga (2004),
Dossier brulant (2005), Code Phoenix (2005), L’Or des
Younga (2006), Série noire à Koumbi (2006), La Belle,
la brute et le berger (2006), and Sam le Caid (2008).
Clearly, the choice of genre is directed towards
commercial and entertainment cinema, two
options which were considered as almost heretical
practices at the peak of nationalist ilmmaking
that systematically (and almost naively) rejected
any “escapist” or “capitalist” notions of cinema.
That well-known “African” cinema is on the verge
of being buried by a generation of directors
Critical Interventions 8, Spring 2011
who not only did not experience colonialism as
Sembène Ousmane, but also do not feel obliged
to “speak” for African people or “teach” them
anything. Surprisingly, these discursive and formal
transformations have, at times, been criticized by
scholars who seem concerned with the loss of
an “African ontology” or an “African” cinema
that should remain immune to “alienation” all
the while conserving its “purity” in spite of
global circulations and cultural transformations.
For example, Olivier Barlet contends that “the
successes of African ilms have left that cinema
vulnerable” to the forces of “Western pressures on
the content of ilms,” and implies that ilmmakers
are forced to look towards “western” aesthetics to
respond to the urgency of raising external funds.51
Françoise Pfaff makes a very similar argument
in her assertion that “the serious, didactic,
political, social realist” films of the past have
been dropped in favor of “more commercially
attractive ilm products.”52 Ukadike also argues
very strongly against formal experimentations
and “proliferations” whereby the “new breed”
of ilmmakers desperately “exoticize” their work
for export to foreign markets. Although several
scholars praise the formal transformations
in contemporary narratives, these aspirations
to alternative language and discourse remain
questionable because “some of the conventions
used to attain these aspirations have, however,
been misappropriated.” 53 It has been argued
above that Mweze Ngangura and several
other directors despise didacticism, “bush,” or
“calabash” cinema with little or no elaborate
aesthetic traits. However, for Manthia Diawara,
formal experimentations are nothing but a mere
“recourse to a Eurocentric formalism, which
represses the contents of their lives and privileges
the position of Western spectators in art cinema
festivals.”54 The implication of the above view
is that there is something inherently wrong with

