African Film and Literature
African Film and Literature

Author: Lindiwe Dovey

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2009-05-20

Total Pages: 356

ISBN-13: 0231519389

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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.

African Film and Literature
African Film and Literature

Author: Lindiwe Dovey

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 358

ISBN-13: 0231147546

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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.

African Cinema
African Cinema

Author: Manthia Diawara

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 1992-04-22

Total Pages: 212

ISBN-13: 9780253207074

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Manthia Diawara provides an insider's account of the history and current status of African cinema. African Cinema: Politics and Culture is the first extended study in English of Sub-Saharan cinema. Employing an interdisciplinary approach which draws on history, political science, economics, and cultural studies, Diawara discusses such issues as film production and distribution, and film aesthetics from the colonial period to the present. The book traces the growth of African cinema through the efforts of pioneer filmmakers such as Paulin Soumanou Vieyra, Oumarou Ganda, Jean-René Débrix, Jean Rouch, and Ousmane Sembène, the Pan-African Filmmakers' Organization (FEPACI), and the Ougadougou Pan-African Film Festival (FESPACO). Diwara focuses on the production and distribution histories of key films such as Ousmane Sembène's Black Girl and Mandabi (1968) and Souleymane Cissé's Fine (1982). He also examines the role of missionary films in Africa, Débrix's ideas concerning 'magic, ' the links between Yoruba theater and Nigerian cinema, and the parallels between Hindu mythologicals in India and the Yoruba-theater - inflected films in Nigeria. Diawara also looks at film and nationalism, film and popular culture, and the importance of FESPACO. African Cinema: Politics and Culture makes a major contribution to the expanding discussion of Eurocentrism, the canon, and multi-culturalism.

Spirituality as Ideology in Black Women's Film and Literature
Spirituality as Ideology in Black Women's Film and Literature

Author: Judylyn S. Ryan

Publisher: University of Virginia Press

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 212

ISBN-13: 9780813923703

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Given the ways in which spirituality functions in the work of such Black women writers and filmmakers as Toni Morrison, Ntozake Shange, Maya Angelou, Julie Dash, and Euzhan Palcy, Judylyn Ryan proposes in this challenging new study that what these women embrace in their narrative construction and characterization is the role and responsibility of the priestess, bearing and distributing life-force to sustain the community of people who read and view their work. Central to these women's vision of transformation is what Ryan calls a paradigm of growth and an ethos of interconnectedness, which provide interpretive models for examining and teaching a broad range of artistic, cultural, and social texts. The focus on theology provides a new way of viewing the connections among New World African diaspora religious traditions, challenging the widespread and reductive assumption that Afro-Christianity shares no philosophical commonalities with Santeria, Candomble ...

Gendered Violence and Human Rights in Black World Literature and Film
Gendered Violence and Human Rights in Black World Literature and Film

Author: Naomi Nkealah

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-03-30

Total Pages: 255

ISBN-13: 1000367770

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This book investigates how the intersection between gendered violence and human rights is depicted and engaged with in Africana literature and films. The rich and multifarious range of film and literature emanating from Africa and the diaspora provides a fascinating lens through which we can understand the complex consequences of gendered violence on the lives of women, children and minorities. Contributors to this volume examine the many ways in which gendered violence mirrors, expresses, projects and articulates the larger phenomenon of human rights violations in Africa and the African diaspora and how, in turn, the discourse of human rights informs the ways in which we articulate, interrogate, conceptualise and interpret gendered violence in literature and film. The book also shines a light on the linguistic contradictions and ambiguities in the articulation of gendered violence in private spaces and war. This book will be essential reading for scholars, critics, feminists, teachers and students seeking solid grounding in exploring gendered violence and human rights in theory and practice.

The Life and Struggles of Our Mother Walatta Petros
The Life and Struggles of Our Mother Walatta Petros

Author: Galawdewos

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2015-10-13

Total Pages: 544

ISBN-13: 0691164215

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A "geadl" or hagiography, originally written by Gealawdewos thirty years after the subject's death, in 1672-1673. Translated from multiple manuscripts and versions.

Queer African Cinemas
Queer African Cinemas

Author: Lindsey B. Green-Simms

Publisher: Duke University Press

Published: 2022-02-04

Total Pages: 171

ISBN-13: 1478022639

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In Queer African Cinemas, Lindsey B. Green-Simms examines films produced by and about queer Africans in the first two decades of the twenty-first century in an environment of increasing antiqueer violence, efforts to criminalize homosexuality, and other state-sanctioned homophobia. Green-Simms argues that these films not only record the fear, anxiety, and vulnerability many queer Africans experience; they highlight how queer African cinematic practices contribute to imagining new hopes and possibilities. Examining globally circulating international art films as well as popular melodramas made for local audiences, Green-Simms emphasizes that in these films queer resistance—contrary to traditional narratives about resistance that center overt and heroic struggle—is often practiced from a position of vulnerability. By reading queer films alongside discussions about censorship and audiences, Green-Simms renders queer African cinema as a rich visual archive that documents the difficulty of queer existence as well as the potentials for queer life-building and survival.

African Film Cultures
African Film Cultures

Author: Añuli Agina

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2017-08-21

Total Pages: 267

ISBN-13: 1527500578

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The growing body of films in and around Africa, and the seemingly incongruent growth in African film scholarship, suggests the need for new perspectives, approaches and insights into film cultures in Africa. Although it is impossible to capture the entire diversity of existing African film cultures, this collection, which has resulted from African film conferences organized by the University of Westminster, United Kingdom, has recognized the significance and urgency of this task. The book offers a unique engagement with widened African film ‘cultures’ in the context of diverse peoples, histories, geographies, languages and changing film production cultures shaped by audiences and users at home and in the diaspora. The volume is a significant contribution to the processes of representing the self and other, as well as the emergence of alternative, non-official dialogues, circulation and consumption, including on social media. Students, researchers, film policy makers, film producers, distributors and anyone else with an interest in African screen media will find in the book useful and readable analyses of socio-political factors that affect and are shaped by African film.

Black–Arab Encounters in Literature and Film
Black–Arab Encounters in Literature and Film

Author: Touria Khannous

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-08-27

Total Pages: 148

ISBN-13: 0429871236

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This book investigates how representations of Black Africans have been negotiated over time in Arabic literature and film. The book offers direct readings of a representative selection of primary texts, shedding light on the divergent ways these authors understood race across different genres, including pre-Islamic classical poetry, polemical essays, travel narratives, novels, and films. Starting with the first recognized Black-Arab poet Antara Ibn Shaddad (580 C.E.) and extending right up to the present day, the works examined illuminate the changes in consciousness that attended Black Africans as they negotiated their position in Arab society. In a twist to Edward Said’s Orientalism, the book argues that scholars in the Middle East and North Africa generated a hierarchical representational discourse themselves, one equally predicated on the Self-Other binary. However, it also demonstrates that Arab racial discourse is not a linear rhetoric but changes according to history, political circumstances, and ideologies such as tribal politics, the Shu’ubiyya movement, nationalism, and imperialism. Blacks and Arabs have had tangled relationships that are based not only on race but also on kinship and solidarity due to trade and other types of connections. Challenging fundamental assumptions of Black Diaspora studies and postcolonial studies, this book will be of interest to scholars of the African diaspora, Arabic literature, Middle East studies, and critical race studies.