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. ...- Sub-Saharan African films and filmmakers: an annotated bibliography = Films et cinéastes Africains de la région Subsaharienne: une bibliographie commentée byCall Number: Baker-Berry Z 5784 .M9 S337 1988ISBN: 9780905450322
- Sub-Saharan African films and filmmakers, 1987-1992: an annotated bibliography byCall Number: Baker-Berry Z 5784 .M9 S32 1994ISBN: 9781873836217Both an update to Schmidt's previous work & a stand-alone reference, this index furnishes 3,000 citations on literature published after 1987, much of which was originally published in African newspapers & magazines & is not cited in other bibliographies. In addition to more detailed & lengthy annotations, the guide features six indexes & two introductory essays.
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. ...
Introduction to Sub-Saharan African cinema
Arguably the earliest public film screening on the African continent took place in South Africa in May 1896. A number of ethnographic films had been made in West Africa in the previous year by Félix-Louis Regnault (in collaboration with Jules-Etienne Marey); however, these were only screened in Europe. In the 1920s in British Tanganyika (now Tanzania) the colonial/explorer documentary films of Martin Johnson typified the stereotypical depictions of Africa and Africans avidly consumed by audiences in Europe and the US. A similar patronising attitude can be found in 1930s feature films such as Hollywood’s Tarzan franchise and adventure films such as Les cinq gentlemen maudits/The Five Accursed Gentlemen (Julien Duvivier, France, 1931) and Sanders of the River (Zoltán Korda, UK, 1935). In 1935 the British Colonial Office built production studios and labs in Tanganyika, the Gold Coast (now Ghana) and Nigeria, and between 1935 and 1936, under the aegis of the Bantu Educational Kinema Experiment (BEKE), took a number of health and information films (with titles such as Post Office, Savings Bank, Tax, and Infant Malaria) on lorry tours of East and Central Africa (see useful cinema). ...
Kuhn, A., & Westwell, G. (2020). Sub-Saharan 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.
- motion pictures africa sub-saharanCall number range PN 1993.5 .A35 on Baker Level 4.
- motion pictures africaCall number range PN 1993.5 .A35 on Baker Stacks Level 4.
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: five formations by Call Number: eBookISBN: 9781611862454This volume attempts to join the disparate worlds of Egyptian, Maghrebian, South African, Francophone, and Anglophone African cinema--that is, five "formations" of African cinema. These five areas are of particular significance--each in its own way.
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.
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
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. ...
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. ...
Postnationalist African cinemas by Call Number: Baker-Berry PN 1993.5 .A35 T35 2011ISBN: 9780719083365Postnationalist African Cinemas convincingly interrogates the ways in which African narratives locate postcolonial identities and forms beyond essentially nationalist frameworks. It investigates how the emergence of new genres, discourses and representations, all unrelated to an overtly nationalist project, influences the formal choices made by contemporary directors.
Questioning African cinema: conversations with filmmakers by Call Number: Baker-Berry PN 1993.5 .A35 U45 2002ISBN: 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.
Trash: African cinema from below by Call Number: Baker-Berry PN 1993.5 .A35 H375 2013ISBN: 9780253007513Highlighting what is melodramatic, flashy, low, and gritty in the characters, images, and plots of African cinema, Kenneth W. Harrow uses trash as the unlikely metaphor to show how these films have depicted the globalized world. Rather than focusing on topics such as national liberation and post-colonialism, he employs the disruptive notion of trash to propose a destabilizing aesthetics of African cinema.
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 cinema by Call Number: Streaming video - there are other formats in the Jones Media CenterFilms 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.
Finding journal articles
You can search various publications to find articles on Sub-Sahara African cinema. Our collection does not have cinema journals that cover the area 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.
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 Sub-Saharan films in the online catalog.
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.
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.
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.