African Cinema: Manifesto and Practice for Cultural Decolonization

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 Kaboré is a film director, producer, and screenwriter and the former director of the Centre National du Cinéma in Burkina Faso.

• DedicationAcknowledgmentsAfrican Cinema and the Diasporic: Introductory Considerations, by Michael T. Martin and Gaston Jean-Marie KaboréPart I: Colonial FormationsColonial Cinema, by Roy ArmesThe Colonialist Regime of Representation, 1945-1960, by James E. GenovaPolitics of Cultural Conversion in Colonialist African Cinema, by Femi Okiremuete ShakaThe African Bioscope: Movie-House Culture in British Colonial Africa, by James BurnsFrom the Inside: The Colonial Film Unit and the Beginning of the End, by Tom RiceThe Independence Generation: Film Culture and the Anti-Colonial Struggle in the 1950s, by Odile GoergPart II: Constituting African CinemaWhat Is Cinema for Us?, by Med HondoA Cinema Fighting for Its Liberation, by Férid BoughedirWhere Are the African Women Filmmakers?, by Haile GerimaThe FEPACI and Its Artistic Legacies, by Sada NiangNew Avenues for FEPACI: Interview with Seipati Bulane-Hopa, by Monique Mbeka PhobaThe Six Decades of African Film, by Olivier BarletAfrica, The Last Cinema, by Clyde R. TaylorThe Pan-African Cinema Movement: Achievements, Misadventures, and Failures (1969-2020), by Férid BoughedirPart III: Theorizing African CinemaAfrican Cinema(s): Definitions, Identity, and Theoretical Considerations, by Alexie TcheuyapTheorizing African Cinema: Contemporary African Cinematic Discourse and Its Discontents, by Esiaba IrobiThe Theoretical Construction of African Cinema, by Stephen A. ZacksToward a Critical Theory of Third World Films, by Teshome H. GabrielAfricans Filming Africa: Questioning Theories of an Authentic African Cinema, by David MurphyTradition/Modernity and the Discourse of African Cinema, by Jude AkudinobiToward a Theory of Orality in African Cinema, by Keyan G. Tomaselli, Arnold Shepperson, and Maureen N. EkeFilm and the Problem of Languages in Africa, by Paulin Soumanou VieyraIn Defense of African Film Studies, by Boukary SawadogoPart IV: Articulations of African CinemaDossier 1: Key Dates in the History of African Cinema, by Olivier Barlet and Claude ForestDossier 2: Ousmane Sembène, by Sada Niang and Samba GadjigoDossier 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, Kaboré 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)