Directory Of World Cinema Africa

Eschewing the postcolonial hubris that suggests Africa could only define itself in relation to its colonizers, a problem plaguing many studies published in the West on African cinema, this entry in the Directory of World Cinema series instead looks at African film as representing Africa for its own sake, values, and artistic choices. With a film industry divided by linguistic heritage, African directors do not have the luxury of producing comedies, thrillers, horror films, or even love stories, except perhaps as DVDs that do not travel far outside their country of production. Instead, African directors tend to cover serious sociopolitical ground, even under the cover of comedy, in the hopes of finding funds outside Africa. Contributors to this volume draw on filmic representations of the continent to consider the economic role of women, rural exodus, economic migration, refugees and diasporas, culture, religion and magic as well as representations of children, music, languages and symbols. A survey of national cinemas in one volume, Directory of World Cinema: Africa is a necessary addition to the bookshelf of any cinephile and world traveller.

Scotland, its people and its history have long been a source of considerable fascination and inspiration for filmmakers, film scholars and film audiences worldwide. A significant number of critically acclaimed films made in the last twenty-five years have ignited passionate conversations and debates about Scottish national cinema. Its historical, industrial and cultural complexities and contradictions have made it all the more a focus of attention and interest for both popular audiences and scholarly critics. Directory of World Cinema: Scotland provides an introduction to many of Scottish cinema’s most important and influential themes and issues, films and filmmakers, while adding to the ongoing discussion concerning how to make sense of Scotland’s cinematic traditions and contributions. Chapters on filmmakers range from Murray Grigor to Ken Loach, and Gaelic filmmaking, radical and engaged cinema, production, finance and documentary are just a few of the topics explored. Film reviews range from popular box office hits such as Braveheart, and Trainspotting to lesser known but equally engaging independent and lower budget productions, such as Shell and Orphans. This book is both a stimulating and accessible resource for a wide range of readers interested in Scottish film.

In 1994, not long after South Africa made its historic transition to multiracial democracy, the nation’s first black-majority government determined that film had the potential to promote social cohesion, stimulate economic development, and create jobs. In 1999 the new National Film and Video Foundation was charged with fostering a vibrant, socially engaged, and self-sufficient film industry. What are the results of this effort to create a truly national cinematic enterprise? Projecting Nation: South African Cinemas after 1994 answers that question by examining the ways in which national and transnational forces have shaped the representation of race and nation in feature-length narrative fiction films. Offering a systematic analysis of cinematic texts in the context of the South African film industry, author Cara Moyer-Duncan analyzes both well-known works like District 9 (2009) and neglected or understudied films like My Shit Father and My Lotto Ticket (2008) to show how the ways filmmakers produce cinema and the ways diverse audiences experience it—whether they watch major releases in theaters in predominantly white suburban enclaves or straight-to-DVD productions in their own homes—are informed by South Africans’ multiple experiences of nation in a globalizing world.

African Diasporic Cinema: Aesthetics of Reconstruction analyzes the aesthetic strategies adopted by contemporary African diasporic filmmakers to express the reconstruction of identity. Having left the continent, these filmmakers see Africa as a site of representation and cultural circulation. The diasporic experience displaces the center and forges new syncretic identities. Through migratory movement, people become foreigners, Others—and in this instance, black. The African diasporic condition in the Western world is characterized by the intersection of various factors: being African and bearing the historical memory of the continent; belonging to a black minority in majority-white societies; and finally, having historically been the object of negative, stereotyped representation. As a result, quests for the self and self-reconstruction are frequent themes in the films of the African diaspora, and yet the filmmakers refuse to remain trapped in the confines of an assigned, rigid identity. Reflecting these complex circumstances, this book analyzes the contemporary diaspora through the prism of cultural hybridization and the processes of recomposing fragmented identities, out of which new identities emerge.

The representation of African American women is an important issue in the overall study of how women are portrayed in film, and has received serious attention in recent years. Traditionally, "women of color," particularly African American women, have been at the margins of studies of women's on-screen depictions--or excluded altogether. This work focuses exclusively on the sexual objectification of African American women in film from the 1980s to the early 2000s. Critics of the negative sexual imagery have long speculated that control by African American filmmakers would change how African American women are depicted. This work examines sixteen films made by males both white and black to see how the imagery might change with the race of the filmmaker. Four dimensions are given special attention: the diversity of the women's roles and relationships with men, the sexual attitudes of the African American female characters, their attitudes towards men, and their nonverbal and verbal sexual behaviors. This work also examines the role culture has played in perpetuating the images, how film influences viewers' perception of African American women and their sexuality, and how the imagery polarizes women by functioning as a regulator of their sexual behaviors based on cultural definitions of the feminine.

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.