commercial cinema, European legitimization,
and entertainment. It also implies that “African”
cinema, basically, is perceived as containing no
formal (i.e., European) construction, and any attempt
to be aesthetically sophisticated is driven by the
need to please foreign spectators.
Notwithstanding the above “resistance” by
these critics, likely motivated by what Paul Gilroy
calls an “ontological essentialist view [that] has
often been characterized by a brute pan-Africanism,”
contemporary directors offer ample evidence that
the monolithic perception of “African cinema”
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which was bound to be militant is on the verge
of extinction.55 That “African cinema” looks
deinitively dead can be noted in the works of
Aboubacar Diallo and Mwenze Ngangura, and in
light of the explosion of image productions in
Nigeria, Ghana, and lately Cameroon. The need
to challenge any ontology is best summarized
by Essomba Toureur in Jean-Pierre Bekolo’s
Aristotle’s Plot:
Is there anything in this cinema which is
not African?
Fantasy, myth, we got. Walt Disney, we got.
Lion King, we got. Massacres, we got.
Comedians, music, we got. Paul Simon, we
got.
Aristotle, catharsis, and kola nut, we got.
What don’t we got?
In Africa for the Future, Jean-Pierre Bekolo asks an
essential question the implied answer to which
is negative: how can one possibly differentiate
what is French or American from what belongs
to his African world?56 In other words, is the
African cinema of today ontologically different
from other dominant cinematic productions?
Essomba Toureur seems to have provided the
answer, and scholars should further investigate
these transformations.
AfricAn cinemA(s) 23
One final clarification that deserves to be
stated is the need to be accustomed to speaking of
African cinemas in lieu of a monolithic and somehow
misleading African cinema. Paulin Soumanou
Vieyra speciied in the seventies that he used the
latter term because “the national cinemas of this
continent are not yet so important [...] that we are
led to divide them up and study them separately
as Algerian, Senegalese, Nigerian, Moroccan,
Guinean, Ivorian or Nigerien cinema.”57 However,
there are reasons to believe it is methodologically
objectionable to continue using the singular when
talking about ilms originating from Africa. Apart
from Oliver Barlet, critics have invariably used the
singular in deining ilms from the continent.58
Nigeria, Burkina Faso, South Africa, and Egypt,
to mention only these countries, have separated
and segregated unique ilm industries.59 Moreover,
an excellent illustration of the need to rethink
the blanket term “African cinema” is proposed
by Teresa Hoefert de Turégano, whose African
Cinema and Europe skillfully illustrates the dynamics
of Burkina Faso’s vibrant national cinema. As she
points out, the generic label “African cinema” is
not quite pertinent in that it masks the diversity
of contexts, histories, genres, contexts, film
languages, and narrative forms of production,
which are extremely heterogeneous.60 However,
as she also adds, theories of national cinema
ought to challenge the conceptual limits of
the nation, positioning it within transnational
and international settings.61 Finally, one ought
to mention a rather significant phenomenon,
which has made the definition of “African
cinema” even more complicated: the explosion
of video productions in Nigeria, Ghana, Cote
d’Ivoire, and now Cameroon. The Nollywood
phenomenon, known as Collywood in Cameroon,
has radically transformed the landscape of
African productions, and scholars must theorize
the paradigms according to which these narratives,
Interventions
 24 Tcheuyap
of at times rudimentary quality and mostly genre-
oriented, may be included into the canon of
(national) cinema.
In light of the above discussion, how can
we then deine African cinema? There is likely
no straightforward answer. What is clear, though,
is that no single conceptualization is suficient.
Issues relating to production, distribution, or
spectatorship, which would have provided other
signiicant insights, could be fully addressed in
this short essay. The existence of the category
Sheila Petty calls “Black Diasporic Cinema”
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further complicates any theoretical investigation,
as it conirms the fragility of any territorial or
geographical classiication.62 What is common
between diasporic and post-1990 African ilms is
that black directors abroad evolve in a transnational
context where “arrival and departure, global and
local, nation and (non)nation,” now determine
cultural production and identity construction.63
It is now evident that entertainment, new genres,
and innovative aesthetic experimentations have
given way to a simplistic “African” cinema that
results in reducing culture to nationalist, racial,
and cultural parameters. Taking into consideration
contemporary political, economic, and cultural
transformations, the best manner in which to
define African cinema would be to consider
as African any film, which integrates Africa
(or Africans) as a category of representation. This,
however, is a potentially contentious view, as such
general typology could also include Hollywood
jungle ilms. Yet, when one considers directors
like Jean Rouch, Claire Denis, Jacques Champreux,
or Laurent Chevalier, there is certainly as much
Africa in their ilms as there is in narratives by
Oumarou Ganda, Soumanou Vieyra, Jean-Pierre
Bekolo, or even Sembene Ousmane. What matters
most, I believe, is not territoriality, race, politics,
or the “authenticity” of a particular culture,
because issues of language, discourse, and form
Critical Interventions 8, Spring 2011
necessarily require us to look beyond any of these
clear-cut concepts.
Notes
1
Manthia Diawara, African Film: New Forms of
Aesthetics and Politics (Munich/Berlin/London/
New York: Prestel, 2010), 29-30. Emphasis added.
2
Assiatou Bah Diallo, “Les femmes à la recherche d’un
nouveau soufle,” Amina 253 (1991): 8-9.
3
Olivier Barlet, African Cinemas: Decolonizing the Gaze,
trans. Chris Turner (New York: Zed Books, 2000),
43-49.
4
Samuel Lelièvre, “Du cinéma africain…aux cinémas
africains,” CinémAction, 106 (2003): 10-13.
5
Diawara quotes George Sadoul. See Manthia
Diawara, African Cinema: Politics and Culture
(Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University
Press, 1992), vii.
6
It is interesting to see an institutional typology
like the one of the recent Fespaco, which
mentions, for ilms showcasing Africa as a
category, classiications like “World feature
ilms.” “Diaspora feature ilms,” and “Feature ilm
panorama Africa, the Caribbean and Paciic.” The
question of identity and plurality thus remains
fundamental and dificult to deine.
7
French original: “Pour qu’un ilm soit africain. Sufit-
il qu’il soit réalisé par un Africain? Sans doute, dans la
sesure où le ilm est remarquable par ses rapports
des valeurs de la civilisation africaine, il peut être
désigné comme un ilm africain. Ce qui veut dire
qu’on reconnaître comme africain un ilm un ilm réalisé
par un Africain sur l’Europe, dès lors qu’on y sent une
certaine façon de penser nègre.” See Paulin Soumanou
Vieyra, Le Cinéma africain de ses origines à 1973 (Paris:
Présence Africaine, 1975), 244
8
Ibid.
9
Nwachukwu Frank Ukadike, Black African Cinema
(Berkley: University of California Press, 1994), 4.
10
French original: Le problème des ilms africains est qu’ils
sont toujours homogénéisés par la perception de l’autre,
l’Occident, qui init par penser que nous ne travaillons
 AfricAn cinemA(s) 25

