African cinema dates back to the early 20th century when film reels were the primary technology. During the colonial era, Western filmmakers portrayed Africa without history or culture. After independence in the 1950s/60s, African filmmakers like Ousmane Sembene used film as a political tool to challenge colonial perceptions and give Africans a voice. The Nigerian film industry is now the largest and most profitable in Africa, producing many films annually. Major festivals like FESPACI have helped promote African film.
African cinema dates back to the early 20th century when film reels were the primary technology. During the colonial era, Western filmmakers portrayed Africa without history or culture. After independence in the 1950s/60s, African filmmakers like Ousmane Sembene used film as a political tool to challenge colonial perceptions and give Africans a voice. The Nigerian film industry is now the largest and most profitable in Africa, producing many films annually. Major festivals like FESPACI have helped promote African film.
African cinema dates back to the early 20th century when film reels were the primary technology. During the colonial era, Western filmmakers portrayed Africa without history or culture. After independence in the 1950s/60s, African filmmakers like Ousmane Sembene used film as a political tool to challenge colonial perceptions and give Africans a voice. The Nigerian film industry is now the largest and most profitable in Africa, producing many films annually. Major festivals like FESPACI have helped promote African film.
African cinema dates back to the early 20th century when film reels were the primary technology. During the colonial era, Western filmmakers portrayed Africa without history or culture. After independence in the 1950s/60s, African filmmakers like Ousmane Sembene used film as a political tool to challenge colonial perceptions and give Africans a voice. The Nigerian film industry is now the largest and most profitable in Africa, producing many films annually. Major festivals like FESPACI have helped promote African film.
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AFRICAN CINEMA
African cinema is film production in Africa. It dates back to the
early 20th century, when film reels were the primary cinematic technology in use. The Nigerian film industry is the largest in Africa in terms of value, number of annual films, revenue and popularity.[1][2] It is also the second and third largest national film industry in the world, based on the number of annual films [2] and revenue respectively.
During the colonial era, Africa was represented
exclusively by Western filmmakers. The continent was portrayed as an exotic land without history or culture. Examples of this kind of cinema abound and include jungle epics based on the Tarzan character created by Edgar Rice Burroughs and the adventure film The African Queen (1951), and various adaptations of H. Rider Haggard's novel King Solomon's Mines (1885). [4] In the mid-1930s, the Bantu Educational Kinema Experiment was conducted in order to educate the Bantu.[5] Egyptian actor Emad Hamdy in a scene from Faten Hamama (1962).
In the French colonies Africans were
legally prohibited ("Laval Decree") from making films of their own.[6] The ban stunted the growth of film as a means for Africans to express themselves politically, culturally, and artistically.[7] In 1955,
In 1955, however, Paulin Soumanou
Vieyra originally from Benin, but educated in Senegal along with his colleagues from Le Group Africain du Cinema, shot a short film in Paris by the name of Afrique Sur Seine (1955). Vieyra was trained in filmmaking at the Institut des hautes
Before independence, only a few
anti-colonial films were produced. Examples include Les statues meurent aussi by Chris Marker and Alain Resnais about European robbery of African art (which for 10 years was banned by the French[10]) and Afrique 50 by Ren Vautier about anti-colonial riots in Cte d'Ivoire and in Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso
Rouch made documentaries that were not
explicitly anti-colonial, but challenged perceptions about colonial Africa and gave a new voice to Africans through film. [12] Although Rouch has been accused by Ousmane Sembene and others[13] of being someone who looks at Africans "as if they are insects," Rouch was an important figure in the developing field of African film and was the first person to work with Africans who would have important careers in African cinema
Rouch made documentaries that were not
explicitly anti-colonial, but challenged perceptions about colonial Africa and gave a new voice to Africans through film.[12] Although Rouch has been accused by Ousmane Sembene and others[13] of being someone who looks at Africans "as if they are insects," Rouch was an important figure in the developing field of African film and was the first person to work with Africans who would have important careers in African cinema (Oumarou Ganda, Safi Faye and
Most of the films prior to
independence were egregiously racist in nature, African filmmakers of the independence era such as Ousmane Sembene and Oumarou Ganda, among others saw filmmaking as an important political tool for rectifying the erroneous image of Africans put forward by Western filmmakers and for
The first African film to win
international recognition was Sembne Ousmane's La Noire de... also known as Black Girl. It showed the despair of an African woman who has to work as a maid in France
With the creation of the African film
festival FESPACO in Burkina Faso in 1969, African film created its own forum. FESPACO now takes place every two years in alternation with the film festival Carthago in (Tunisi
The Pan African Federation of Filmmakers (Fdration Panafricaine des Cinastes, or FEPACI)[17] was formed in 1969 in order to focus attention on the promotion of African film industries in terms of production, distribution and exhibition.
Med Hondo's Soleil O, shot in 1969,
was immediately recognized. No less politically engaged than Sembne, he chose a more controversial filmic language to show what it means to be a stranger in France with the "wrong" skin colour.
1980s and 1990s
Souleymane Ciss's Yeelen (Mali, 1987) and Cheick Oumar Sissoko's Guimba (Mali, 1995) were well received in the west. Some critics criticized the filmmakers for adapting to the exotic tastes of western audiences. Many films of the 1990s, including Quartier Mozart by Jean-Pierre Bekolo (Cameroon, 1992), are situated in the globalized African metropolis. Nigerian cinema experienced a large growth in the 1990s with the increasing availability of home video cameras in Nigeria, and soon centered Nollywood as the nexus for West African English-language films.
2000s to present 2000s to present A first African Film Summit took place in South Africa in 2006. It was followed by FEPACI 9th Congress. The African Movie Academy Awards were launched in 2004, marking the growth of local film industries like that of Nigeria as well as the development and spread of the film industry culture in sub-Saharan Afric
Themess African cinema focuses on social and political themes rather than any commercial interests, and is an exploration of the conflicts between the traditional past and modern times.
Some African filmmakers, for
example Ousmane Sembne, try to give back African history to African people by remembering the resistance to European and Islamic domination
Patterns of African oral literature
often recur in African films. African film has also been influenced by traditions from other continents, such as Italian neorealism, Brazilian Cinema Novo and the theatre of Bertolt Brecht.
Women Directors Ethnologist and filmmaker Safi Faye was the first African woman film director to gain international recognition. In 1972, Sarah Maldoror shot her film Sambizanga about the 196174 war in Angola. Surviving African women of this war are the subject of the documentary Les Oublies (The forgotten women), made by Anne-Laure Folly 20 years later. In 1995, Wanjiru Kinyanjui made the feature film The Battle of the Sacred Tree in Kenya. In 2008, Manouchka Kelly Labouba became the first woman in Gabon cinema history to direct a fictional film. Her short film Le Divorce addresses the impact of modern and traditional values on the divorce of a young Gabonese couple
