Traditional African filmmakers, considered themselves part of an emerging third world cinema and used film as a tool of revolution, a means of political education to be used for transforming consciousness, however now there is a new generation of filmmakers that have been supposedly "freed from the obligation to convey an ideological message." Yet, is this the time to move away from the traditional? Has there been enough progress or heightened awareness to relax into entertainment purely for entertainments sake? There is still an urgent need for African filmmakers as part of the "cultural elite," to act in their essential roles and assist in the formulation, cultivation and direction of specific nationalist conversations.
[...] Out of this suffering rises the exciting opportunity for the use of cinema as a method to “decolonize the mind, contribute to the development of a radical consciousness, lead to a revolutionary transformation of society and develop new film language with which to accomplish these tasks.”[21] Bibliography: Formulating Nationalist Conversations: An Investigation of the Function of West African Cinema Akudinobi, Jude. “Durable Dreams: Dissent, Critique, and creativity in Faat Kine' and Moolaade'” Meridians: feminism, race, transnationalism. Volume 6 No Diawara, Manthia. [...]
[...] With the current economic situation in West Africa there is little money for expensive film budgets. In addition foreign funding is limited because of the drastically different cinematic style of West African films that confines their overseas popularity to a small following.[15] “Hollywood virtually monopolizes sub-Sahran African theaters, along with foreign distributors and exhibitors of Hong Kong, kung fu, and Indian musical melodramas, with the result that very few African films get seen.”[16] There is no way to force theatres to show a specific quota of African films. [...]
[...] American films use these as techniques to idealize the individual, whereas many African film makers prefer not to isolate people, in an attempt to portray that it is the cohesiveness of a group that can truly impact events, and prompt significant change.[7] This idea of individual verses society is well portrayed in Sembene's 1970's film This movie is a comic satire, in which an older wealthy Islamic business man Hadji,' after embezzling government money and using it to marry his third wife is cursed by a beggar whose land he has mis-allocated. [...]
[...] We must understand African cinema is a collection of cinematic forms whose patterns and styles of execution may be as different as the fifty-four nations, many religious persuasions and countless populations they represent.[4] To provide specific references and an increased focus to this paper, it will primarily consider the largely Islamic West African cinema noticing the works of Senegalese filmmaker Ousmane Sembene a pioneer of African Film, and the 2006 Cannes film festival selection, the Malian film, Bamako by Abderrahmane Sissako. [...]
[...] Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press Ebrima Muhammad, Native of The Gambia, West Africa, Muslim. Garritano, Carmela. “Troubled Men and the Women Who Create Havoc: Four recent films by West African Filmmakers.” Reasearch in African Literatures. Volume 34 No Fall 2003. Gugler, Joseph. African Film: Re-imagining a Continent. Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press Hill, John, and Pamela [...]
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