Towards an African Women in Cinema Studies

Towards an African Women in Cinema Studies
The original version appeared in Journal of African Cinemas, 2012

The focus of this article is the conceptualization of an approach to the study of African women in cinema, proposing tenets for constructing a methodology, developing a theoretical framework and formulating a feminist critic of African women’s cinematic practices. The article considers the extent that African transnational relationships have influenced its makers from the very beginning of African cinema history. Avoiding reductive declarations of a monolithic African women in cinema studies, the article attempts to discern key components that are representative of African women and their cinematic gaze.

As practice, professional body and network, and conceptual framework and field of study, ‘African women in cinema’ has been informed by diverse local, regional, continental, and world-wide movements during the last several decades: the global independence movements notably in Africa in the 1950s and 1960s, the international women’s movements and initiatives of the 1970s and 1980s, third cinema and postcolonial theory emerging in the 1970s, the global focus on multiculturalism and gender during the same period, and, during the last decades of the twentieth century onward, the dominance of digital technologies, new media and the Internet.

Africa, a vast continent with diverse languages, social and political histories, geographic and demographic specificities, religious and cultural practices, whose boundaries extend to a global diaspora, encompasses a plurality of cinematic practices. Moreover, this growing transnationality inherent in these travelling identities necessitates a redefinition of African women’s cinemas as well as the renegotiation of positionality, social location and subjectivities, not only in terms of film-making but also as it relates to their audience. Similarly, these transmutations emphasize the fact that the cinemas and cinematic practices of African women are not a monolith, and hence discourse on African women in cinema studies is informed by the plurality of these cinematic histories, embracing the intersectionality of trans/national and racial identification and ethnic and cultural specificities.

African cinema(s), itself a postcolonial phenomenon that emerged in tandem with African independences, has always existed inside a transnational framework. From a postcolonial approach, it has long dealt with the tensions between African traditions and westernization, the reframing of the colonial version of its history, and the politics of identification. In this regard, La noire de ... by Ousmane Sembene, released in 1966, had already begun to work within postcolonial themes. Similarly, the early films by women postulated postcoloniality in their intent, working simultaneously within a transnational context: as an expatriate film student in France, Safi Faye’s La Passante (1972) focused on the transnational nature of the protagonist’s world as she navigates between two cultures, African and European – a reflection of the film-maker’s own experiences. Sarah Maldoror returns to her ancestral continent using her camera as a tool for liberation. In her classic film Sambizanga (1972) she positions Maria as an agent of change in an Angola breaking free of Portuguese domination. In La Nouba des femmes du Mont Chenoua by Assia Djebar, Lila, who has recently returned to her native region fifteen years after the war of independence, must renegotiate this very space. For Djebar, a native Arabic speaker whose literary expression is in French, film-making in Arabic ‘is to return to the source of language’.

A generation later, African women film-makers continue to work through their multiple identities in their films. Some are bi-racial and their dual identities raise issues that they problematize in their work; others are bi-national and focus on problems of integration and the complexities of identity as first- generation-born citizens in their diasporic home. Still others choose universal themes that do not specify their racial and ethnic identity. On the other hand, autobiographical écriture is a growing trend among the contemporary generation of Afro-Europeans as they attempt to integrate their Afro-European metissage identity.

Drawing on American thinker W. E. B. Dubois’ notion of double consciousness: wanting to live as both black and American, Ghanaian American Akosua Adoma Owusu negotiates what she describes as the triple consciousness of the African immigrant in the United States, having to assimilate in white American culture, being identified with African Americans because of shared skin colour but not always identifying with their culture and history, and having to deal with the African world and one’s line of descent.

African film-makers have long insisted on being considered filmmakers, period, and in the case of women, on not having to also wear a gendered label. Safi Faye has always stressed this point even though her films have African-focused themes. As the notion of transnational cinema takes hold, the non-identifiability of the filmmaker’s nationality based on her work becomes more likely. Many western-based women tell stories that do not always feature African or black characters. Are they excluded from the discourse on African cinema and African film aesthetics? Are they reinserted into the dialogue when their stories do focus on Africa? Moreover, the border-crossing filmmaking of several cineastes also challenges the ‘nationality’ categorization of filmmaking. In the same way, some white South African film-makers and film professionals are asserting their identity and claiming their experiences as part of African history, expressing a desire to be included in the dialogue as well, even when their stories are about white South Africans.

