Subject Librarian
Lucinda M. Hall
Contact:
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Dartmouth College
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Other Library resource(s)
African cinema from Oxford Bibliographies Online by Call Number: Electronic resourceISBN: 9780199791286The term “African cinema” generally refers to film production in Sub-Saharan African countries. Compared to the other national cinemas in the world, African cinema can be said to be a recent phenomenon that for many countries within this region only began to materialize after independence in the 1960s. ...
Library of African cinemaCall Number: Jones Media Center - Check the online catalog for exact accession numberFilms from Africa made by Africans offer restorative images and a new film language. The beautiful and sometimes challenging films in this collection not only showcase the works of master filmmakers but also innovative new talents who are embracing video technology. To see Africa through African eyes will break stereotypes and enlighten viewers about life in Africa.
Internet resource(s)
- African Holocaust (Maafa)Their mission is to produce accessible bodies of work, which inform about African culture and history, within an African-cultured framework. And within this framework they believe that African people should economically profit from their cultural capital and not be victims of cultural exploitation.
- Federation Africaine de la Critique CinematographiqueThe aim of the federation is to stimulate and promote critical writing in Africa, to obtain greater recognition for African criticism within film criticism internationally, to provide training through meetings between critics, to encourage enthusiasm in film, and to provide information on and support for African productions through debate and reflection.
- Southern African film: towards a regional narration of the nationA paper presented at the "Refiguring Postcoloniality Conference" at Murdoch University in Perth, Western Australia on February 18, 2000 by Martin Mhando.
Introduction to African cinema
The African continent, which consists of over 50 separate countries, is extremely diverse and it is important to recognize this by referring to African cinemas in the plural, acknowledging distinct traditions, histories, and cultural differences. In film studies it has been common to consider African cinemas in relation to two main regions. The first, North Africa (sometimes also referred to as the Maghreb) shares a common language, Arabic, and a strong historical and cultural connection to the Middle East, which has helped to foster a tradition of Arab cinema (see north africa, film in). The second, Sub-Saharan Africa, has greater historical, linguistic, ethnic, and social diversity, and a number of distinct but overlapping film cultures have emerged partly as a consequence of the influence of, and resistance to, different colonial regimes: historically, Francophone West Africa has produced the greatest number of films and drawn the most interest within film studies, though this is now changing (see sub-saharan africa, film in). While this regional separation remains to a degree, a great many African filmmakers have been, and remain, mobile and active across regional and national boundaries; and from the 1960s a significant number of pan-African film initiatives have sought to foster collaborative projects and celebrate African cinemas. The year 1969 saw the founding of the Fédération Panafricaine des Cinéastes (FEPACI), a body committed to facilitating film distribution across Africa and to challenging existing monopolies and market dominance. In 2017, FEPACI, in co-operation with UNESCO and (the US-based non-profit) The Film Foundation, committed to restoring fifty African films with historic, artistic, and cultural significance. ...
Kuhn, A., & Westwell, G. (2020). Africa, film in. In A Dictionary of Film Studies. Oxford University Press. Retrieved 13 May. 2021
Searching the online catalog
You can use the subject heading below to find resources in the online catalog. The call number range is also included. Please note: these are not the only call number ranges, but they have the majority of items. This page highlights general resources on film-making on the African continent.
Introductory reading(s)
African film: re-imagining a continent by Call Number: Baker-Berry PN 1993.5 .A35 G77 2003ISBN: 9780253216434In African Film: Re-imagining a Continent, Josef Gugler provides an introduction to African cinema through an analysis of 15 films made by African filmmakers. These directors set out to re-image Africa; their films offer Western viewers the opportunity to re-imagine the continent and its people. ...
African filmmaking: North and South of the Sahara by Call Number: Baker-Berry PN 1993.5 .A35 A758 2006ISBN: 9780253218988African cinema is a vibrant, diverse, and relatively new art form, which continues to draw the attention of an ever-expanding worldwide audience. African Filmmaking is the first comprehensive study in English linking filmmaking in the Maghreb with that in the 12 independent states of francophone West Africa. Roy Armes examines a wide range of issues common to filmmakers throughout the region: the socio-political context, filmmaking in Africa before the mid-1960s, the involvement of African and French governments, questions of national and cultural identity, the issue of globalization, and, ...
