Based on research conducted at the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs' African Cinmathque, this article explores the narrative and aesthetic manifestations of alienation in francophone West African films of the past five decades. Rather than examine immigration films, it focuses on francophone West African films that interrogate the concept of alienation from points of view firmly grounded within Africa, such as Sembene's Niaye (1964), La Noire de (1966), and Xala (1974), Samb-Makharam's Et La Neige N'tait Plus (1965), Mambety's Touki Bouki (1973), and Sissako's Waiting for Happiness (2002). The choice to centre Africa in this way within Francophone Studies has political value, and seeks to acknowledge the internal (psychological) as well as external (bodily) dimensions of exile. After a theoretical consideration of alienation in relation to contemporary Africa, the article identifies and analyses similarities that traverse specific films dealing with exilic experience, attempting to account for the prevalence of images of feet, the inscription of voices, and a palimpsestic aesthetic. Ultimately, the article acknowledges the painful and repetitive nature of exile while also arguing that alienation, in the context of francophone West African cinema, has become a source of creativity and psychological survival against hostility from both without and within.
In the growing scholarly literature on internet television, Africa is mentioned tangentially, if at all. This article attempts to rectify this by offering one of the first studies of Africa-based and Africa-focused internet television and video on demand (VOD) for domestic and diasporan African audiences. It begins by giving a brief overview of screen and television infrastructure across Africa before moving on to describe the landscape of internet television in Africa, focusing on six core competitive factors: content, internet connectivity, data costs, payment options, security, and multimedia convergence. Finally, it identifies and briefly analyzes the potentially most popular Africa-based and Africa-focused internet television and VOD platforms. The article draws on original interviews conducted with key players at some of the most important Africa-based and African-focused internet television and VOD platforms and with other African media scholars and filmmakers who have expertise in different regions of the continent (and specifically
This chapter is in part a manifesto and in part an engagement with the thinking and practice already re-shaping film festivals in this era of decolonization and Covid-19. We take as a starting point and analyze the provocative docu-fiction film titled Film Festival Film (dir. Perivi Katjavivi and Mpumelelo Mcata, 2019, South Africa) which raises myriad, difficult, and enduring questions about film festivals and contemporary film culture. Reading the provocations of this film alongside our own respective research into and work with film festivals and film curation (mostly in relation to African filmmaking), we then put ourselves into conversation with 22 film festival curators and filmmakers around the world who have shared their experiences with us, as well as with recent decolonial theorizing (by, e.g., Ndlovu-Gatsheni, Mignolo and Walsh). The chapter grapples with questions such as what does decolonization mean in relation to contemporary film culture? What would decolonized film festival worlds look like? And what have film practitioners learned from their work during the Covid-19 pandemic that might help us to collectively realize those worlds? In this way, we try to chart the significant work being done by many people to build more inclusive, sustainable, decolonized film cultures.
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