As the formulation of theories and methodologies in African women in cinema studies materializes, there are many lessons that may be learned from other research at the intersection of gender, race, geography and power. Tsitsi Dangarembga, who has already explored the postcolonial condition in her influential novel Nervous Conditions (1988), is onto something regarding her interest in exploring Laura Mulvey’s gender analysis of the male spectator and screen representation of the woman as object of desire in the context of the racialized gaze.

While critiques of the male gaze were among the first analyses of women in cinema discourse, as women’s experience in cinema developed into an importance corpus of work, the female gaze and female subjectivity have emerged as underlying components of feminist film theory. Similarly, during the development of African film criticism, an abundance of critiques of the white gaze and pre-African cinema representations in the colonial imagination materialized. To note, Ousmane Sembene famously called Jean Rouch’s filmic observation of Africa as ‘looking at Africans as if we were insects’. Hence, the organizing principle of a theoretical framework for African women in cinema would appropriately underscore the racialized gaze of colonial and western filmic representations of Africa – often replete with stereotypes and racist subtexts – at the intersection of the investigation of African women and visual representation. In this regard, Frantz Fanon’s examination of the white gaze upon the black person as an object to be looked at (1952) parallels Mulvey’s analysis of the male gaze and the ‘to-be-looked-at-ness’ of the (white) female screen image, as both consider the cinematic treatment of scopophilia. As such, the employment of intersectionality as a conceptual framework allows the convergence of gendered, racialized and postcolonial identities. To illustrate this point, one of the first African feature films, La Noire de ... (1966), directed by Ousmane Sembene, explores the psychological trauma of a young black woman as she experiences dislocation within a foreign, European environment. And while male desire is a subtext in the film, the underlying text, the black female body as postcolonial subject, underscores the relation of power between the black and white female characters. Thus, a gendered post- colonial analysis would be more applicable to the film than the feminist film theory based exclusively on the interrogation of the male gaze.

Ngozi Onwurah examines this vexed history of representation at the intersection of African cultural practices and western stereotypes, locating the visualization of African traditions within the context of power and the gaze. Brought on board to direct the BBC-commissioned documentary film Monday’s Girls released in 1993, she realized immediately that the story was fraught with western stereotypes and notions of African women. The film follows the experiences of two young Waikiriki women during the Iria coming-of-age ceremony, a celebration of women’s rites of passage that entails seclusion in the ‘fattening rooms’ during which the young women are fed and pampered; during the formal procedure they are adorned with body paint and ceremonial attire including nude breasts. Onwurah is apprehensive about the interpretation of these images by western spectators who have preconceived notions of Africa, having already seen Discovery Channel- and National Geographic-type programmes about Africa. Her concern is especially relevant to the current discourse on the female body, a pervasive theme in feminist film studies and cultural studies.

Onwurah would have rather told a different story had she had the real power over the outcome of the film. Much more forceful and pertinent to African realities where tradition and modernity coexist were the off-camera experiences of the young women during the shooting. They had developed their own cinematic gaze and, based on whether the camera was on or off, knew what was expected of them, as they were familiar with westernized black female representation. This repositioning of the subject was the film that Ngozi Onwurah found more compelling rather than adhering to the African/ western dichotomy of the original script.

This elaboration of Onwurah’s arguments considers several issues towards the formulation of theories of African women in cinema studies and criticism: the intent of the filmmaker, the targeted audience, the politics of representation, the cultivation and forging of structures for critical discourse, the enhancement of cultural readership of the audience, and, perhaps most importantly and ultimately, how the film-maker is allowed to tell her story and to whom.