Cine-Ethiopia: the history and politics of film in the Horn of Africa by Call Number: eBookISBN: 9781609175726Over the past decade, Ethiopian films have come to dominate the screening schedules of the many cinemas in Ethiopia's capital city of Addis Ababa, as well as other urban centers. Despite undergoing an unprecedented surge in production and popularity in Ethiopia and in the diaspora, this phenomenon has been broadly overlooked by African film and media scholars and Ethiopianists alike. This collection of essays and interviews on cinema in Ethiopia represents the first work of its kind and establishes a broad foundation for furthering research on this topic. ...
Contemporary African cinema by Call Number: eBookISBN: 9781611862119African and notably sub-Saharan African film's relative eclipse on the international scene in the early twenty-first century does not transcend the growth within the African genre. This time period has seen African cinema forging a new relationship with the real and implementing new aesthetic strategies, as well as the emergence of a post-colonial popular cinema. Drawing on more than 1,500 articles, reviews, and interviews written over the past fifteen years, Olivier Barlet identifies the critical questions brought about by the evolution of African cinema.
Directory of world cinema Africa by Call Number: eBookISBN: 9781783203918Eschewing 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. ...
New African cinema by Call Number: eBookISBN: 9780813589954New African Cinema examines the pressing social, cultural, economic, and historical issues explored by African filmmakers from the early post-colonial years into the new millennium. Offering an overview of the development of postcolonial African cinema since the 1960s, Valérie K. Orlando highlights the variations in content and themes that reflect the socio-cultural and political environments of filmmakers and the cultures they depict in their films. ...
Postcolonial African cinema: ten directors by Call Number: Baker-Berry PN 1993.5 .A35 M79 2007ISBN: 9780719072031This is the first introduction of its kind to an important cross-section of postcolonial African filmmakers from the 1950s to the present. Building on previous critical work in the field, this volume will bring together ideas from a range of disciplines - film studies, African cultural studies, and, in particular, postcolonial studies - in order to combine the in-depth analysis of individual films and bodies of work by individual directors with a sustained interrogation of these films in relation to important theoretical concepts. ...
Selected book titles
African cinema and Europe: close-up on Burkina Faso by Call Number: Baker-Berry PN 1993.5 .B84 H64 2004ISBN: 9788883980312The core of this work is an analysis of cinematic representation in relation to a politics of production and to a received body of knowledge on Africa. It explores the process of transnational, translational and negotiated identities within differentiated structures of power and hierarchy in a global system. Burkinabè fiction film is used to consider an asymmetric relationship between France and Burkina Faso and by extension between Europe and sub-Saharan Africa. ...- A chacun son griot: le mythe du griot-narrateur dans la littérature et le cinéma d'Afrique de l'Ouest byCall Number: Baker-Berry PL 8014 .W37 T48 2005ISBN: 9782747570084
Cinemas of the Black diaspora: diversity, dependence, and oppositionality by Call Number: Baker-Berry PN 1995.9 .N4 C58 1995ISBN: 9780814325889This is a study of the cinematic traditions and film practices in the black Diaspora. With contributions by film scholars, film critics, and film-makers from Europe, North America and the Third World, this diverse collection provides a critical reading of film-making in the Black Diaspora that challenges the assumptions of colonialist and ethno-centrist discourses about Third World, Hollywood and European cinemas. Cinemas of the Black Diaspora examines the impact on film-making of Western culture, capitalist production and distribution methods, and colonialism and the continuing neo-colonial status of the people and countries in which film-making is practiced. ...
Focus on African films by Call Number: Baker-Berry PN 1993.5 .A35 F63 2004ISBN: 9780253216687Emphasizing post-independent films released since the 1950s and the burgeoning commercial film production of the last decade, Focus on African Films provides unique and pluralistic perspectives on film-making throughout Africa. As a whole, the collection highlights the distinct thematic, stylistic, and socioeconomic circumstances of African film-making. ...- Lumières africaines: nouveaux propos sur la littérature et le cinéma africains: mélanges offerts à Barthélémy Kotchy-N'Guessan byCall Number: Baker-Berry PL 8010 .L85 1997ISBN: 9781889431185
Postcolonial African cinema: from political engagement to postmodernism by Call Number: Baker-Berry PN 1993.5 .A35 H37 2007ISBN: 9780253219145Kenneth W. Harrow offers a new critical approach to African cinema--one that requires that we revisit the beginnings of African filmmaking and the critical responses to which they gave rise, and that we ask what limitations they might have contained, what price was paid for the approaches then taken, and whether we are still caught in those limitations today. ...
Questioning African cinema: conversations with filmmakers by Call Number: eBookISBN: 9780816640058Featuring interviews with key personalities from 12 nations, Questioning African Cinema provides the most extensive, comprehensive account of the origins, practice, and implications of film-making in Africa.