ni sur les mêmes données, ni sur les mêmes valeurs que les 22
siennes. En dépit d’une philosophie particulière et d’une
originalité propre, chaque ilm réalisé en Afrique par
un Africain est rangé par avance dans la case “cinéma 23
24
africain.” See Idrissa Ouedraogo, “Le cinéma et nous,”
in FEPACI, L’Afrique et le centenaire du cinéma (Paris: 25
Présence Africaine, 1995), 336.
11
French original: “Que dire des ilms du sud arborant
plus facilement que leurs auteurs ‘sans papiers’ la 26
nationalité du nord? En réalité, les déinitions initiales
sont vite dépassées par les envies des créateurs, leurs statuts 27
ne peuvent être enserrés dans un carcan. Les cinéastes dits
du Sud sont des auteurs qui se déinissent selon les mêmes
termes que l’on fait Truffaut, Godard, Rohmer, Chabrol, 28
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Bill Ashcroft et al, The Empire Writes Back: Theory
and Practice in Post-Colonial Literatures, (London and
New York: Routledge, 2002).
Diawara, African Film, 20.
Diawara, African Film, 23.
Neil Lazarus, Nationalism and Cultural Practice
in the Postcolonial World (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1999), 78.
Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (New York:
Grove Press, 1968), 152.
Francoise Pfaff, The Cinema of Ousmane Sembène. A
Pioneer of African Film. (Wesport, CT: Greenwood
Press, 1984).
Cited by Pfaff. See Pffaf, The Cinema of Ousmane

tous les acteurs de la Nouvelle Vague. Ils ne récusent Sembène, 29.

pas cette chaleur qui court le long de leurs ilms […].”
Imunga Ivanga, “Au sud, des cinémas,” in Afriques
50: Singularités d’un cinéma pluriel, ed. Catherine
Ruelle (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2005), 176. Emphasis
added.
12
Nwachukwu Frank Ukadike, Questioning African
Cinema: Conversations with African Filmmakers
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
2002), 220.
13
Ukadike, Questioning African Cinema, 223.
14
Robert Stam and Louise Spence, “Colonialism,
Racism and Representation,” Screen, 24, 2 (1983): 6.
15
Ukadike, Black African Cinema, 35.
16
Imruh Bakari and Mbye Cham, eds, African
Experiences of Cinema (London: British Film
Institute, 1996), 25-26. Emphasis added.
17
Ferid Boughedir, African cinema from A to Z
(Brussels: OCIC, 1992), 70.
18
Ukadike, Black African Cinema, 286. Emphasis
added.
19
Ferid Boughedir, “African Cinema and Ideology:
Tendencies and Evolution,” in Symbolic Narratives/
African Cinema: Audiences, Theory and the Moving Image,
ed. June Givani (London: BFI Publishing, 2000),
117.
20
Ukadike, Black African Cinema, 234.
21
Kenneth Harrow, Postcolonial African Cinema. From
Political Engagement to Postmodernism (Bloomington
& Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2007),
19.
29
Ukadike, Black African Cinema, 178-179.
30
Ukadike, Black African Cinema, 166. Emphasis
added.
31
Ukadike, Black African Cinema, 202. Emphasis
added.
32
Manthia Diawara, “Popular Culture and Oral
Traditions in African Films,” in African Experiences
of Cinema, (London: British Film Institute, 1996),
209-210. Emphasis added.
33
Diawara, African Cinema, 164.
34
Eileen Julien, African Novels and the Question of
Orality (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press,
1992).
35
Diawara, “Popular Culture and Oral Traditions.”
36
Tommie Shelby, We Who Are Dark: The Philosophical
Foundations of Black Solidarity (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 2005), 176.
37
Manthia Diawara, “The Iconography of West
African Cinema,” in Symbolic Narratives/African
Cinema: Audiences, Theory and the Moving Image, ed.
June Givani (London: BFI Publishing, 2000), 81.
38
David Murphy and Patrick Williams, “Africans
Filming Africa: Questioning Theories of an
Authentic African Cinema,” Journal of African
Cultural Studies, 13, 2 (2000): 240.
39
Diawara, African Film, 45.
40
Mwenze Ngangura, “African Cinema: Militancy or
Entertainment?” in African Experiences of Cinema,
eds Imruh Bakari and Mbye Cham (London: BFI
Publishing, 1996), 61-62.