While African women in cinema have expressed concerns about the screen representation of women by African male filmmakers, they also caution against the automatic application of western feminist discourses of the male gaze and female objectification. On the other hand, there is a growing prevalence of a masculinist focus on the female body and sexuality, and in the case of Mama Keita’s L’Absence (2009), Abdellatif Kechiche’s Vénus noire (2011) and Djo Munga’s Viva Riva (2011) pornographic violence towards the African female protagonist. And yet Ngozi Onwurah raises the issue of her own use of violence, noting that it is an approach that is generally not attributed to women. Indeed, Welcome II the Terrordome (1995) employs a level of brutality upon the white female character that parallels the pornographic violence mentioned in the films above: pregnant by her black partner, she is punched and kicked viciously in the stomach by her former white partner. On the other hand, much of Onwurah’s work is provocative, pushing the limits of racial, sexual and ethnic hatred, and of the violence and fear expressed by both black and white people. Similarly Fanta Nacro does not shy away from the taboo of graphic depictions of sexuality (Puk Nini, 1996) and, in the case of La Nuit de la verité, the extreme, obscene and often sexualized violence of madness and war. Nor does Safi Faye censor her work from potential criticism of female objectification regarding her very explicit depiction of nudity, sexuality and female pleasure in Mossane (1996). Furthermore, Tsitsi Dangarembga, accused of presenting Africans as cannibals in her recent film Nyami Nyami and the Evil Eggs (2011), had already drawn this same metaphor of famine and human body consumption in her work Kare Kare Zvako-Mother’s Day (2004) , which also depicts the brutal murder of a woman by her husband, who then consumes her remains. Whether visual metaphors or fictionalized rituals, such as Safi Faye’s stunning world of the Pangools in Mossane, African filmmakers are constantly defying the preconceived notions about Africa that Onwurah describes above.

Since the seminal moment in Ouagadougou in 1991, which I situate as the genesis of the African women in cinema movement, there has been an increased academic and scholarly interest in African women in cinema, though not necessarily as a result of it, as research on the subject dates back to the 1970s. Nonetheless, the underlying desire for framing an organized movement spearheaded by the continent-wide association was to forge an indigenous continent-based infrastructure that included film criticism through initiatives like the defunct Écrans d’Afrique and audience-building through local ciné-clubs and film forums. And while African film studies in Africa have not been institutionalized in the academy, there is a growing interest in formalizing it into university curricula. This is not to say that local initiatives do not exist, as this article has demonstrated the many activities that have been created since the 1960s. Nonetheless, there continue to be disparities in research, publication, and networking opportunities and, perhaps most importantly, in the ability, the imperative even, of African women themselves to formulate and establish the discourse.

Works Cited
Bouyain, Sarah (2000), Les Enfants du Blanc.
Dangarembga, Tsitsi (2011), Nyami Nyami and the Evil Eggs.
—— (2004), Kare Kare Zvako-Mother’s Day.
—— (1988), Nervous Conditions. London: The Women’s Press.
Djebar, Assia (1977), La Nouba des femmes du Mont Chenoua.
Fanon, Frantz (1952), Black Skin White Masks. New York: Grove Press.
Faye, Safi (1996), Mossane.
—— (1972), La Passante.
Kechiche, Abdellatif (2011), Vénus noire.
Keita, Mama (2009), L’Absence.
Maldoror, Sarah (1972), Sambizanga.
Mulvey, Laura (1975), “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”, Screen 16: 3,
pp. 6–18.
Munga, Djo (2011), Viva Riva.
Nacro, Fanta (2004), La Nuit de la verité/The Night of Truth. —— (1996), Puk Nini.
Onwurah, Ngozi (1995), Welcome II the Terrordome.
—— (1993), Monday’s Girls.
—— (1991), The Body Beautiful.
Sembene, Ousmane (1966), La Noire de ...



 

African Women’s Perspective as Alternative Discourse: Reflections on African Women and Film Criticism

Adapted from my article "Reflections on Cinema Criticism and African Women and Film Criticism" in Feminist Africa 16 African Feminist Engagements with Film. Issue 16: July 2012
 

In the intriguing “Le dit du cinéma africain” (A Tale of African Cinema) by the inimitable storyteller of the African griot oral tradition, Amadou Hampâté Bâ, published in 1967, is the extraordinary story of Kadidja Pâté, his mother. Her fascinating and edifying encounter with early cinema provides a unique introduction to research on African women and film criticism.

Hampâté Bâ recalls as an eight-year-old, the first film screening held in his native village Bandiagara, Mali in 1908. The local colonial governor had ordered the religious leaders of the village to attend a film screening, and concerned about this “satanic ghost ready to trick the true believer”, they gathered to find a way to sabotage the event. Though she was not present at the screening, Kadidja Pâté, a devout Muslim, embraced this collective belief. However, in 1934, while still under the 1908 interdiction of the marabouts of Bandiagara, though to please her son, she accompanied him and his wife to the movie theatre.
 