Bibliographies
Blacks in film and television: a Pan-African bibliography of films, filmmakers, and performers by Call Number: Baker-Berry Z 5784 .M9 G72 1990ISBN: 9780313274862This is a comprehensive guide to the black experience both on film and behind the camera. More than 6,000 entries documenting global film activity from 1919 to 1990 offer historical perspective on the black image in film, bibliographical material on filmmakers and individual artists, and exciting information on newly emerging talent throughout the world. ...
Twenty-five Black African filmmakers: a critical study, with filmography and bio-bibliography by Call Number: Baker-Berry PN 1998 .A2 P477 1988ISBN: 9780313246951An invaluable work on black African cinema has at last appeared in English. Françoise Pfaff's volume synthesizes relevant information, devoid of hagiography, about twenty-five sub-Saharan African filmmakers, according a separate chapter--consisting of a biography, filmography, and thematic analyses of individual films--to each. Varying critical viewpoints are brought to bear from both African and non-African perspectives. The author has gone beyond translation and compilation to explore the decades of black African cinema within the historical context of the continent's problematic emancipation. Twenty-Five Black African Filmmakers offers enormous insight along with valuable data heretofore unavailable in English. ...
Finding journal articles
You can search various publications to find articles on African cinema. Our collection does not have cinema journals that cover the continent exclusively. You can use Film & Television Literature Index to find articles or use the search box at the top of the page.
Film & television literature index by Call Number: Electronic resourceUse this index to find articles about this regional cinema.
allAfrica.comCall Number: Electronic resourceContains over 700,000 articles from 100 news publications throughout Africa and from several hundred other sources, including governments, non-governmental organizations and other news makers, inside and outside of Africa.
Screen studies collection by Call Number: Electronic resourceA comprehensive survey of current publications related to film scholarship alongside detailed filmographies. This collection includes the FIAF International Index to Film Periodicals Database and the detailed and complementary filmographies created by the American Film Institute (AFI) and the British Film Institute.
The web of science citation databases by Call Number: Electronic resourceThe online version of 3 separate ISI indexes: Arts & Humanities Citation Index, Science Citation Index and, Social Sciences Citation Index.
Selected film titles
Find more African films in the library's collections.
Dakan by Call Number: Jones Media DVD #20252This first feature film on homosexuality from sub-Saharan Africa is a contemporary African reinterpretation of the age-old Romeo and Juliet conflict between love and social convention. When Sori and Manga tell their parents they are in love, they respond that, "It's impossible; since time began, it's never happened. Boys don't do that."
Guimba: un tyran, une époque = a tyrant in his time by Call Number: Jones Media DVD # 4735A tyrant throws his city into conflict and chaos when he allows his randy, dwarf son to reject an arranged marriage to the slim local beauty in order for him to pursue the girl's larger, married mother. The tyrant then sets his own eyes on the girl, making the situation even worse. An epic set in the legendary past of Mali (West Africa) to provide a biting allegory of present-day African politics. Through the story of the downfall of Guimba the tyrant, the filmmaker foretells a similar fate for the many dictators who still pillage the continent. He frames his film with the appearance of a griot, a traditional African storyteller who passes down the "wisdom of the ancestors," looking to the values and legends of the African past for inspiration and guidance in reconstructing well-governed, self-sufficient nations.
La nuit de la verité = The night of truth by Call Number: Jones Media DVD # 5272ISBN: 720229912624In an unspecified country in Africa, after ten years of bloody war, the Nayaks, the President's ethnic group, and the Bonandes, rebels supporting Colonel Theo, come together to celebrate the peace agreement. But the reconciliation festivities are overshadowed by the terrible barbarities that have been committed on both sides.
Mandabi = Money order by Call Number: Jones Media DVD # 3923ISBN: 9781567304091A story about a man who receives a money order that threatens to destroy the traditional fabric of his life is used to point out the problems of modern Africa as a civilization struggling to recapture its own rich heritage after colonial corruption.
Keeping up with the journal literature
Want an easy way to keep up with the journal literature for a national or regional cinema? And you use a mobile device? You can install the BrowZine app and create a custom Bookshelf of your favorite journal titles. Then you will get the Table of Contents (ToCs) of your favorite journals automatically delivered to you when they become available. Once you have the ToC's you can download and read the articles you want.
You can get the app from the App Store or Google Play.
Don't own or use a mobile device? You can still use BrowZine! It's now available in a web version. You can get to it here. The web version works the same way as the app version. Find the journals you like, create a custom Bookshelf, get ToCs and read the articles you want.