African Film and Literature

by Dovey, Lindiwe

• ISBN13: 9780231147545
• ISBN10: 0231147546
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2009-04-01
• Publisher: Columbia Univ Pr

Summary

Analyzing a range of South African and West African films inspired by African and non-African literature, Lindiwe Dovey identifies a specific trend in contemporary African filmmaking-one in which filmmakers are using the embodied audiovisual medium of film to offer a critique of physical and psychological violence. Against a detailed history of the medium's savage introduction and exploitation by colonial powers in two very different African contexts, Dovey examines the complex ways in which African filmmakers are preserving, mediating, and critiquing their own cultures while seeking a united vision of the future. More than merely representing socio-cultural realities in Africa, these films engage with issues of colonialism and postcolonialism, "updating" both the history and the literature they adapt to address contemporary audiences in Africa and elsewhere. Through this deliberate and radical re-historicization of texts and realities, Dovey argues that African filmmakers have developed a method of filmmaking that is altogether distinct from European and American forms of adaptation.

Table of Contents

List of Film Stills

Preface

Acknowledgments

Abbreviations

Introduction: ""African Cinema"": Problems and Possibilities

Cinema and Violence in South Africa

Fools and Victims: Adapting Rationalized Rape into Feminist Film

Redeeming Features: Screening HIV/AIDS, Screening Out Rape in Gavin Hood's Tsotsi

From Black and White to ""Coloured"": Racial Identity in 1950s and 1990s South Africa in Two Versions of A Walk in the Night

Audio-visualizing ""Invisible"" Violence: Remaking and Reinventing Cry, the

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