Research on early cinema and spectatorship of that era underscores the near-universal response of amazement and wonder in the first decades of the birth of cinema. Audiences in both westernized and non-western societies experienced the stunning effect of this new technology. Hence, it is not surprising that even the learned leaders of the small village of Bandiagara, Mali had awed reactions, encouraging their extant opposition to the veneration of images under Islam. At the same time that Hampâté Bâ presents an introduction to early African experiences in cinema, his story also explores the relations of power between coloniser and Africa at the site of the image and spectatorship, and the negotiation of endogenous (religious) beliefs with external cultural forms.
 

The most intriguing aspect of the story and a useful example for my work, is the absolute transformation of Kadidja Pâté, from a young woman who in 1908 accepted the elders’ belief that cinema was evil, to a mature woman in 1934, who had evolved into an independent thinker critically engaging its possibilities. In this article, Kadidja Pâté serves as a conduit of sorts to the emergence of an African women’s cinematic gaze; demonstrating her ability to interpret, discern and demystify the moving images of her time, a time when cinema was just developing and taking shape. When Hampâte Bâ’s story begins, a mere decade and a half had passed since the first public screenings of the moving images in the 1890s in Europe and North America, at the time of Kadidja Pâté’s first encounter with cinema in 1934, the sound era had just emerged. Though an untrained spectator, she was able to draw lessons and benefit from her first experience at the movie theatre. Her interpretation of the screen as metaphor, her ability to observe, differentiate, compare— likening the screen to an intermediary between the Maker and the viewer, is indicative of a perceptive cultural reader able “to develop [her] own beliefs into firm ideas and not through passive conformity.” Her reflection, I would venture to say, is the earliest evidence of an African woman’s experience of cinema.
 

Hence drawing from Kadidja Pâté’s first cinematic encounter with the moving image is a manner to explore the tenets of an African woman’s cinema criticism and its application of an African cinematic practice that emerged some twenty years later in the 1950s. It is highly significant to have an oral testimony transported into text of such a historical event that occurred more than 75 years ago. It is also significant that it has not elicited much scholarly interest, although this may be due to its obscurity—tucked away as the introductory text of a French-language catalogue on ethnographical films on Africa originally published by UNESCO in 1955. Pâté’s testimony is vital to the ongoing efforts to forge an African perspective on the image in general and African cinematic representation in particular. While it would be twenty years after Kadidja Pâté’s 1934 cinematic encounter before the emergence of an African cinematic practice, and thirty years before an African would direct a film on the continent, the span widens when considering an African engagement with film criticism, although Paulin Soumanou Vieyra pioneers a historiography of African cinema in the late 1960s. The lack of a veritable foundation within which to debate, discuss, exchange discourse and forge a theoretical framework endogenous to African cinematic realities has been an ongoing concern since the creation of a continental cinema infrastructure in the 1960s.

Continuing the work of Paulin Soumanou Vieyra, also known as the father of African film criticism and history, Burkinabé film critic Clément Tapsoba (1995) asserts that African film criticism is an intermediary between the public and the filmmaker, and hence it should first be an encounter with the people to whom it informs, guides, and enlightens, which in return provides the necessary feedback to the filmmakers. Film criticism must reveal not only multi-layered meaning to the public, but it must also find the most appropriate technique for the creation of meaning. Influenced by Vieyra’s (1990) work on oral tradition and film production, Tapsoba (1995) asserts that evolving from a culture of orality, African filmmakers have always reflected the close links between their film narratives and traditional stories. However, the new demands of cinema on the one hand and the changes in attitude of the African public as a result of foreign images on the other, are factors that call for a new approach to African cinema for both the filmmaker and for film criticism. He notes that increasingly, African filmmakers must combine the social function of their work with the aspect of entertainment, while still retaining its own identity, as the preservation of identity is the fundamental challenge they face confronted with the tendency toward the standardization of world cinema by Hollywood. Hence, he insists that African film criticism must be endogenous and inward looking. He reminds us of the reflections of Vieyra: “criticism is born with the object that it critiques. It develops and is also strengthened in time because the art evolves, people become more knowledgeable and thus more demanding.” Similarly, Imunga Ivanga (2005), Gabonese filmmaker and director of the Gabonese National Centre of Cinema, paraphrases Cheikh Anta Diop as he urges Africans to be the ones “to generate their own theoretical, conceptual, psychological, psychoanalytical, and aesthetic language and categories, which will not be indebted neither to Oedipus or Electra.”

