Contemporary Cinema of Africa and the Diaspora

by Prabhu, Anjali

• ISBN13: 9781405193030
• ISBN10: 1405193034
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2014-06-23
• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell

Summary

Analyzing art house films from the African continent and the African diaspora, this book showcases a new generation of auteurs with African origins from political, aesthetic, and spectatorship perspectives.

• Focuses on art house cinema and discusses commercial African cinema
• Enlarges our understanding of African film to include thematic and aesthetic influence
• Highlights aesthetic and political aspects including racial identity, women’s issues, and diaspora
• Heavily illustrated with over 90 film stills
• Features selected stills integral to the filmic analysis in full color
• Moves beyond Western-oriented analytical paradigms

Author Biography

Anjali Prabhu is Professor of French and Francophone Studies at Wellesley College, USA, where she also teaches in the Cinema and Media Studies Program. The author of Hybridity: Limits, Transformations, Prospects (2007), she has published widely in journals such as Cinema Journal, International Journal of French and Francophone Studies, Levinas Studies, Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy, Diacitics, Studies in Twentieth and Twenty-first Century Literatures, Présence Francophone, and Comparative Literature Studies.

Table of Contents

Contents.INTRODUCTION.The introduction describes in detail the method for the book, explained briefly above in the method section.FRAMING SPACE.Chapter 1: Filming the City: Battle of Algiers (Algeria/Italy), Pi+ces d'identit_ (Congo/Belgium), Sugar-Cane Alley (Martinique), Blue Eyes of Yonta (Guinea-Bissau), Max and Mona (South Africa), Home Coming (Ghana), A Casablanca les anges ne volent pas [In Casablanca, Angels don't Fly] (Morocco), Faat Kine (Senegal), A Goat's Tail (Ghana).Chapter 2: Non-urban space: Dakan (Guinea), Reassemblage (USA/Senegal), Women with Open Eyes (Togo), Life on Earth (Mali), Angano Angano (Madagascar), Quand les _toiles rencontrent la mer (Madagascar).These films provide a thought-provoking forum for considering the deep difference between the rhythms and realities of the city as compared to the non-urban spaces of Africa represented, and help to re-assess the previous chapter through a dialogic consideration in the conclusion.Chapter 3: Closed space: Silences of the Palace (Tunisia), Yacoubian Building (Egypt), Chocolat (Cameroon/France).This chapter brings to the forefront specific spaces and the various hierarchies within Tunisia, Egypt, and Cameroon.FOCUS ON CHARACTER.Chapter 4: Models of African femininity: Faat Kine (Senegal), Silences of the Palace (Tunisia), Karmen Gëi (Senegal), In Search of My Wife's Husband (Morocco).This chapter showcases Senegalese cinema by drawing on two of its remarkable films depicting women.Chapter 5: Failure of African Manhood: Xala (Senegal), Tsotsi (South Africa), Halfaouine (Tunisia), Yacoubian Building (Egypt), Sisters-in-Law (Cameroon), Faat Kine (Senegal), Karmen Geï (Senegal), Mossane (Senegal).This works as a complementary chapter to the previous one and expands the discussion of African film by juxtaposing male and female roles in realist and utopian representations.Chapter 6: Between Tradition and Modernity: A Summer in the Goulette (Tunisia), Silences of the Palace (Tunisia), Faat Kine (Senegal), Sisters-in-Law (Cameroon), Pi+ces d'identit_ (Congo/Belgium), The Little Girl who sold the Sun (Senegal/Switzerland), Ça twiste ¡ Poponguine (Senegal).The characters studied in these films introduce the perspective of children and youth as they negotiate the spaces between a colonial past and a postcolonial present.Chapter 7: Revolutionary Personhood: Black Girl (Senegal), Hero (Angola), Moolad_ (Senegal), In My country (South Africa/UK/Ireland), Battle of Algiers (Algeria/Italy), Lumumba (Congo/France/Belgium/Haiti).The real risks of revolutionary personhood in the African political and social contexts come through in these films.NARRATIVE ON SCREEN.Chapter 8: History and Utopianism: Diaspora, Postcolonialism, Colonialism: Fatou Kin_ (Senegal), Silences du palais (Tunisia), A Dry White Season (South Africa/USA), Forgiveness (South Africa), Africa, I will Fleece You (Cameroon), Colonial Misunderstanding (Cameroon), Lumumba (Congo/France/Germany/Haiti), Pi+ces d'identit_ (Congo/Belgium), A Summer in the Goulette (Tunisia), Handsworth Songs (UK), Frantz Fanon (UK), Hate (USA).The explicit relationship between past and present becomes complicated when conceiving a globalized Africa that takes into account the issues raised in chapter six.Chapter 9: African Reality as Documentary and Fiction: Genre and Auteurism Jean-Marie T_no (Cameroon), Sembene Ousmane (Senegal), Raoul Peck (Haiti), Euzhan Palcy (Martinique), Fanta Nacro (Burkina Faso) Hamed Marawan (Egypt), Salem Mekuria (Ethiopia), John Akomfrah (Ghana/UK), Gavin Hood (South Africa).The question of documen