Interventions
 26 Tcheuyap

41
Idrissa Ouedraego’s words, cited by Barlet. See 59
It is interesting to note that in her latest book
Barlet, African Cinemas, 75. 50 ans de cinéma maghrébin (Minerve, 2009), Denise
42
Ukadike, Questioning African Cinema, 219. Brahimi also uses the plural form in characterizing
43
Michael T Martin, “I am not a Filmmaker Engagé, the cinemas of Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia.
I am an Ordinary Citizen Engagé: A Black Camera 60
Hoefert de Turégano, African Cinema and Europe,
Interview with Joseph Gai Ramaka.” Black Camera, 13.
22.2 and 23.1 (2008): 27-28. 61
Hoefert de Turégano, African Cinema and Europe,
44
Teresa Hoefert de Turégano, African Cinema 206.
and Europe: Close-up on Burkina Faso (Florence: 62
Sheila Petty, Contact Zones: Memory, Origin, and
European Press Academic Publishing, 2004), 195. Discourses in Black Diasporic Cinema (Detroit: Wayne
45
Hoefert de Turégano, African Cinema and Europe, State University Press, 2008).
63
194. Petty, Contact Zones, 1.
46
Kwame Anthony Appiah, In my Father’s House:
Africa in the Philosophy of Culture. (New York:
Downloaded by [24.150.69.220] at 16:28 30 March 2016

Oxford University Press, 1992), 180.

47
Achille Mbembe, “African Modes of Self Writing,”
trans. Steven Rendall, Public Culture, 14, 1 (2002):
263.
48
Arjun Appadurai, Modernity at Large: Cultural
Dimensions of Globalization (Minneapolis: University
of Minnesota Press, 2005), 158.
49
David Murphy and Patrick Williams, Postcolonial
African Cinema: Ten Directors (Manchester:
Manchester University Press, 2007), 19.
50
Melissa Thackway, Africa Shoots Back: Alternative
Perspectives Sub-Saharan Francophone African Film
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003).
51
Barlet, African Cinemas, 260.
52
Françoise Pfaff, Focus on African Films
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004), 6.
53
Ukadike, Black African Cinema, 288.
54
Diawara, African Film, 61.
55
Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double
Consciousness (London: Verso, 1993), 31. Emphasis
added.
56
Jean-Pierre Bekolo, Africa for the Future: Sortir un
Nouveau Monde du Cinéma (Paris: Dagan & Medya,
2009), 49.
57
French original: “les cinémas nationaux de ce continent
ne sont pas encore si importants (…) pour que nous soyons
amenés à en séparer l’étude en la fractionnant en cinéma
algérien, sénégalais, nigérian, marocain, guinéen, ivoirien ou
nigérien.” See Vieyra, Le cinéma africain de dese origines
à 1973, 7.
58
Barlet, African Cinemas.

Critical Interventions 8, Spring 2011