Togolese Anne-Laure Folly Reimann (2000) follows this reasoning vis-à- vis her view of the role of African cinema whose endeavor is to restore its values within a thought system that can no longer survive in this era unless it is disseminated beyond its borders. Africa has alternative values that it must learn to impart and exchange with others. According to her: “the world is evolving in such a way that we will interchange with each other no matter what. Everything is interconnected, and if we express our culture, the logic of the system is such that it will be shared elsewhere as well.”

These irrefutable conclusions draw attention to what Tapsoba views as the major obstacles in the development of an endogenous African cinema criticism: the shortage of film production, the lack of distribution and venues for exhibition and hence an absence of an African public to view African films. Tapsoba expresses his concern at a growing tendency towards western hegemony of African cinema criticism. In many cases western critics and scholars have access to African films before the African critics and the African public and hence from this privileged position assume the right to define, categorize and assign meaning, appropriating an important part of African cultural heritage. Imunga Ivanga (2005) has other concerns that are equally compelling. He poses important questions: what is film criticism? What purpose does it serve? And moreover, should it serve a purpose? According to him, the educational aspect that can result from these questions may be of interest to an African public that has not yet entirely integrated reading and writing in its traditions. While paradoxically, radio, television and film can be defined as constituents of neo-orality as they have continued success among the African population. The challenge is that access to these reflections must often pass through the written word, and thus it is necessary to create places of debate that would take this constraint into account.

 

It is for these same reasons that Tsitsi Dangarembga (1997) finds filmmaking more applicable to the African context than literature, as films reach a wider public. Similarly, she observes that “to understand a film you don’t have to be educated to the same extent where you do when you have to pick up a book.” Since she writes in English she must take into account that all Zimbabweans do not read in English, “whereas even if a film is in English, I think if it is made well enough, a person can probably understand what is going on.” Taking this consideration into account, Women Filmmakers of Zimbabwe (WFOZ), initiated outreach to remote regions in Zimbabwe, using film as a means to engage with the messages in the films so that the young women especially, may recognize, examine and discover possible solutions to the problems that affect them. Continuing Imunga Ivanga’s (2005) query on the role of film criticism: For whom is African film criticism intended? Who are the intended viewers of African films? As African films are notoriously inaccessible on the continent, they are invisible to African audiences. And thus, asks Imunga Ivanga: Who sees? Who reads? Who sees what? Who reads what? And under what conditions?

 

If the notion of an African gaze continues to concern African filmmakers and critics it is because it is imperative to assert an African specificity facing a standardized universalism, not only in the form of added testimonials attesting to its existence, but more importantly as an agent of a world that has inscribed it no place on the world map. In the same way, Folly Reimann (2000) asserts that power comes from those who say things. There is a widespread attitude that if one does not express oneself, has nothing to say, then one does not exist; and that the problem is that culturally speaking, Africa does not say things. That there is the perception that what is important is not told, or is expressed discreetly, or is told only to one another, by word-of-mouth. She perceives that the attitude among Africans is that a culture that exposes itself disintegrates, agreeing that in some ways it may be true, that the notion of the total diffusion of something corresponds to losing something of one’s essence. Echoing Vieyra’s reflections above, Folly Reimann observes that changes occur in the West and then are reproduced and diffused. And through this diffusion, a mutation occurs. These notions and values are transmitted elsewhere, which are then modified and changed by the receiver and hence these values evolve. Whereas in African societies, these values once transmitted, are kept and applied throughout one’s life. “I think that we are a bit lost in our international discourse to the extent that we no longer exist. Now we must say something.”

What then do African women say? What is an African woman’s cinematic voice? How do they speak through film? How do they express their vision to their societies and to the world? How do they inscribe their écriture into their work? What are the issues related to the creation of an African women’s film criticism? What are the elements needed to develop it? Why is it important that it be endogenous—that African women themselves formulate the theories and discourse? How would this discourse be encouraged and sustained beyond the film festival forums and occasional conferences and meetings that have given it voice? How can film production be enhanced in order to build a collection of quality works? How can an endogenous African women cinema studies be reconciled with the dominance of western feminist film criticism that interprets female representation and women’s filmmaking practice within western canons and paradigms? Under what conditions are African women able to forge a critique that is meaningful to their experiences? Folly Reimann (2000) proposes an African woman’s perspective as an alternative discourse as “their perspective does not simply analyse things; they live them.” Aminata Ouedraogo (2000) has noted that while there is an under-representation of African women in film criticism involving written works; on the other hand, there is a visible presence of women at film debates at film festivals, film forums and ciné-clubs on the continent. Her assertion underscores the arguments by Tapsoba and Vieyra, that the role of criticism is to directly engage the public, who in turn become more knowledgeable and discerning.

