{"title":"Transforming education with Black diaspora film and filmmaking practice","authors":"Ashley D. Ellis","doi":"10.1386/jac_00042_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jac_00042_1","url":null,"abstract":"At the first Third World Filmmakers Meeting held in Algiers in 1973, participants resolved that the cinema they envisioned could conscientize audiences and continue Indigenous and African storytelling traditions. Today, there is a robust canon of Black diaspora cinema, which\u0000 should be preserved, archived and analysed. Yet when coupled with filmmaking practice, it can become living history as a tool in the application of critical pedagogy. This article considers Black diaspora film and filmmaking practice as mechanisms for the radical transformation of education.\u0000 It examines how oppositional cinematic representations can spark critical consciousness and how filmmaking practice can put emotional intelligence at the centre of learning.","PeriodicalId":41188,"journal":{"name":"Journal of African Cinemas","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42311606","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Musical, textual and visual interplays in Moussa Sène Absa’s Tableau Ferraille and Madame Brouette","authors":"Thérèse De Raedt","doi":"10.1386/jac_00052_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jac_00052_1","url":null,"abstract":"For Moussa Sène Absa, music does not merely complement a film’s narration; it is an integral part of it. A careful analysis of his feature length films Tableau Ferraille (1997) and Madame Brouette (2002) reveals his unique use of music to convey commentaries on the difficulties of constricted daily social life in postcolonial Senegalese urban society. Though both films tackle gritty social issues and denounce corruption and injustices, they are beautiful and melodious, built around bright colours and positive, vibrant and cheerful music. In this article, I examine in detail the links between the songs’ lyrics and the films’ narration and social messages. In particular, I demonstrate how the messages of the films appear through the emancipatory hopes of the two female protagonists.","PeriodicalId":41188,"journal":{"name":"Journal of African Cinemas","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49041081","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The grammar of violence of subalternized women: Three examples of contemporary African films","authors":"Carolin Overhoff Ferreira, José Lingna Nafafé","doi":"10.1386/jac_00048_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jac_00048_1","url":null,"abstract":"This text studies three contemporary African films that look at the westernized patriarchal societies in Burkina Faso, Nigeria and Senegal. The female main characters in the Senegalese Madame Brouette (2002), by Moussa Sène Absa, the Burkinabe Frontières (Borders) (2017), by Apolline Traoré, and the Nigerian The Ghost and the House of Truth (2019), by Akin Omotoso, all face economic and gender subalternization and end up being involved in violence in order to confront it. So as to use an appropriate methodology, we first argue that African film is multilingual, as much linguistically as in terms of cinematic grammar. In order to understand how the female characters navigate their subalternized roles in narratives that look at their subjugation, we then analyse each film regarding the ways how they try, mostly unsuccessfully, to affirm their subjectivity and which multilingual cinematographic grammars are used for this.","PeriodicalId":41188,"journal":{"name":"Journal of African Cinemas","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48917771","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"In memory: Prof. Ntongela Masilela1","authors":"Bridget Thompson","doi":"10.1386/jac_00056_7","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jac_00056_7","url":null,"abstract":"An appreciation of a brief but intense and productive friendship and dialogue.","PeriodicalId":41188,"journal":{"name":"Journal of African Cinemas","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44030272","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Spectacle and Diversity: Transnational Media and Global Culture, Lee Artz (2022)","authors":"A. Mututa","doi":"10.1386/jac_00055_5","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jac_00055_5","url":null,"abstract":"Review of: Spectacle and Diversity: Transnational Media and Global Culture, Lee Artz (2022)\u0000London and New York: Routledge, 260 pp.,\u0000ISBN 978-0-36775-417-4, e-book, £31.49","PeriodicalId":41188,"journal":{"name":"Journal of African Cinemas","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44923347","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Africa, film theory and globalization: Reflections on the first ten years of the Journal of African Cinemas","authors":"K. Tomaselli","doi":"10.1386/jac_00041_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jac_00041_1","url":null,"abstract":"Achievements marked by the tenth anniversary of the Journal of African Cinemas is the focus of this retrospective on the origins and development of the publication. The key question addressed is how to ensure that the inclusion of films and film theory by resident Africans can\u0000 be made integral to the re-envisioning of the whole field. In answering this question, the overview examines the journal’s initial objectives and how they have been met. Editorial board members and guest editors were canvassed for their impressions, and a numerical analysis of author\u0000 locations is plotted. The findings reveal a significant African presence now in studies of African films and in the composition of the journal’s authorship and editorial boards. The geographical spread of national and regional studies across the entire continent, sometimes in translation,\u0000 from Arabic northern Africa to multilingual southern Africa is a key feature of the journal’s success. The conclusions reached are that the journal has successfully integrated African-based scholarship onto the world’s stage, has enabled the study of African film to link from its\u0000 previous African studies’ epistemological location to now also be considered as film studies per se and new electronic distribution facilities have catalysed post-theory approaches that transcend the Cold War binaries of ‘Third Cinema’, national cinema’, ‘national\u0000 culture’ and other twentieth-century categories.","PeriodicalId":41188,"journal":{"name":"Journal of African Cinemas","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46756209","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Moving still: Bicycles in Ranchhod Oza’s photographs of 1950s Stone Town (Zanzibar)","authors":"Pamila Gupta","doi":"10.1386/jac_00036_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jac_00036_1","url":null,"abstract":"Stone Town’s busy streets in the 1950s became a set for photographer Ranchhod Oza, proprietor of Capital Art Studio (1930–83). I was aesthetically drawn to the numerous bicycles portrayed in these Zanzibari images, just as Oza had been at an earlier time and place. I am less interested in reading the subject of bicycles as simply a sign of Zanzibari modernity, an accoutrement that projects a fantasy of advancement via technological things. Instead, I focus on their ability to reflect various material aspects of daily life in Stone Town. Some bicycles carry people, others transport things, while still others appear as stage props, leaning up against walls while waiting (im)patiently for their owners to return. Yet in all these Oza images, they are moving still, ready to reach another chosen destination. What does the content of bicycles say about Oza’s photographic style? Can these bicycles potentially speak to Zanzibar’s placeness as a cosmopolitan Indian Ocean port city?","PeriodicalId":41188,"journal":{"name":"Journal of African Cinemas","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2020-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43218146","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Experiments in cinematic biography: Ken Gampu’s early life in the cinema","authors":"L. Modisane","doi":"10.1386/jac_00032_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jac_00032_1","url":null,"abstract":"Contemporary scholarship on South African film is yet to address the participation of Black actors in film production, exhibition and publicity. The actors’ interpretive roles in the films, their memories and experiences, and the contradictions of their participation in colonial films and beyond, form part of an unexplored and hidden archive in South African film scholarship. This article focuses on Ken Gampu’s early life in the cinema by reflecting on his participation in two films: a western The Hellions and the drama Dingaka. Gampu was a well-known South African actor and also the first Black actor from that country to succeed in Hollywood. This article proposes an experimental methodology of life-writing called ‘cinematic biography’. It shows that the cinematic lives of the marginalized and colonized actors harbour critical potential in enriching the critical perspectives on the cinema and cinematic cultures in South Africa and beyond.","PeriodicalId":41188,"journal":{"name":"Journal of African Cinemas","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2020-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43697757","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}