Early Ethiopian Cinema, 1964–1994

Abstract

The first generation of Ethiopian filmmakers produced significant fictional and documentary films inside Ethiopia from the 1960s to 1990s, but access to these films has been limited. Drawing on interviews with filmmakers, Kassahun and Thomas analyze this early production in its cultural context and compare it with Haile Gerima’s internationally celebrated Harvest: 3000 Years (1975), produced in the United States, to complicate the meta-narrative of Ethiopia’s film history. In the context of debates by intellectuals about art and politics, early Ethiopian filmmakers participated in an internationally conscious Ethiopian modernism across the political revolutions of 1974 and 1991.