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  1. Dartmouth Libraries
  2. Research Guides
  3. Dartmouth Libraries Guides
  4. Film Studies: National Cinemas
  5. Africa, Sub-Saharan

Film Studies: National Cinemas

This guide highlights selected resources for various national cinemas.
  • Introduction
  • Streaming services
  • Afghanistan
  • Africa (General)
    • Africa, Northern
    • Africa, French speaking
    • Africa, Sub-Saharan
  • Argentina
  • Australia
  • Austria
  • Benelux
  • Brazil
  • Cambodia
  • Canada
    • Quebec
  • Caribbean area
  • Chile
  • Chinese cinema
  • Colombia
  • Cuba
  • Czechia (Czech Republic)
  • France
  • Germany
  • Great Britain
    • Northern Ireland
    • Scotland
    • Wales
  • Greece
  • Hong Kong cinema
  • Hungary
  • India
  • Indigenous films
  • Irish cinema
  • Italy
  • Japan
  • Korea
  • Latin America
  • Mexico
  • Middle East
    • Egypt
    • Iran
    • Israel
    • Turkey
  • New Zealand
  • Nigeria
  • Nordic cinema
    • Denmark
    • Finland
    • Iceland
    • Norway
    • Sweden
  • Pakistan
  • Palestine
    • Films by Director
    • Documentaries
    • Films by Title
  • Poland
  • Portugal
  • Romania
  • Russia & the Soviet Union
  • Slovakia
  • South Africa
  • South America
  • Spain
  • Switzerland
  • Taiwan
  • Thailand
  • United States
    • Puerto Rico
  • Vietnam
  • Yugoslavia & Former Yugoslav Republics
  • Transnational & diasporic cinema
  • Journals & magazines about film

Bibliographies

  • Cover art Blacks in film and television: a Pan-African bibliography of films, filmmakers, and performers by John Gray
    • Book
    Call Number: Baker-Berry Z 5784 .M9 G72 1990
    ISBN: 9780313274862
    This 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 by Nancy Schmidt
    • Book
    Call Number: Baker-Berry Z 5784 .M9 S337 1988
    ISBN: 9780905450322
  • Sub-Saharan African films and filmmakers, 1987-1992: an annotated bibliography by Nancy J. Schmidt
    • Book
    Call Number: Baker-Berry Z 5784 .M9 S32 1994
    ISBN: 9781873836217
    Both 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.
  • Cover art Twenty-five Black African filmmakers: a critical study, with filmography and bio-bibliography by Françoise Pfaff
    • Book
    Call Number: Baker-Berry PN 1998 .A2 P477 1988
    ISBN: 9780313246951
    An 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-saharan
    Call number range PN 1993.5 .A35 on Baker Level 4.
  • motion pictures africa sub-saharan history
  • motion picture producers and directors africa, sub-saharan
  • motion pictures, african
  • africa in motion pictures
  • motion picture producers and directors africa
  • motion pictures africa
    Call number range PN 1993.5 .A35 on Baker Stacks Level 4.

Introductory reading(s)

  • Cover art African film: re-imagining a continent by Josef Gugler
    • Book
    Call Number: Baker-Berry PN 1993.5 .A35 G77 2003
    ISBN: 9780253216434
    In 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 Kenneth W. Harrow, ed.
    • Book
    • On Campus or VPN
    Call Number: eBook
    ISBN: 9781611862454
    This 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.
  • Cover art Contemporary African cinema by Olivier Barlet
    • On Campus or VPN
    • E-Book
    Call Number: eBook
    ISBN: 9781611862119
    African 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.
  • Cover art Postcolonial African cinema: ten directors by David Murphy; Patrick Williams
    • Book
    Call Number: Baker-Berry PN 1993.5 .A35 M79 2007
    ISBN: 9780719072031
    This 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

  • Cover art Focus on African films by Françoise Pfaff, ed.
    • Book
    Call Number: Baker-Berry PN 1993.5 .A35 F63 2004
    ISBN: 9780253216687
    Emphasizing 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. ...
  • Cover art Postcolonial African cinema: from political engagement to postmodernism by Kenneth W. Harrow
    • Book
    Call Number: Baker-Berry PN 1993.5 .A35 H37 2007
    ISBN: 9780253219145
    Kenneth 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. ...
  • Cover art Postnationalist African cinemas by Alexie Tcheuyap
    • Book
    Call Number: Baker-Berry PN 1993.5 .A35 T35 2011
    ISBN: 9780719083365
    Postnationalist 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.
  • Cover art Questioning African cinema: conversations with filmmakers by Nwachukwu Frank Ukadike
    • Book
    Call Number: Baker-Berry PN 1993.5 .A35 U45 2002
    ISBN: 9780816640058
    Featuring 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.
  • Cover art Trash: African cinema from below by Kenneth W. Harrow
    • Book
    Call Number: Baker-Berry PN 1993.5 .A35 H375 2013
    ISBN: 9780253007513
    Highlighting 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)

  • Resource logo African cinema from Oxford Bibliographies Online by Frank Ukadike
    • On Campus or VPN
    Call Number: Electronic resource
    ISBN: 9780199791286
    The 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. ...
  • Resource logo Library of African cinema by Various directors
    • Video
    • On Campus or VPN
    Call Number: Streaming video - there are other formats in the Jones Media Center
    Films 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.

  • Resource logo Film & television literature index by EBSCO Publishing
    • On Campus or VPN
    • Database
    Call Number: Electronic resource
    Use this index to find articles about this regional cinema.
  • Resource logo Screen studies collection by ProQuest
    • On Campus or VPN
    • Database
    Call Number: Electronic resource
    A 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.
  • Resource logo The web of science citation databases by ISI (Institute for Scientific Information)
    • On Campus or VPN
    • Database
    Call Number: Electronic resource
    The 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.

  • Cover art Dakan by Mohamed Camara
    • DVD
    Call Number: Jones Media DVD #20252
    This 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."
  • Cover art Guimba: un tyran, une époque = a tyrant in his time by Cheick Oumar Sissoko
    • DVD
    Call Number: Jones Media DVD # 4735
    A 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.
  • Cover art La nuit de la verité = The night of truth by Fanta Régina Nacro
    • DVD
    Call Number: Jones Media DVD # 5272
    ISBN: 720229912624
    In 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.
  • Cover art Mandabi = Money order by Ousmane Sembene
    • DVD
    Call Number: Jones Media DVD # 3923
    ISBN: 9781567304091
    A 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)
    • Link
    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.

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  • Last Updated: Jun 5, 2025 11:55 AM
  • URL: https://researchguides.dartmouth.edu/nationalcinemas
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Subjects: Film and Media Studies
Tags: afghanistan, africa, Arts, Australia, Austria, Benelux, Cambodia, Canada, Caribbean, China, Colombia, Cuba, Czech Republic, Czechia, Denmark, Egypt, film_studies, Finland, France, Francophone Africa, Germany, Great Britain, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iceland, India, Indigenous films, Iran, Ireland, Israel, Netherlands, Nordic cinema, North Africa, Norway, Palestine, Poland, Puerto Rico, Slovakia, Sub-Saharan Africa, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Turkey, Vietnam, world_cinema, Yugoslavia

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