During my work on the African women in cinema project that culminated with the Sisters of the Screen book and film, many of the women were asked about their perspectives on African women cinema criticism, feminist perspectives on cinema, the African female gaze, and female sensibility. Since the publication of the book in 2000, I have continued interviewing women, collecting their perspectives along the way and have witnessed the emergence of a cadre of African women doing advanced study and research and showing increased interest in the area of cinema studies.

Many African women come to cinema with other professional experiences, with advanced academic degrees, or emerge from other disciplines such as visual arts, theatre, journalism, literature, anthropology, sociology, psychology, museum studies, art history, architecture, education, geography, communication theory, development studies, law, medicine, international relations, political science, and business. They come increasingly from backgrounds in film theory and criticism, all of which strengthen their position to theorize about their own work and expectations in terms of audience reception and efforts toward consciousness raising. One need only read interviews and artistic statements and transcripts of colloquia and keynote addresses to see the depth of critical engagement with their films and African films in general, as well as their capacity to make broader connections within an array of issues. Though not necessarily as a searchable collection or ensemble that names it a body of work, increasingly there is scholarship and documentation on which they can build. The intersection of theory and practice is, in fact, the methodology among African women, rather than the academic criticism and study that is the tendency elsewhere. On-the-ground, community-based issues are important to African women filmmakers rather than theory for theory’s sake, criticism for the sake of criticism. They continue to create cinematic institutions and initiatives such as film festivals, film organizations, newsletters, ciné-clubs, pitching forums, production companies and hence are well positioned to critically engage with the films and the audiences who view them.

African women have held key positions in film institutions and in government ministries focusing on culture, education and women, where they can influence policies and make decisions on state, continental and international levels. The initiatives and the women who have forged and sustained them, attest to the scope and breadth of possibilities in the development of an endogenous African women’s cinema criticism capable of embracing the plurality of the continent and drawing directly from its cinematic realities.

What remains important are all the lessons learned in the ongoing growth of African women cinema studies and criticism, and the value of documenting the cinematic experiences of African women from their perspective, told and written in their own voices. Imbedded in this discourse is also my idea of a sisterhood through cinema, where language is not a barrier, where geography is not an impediment, and where the screen becomes the meeting point for all the stakeholders: directors, producers, actors, festival organizers, critics, and audiences. And drawing from the wisdom of Kadidja Pâté, the screen becomes the intermediary through which the moving image is viewed, interpreted and understood.

References
 

Bâ, Amadou Hampâté. 1967. “Le dit du cinéma africain”, Films ethnographiques sur l’Afrique noire. Paris: UNESCO.

Bulane-Hopa, Seipati. 2009. FEPACI Newsletter Nl01-09-09. Link no longer active at http://www.fepaci-film.org/Newsletter/Nl01-09-09-9.html

Dangarembga, Tsitsi. 1997. Interview with the author for the African Women in Cinema Project.

Folly Reimman, Anne-Laure. 2000. Sisters of the Screen: Women of Africa on Film, Video and Television, Beti Ellerson. New Jersey: Africa World Press.

Ivanga, Imunga. 2005. “Autant en emporte la critique.” Afriques 50: Singularités d’un cinema pluriel. Paris: L’Harmattan.

Ouedraogo, Aminata. 2000. Sisters of the Screen: Women of Africa on Film, Video and Television, Beti Ellerson. New Jersey: Africa World Press.

Sama, Emmanuel. 1992. “Le cinéma au féminin sort ses griffes, ‘Un certain matin’ avec Régina Fanta Nacro,” Amina 265: 22-21.

Tapsoba, Clément. 1995. “De l’orientation de la critique du cinéma africain”. L’Afrique et le Centenaire du Cinéma/Africa and the Centenary of Cinema. Fepaci Federation Panafricaine des Cinéastes/Panafrican Federation of Filmmakers. Paris: Présence Africaine.

Vieyra, Paulin Soumanou. 1990. Reflexions d’un cineaste africain. Brussels: Editions OCIC.

Building a Historiography of African Women in Cinema

In applying Sarah Maldoror’s assertion that, African women must be everywhere...in the images, behind the camera, in the editing room, involved in every stage of the making of a film...the ones to talk about their problems, the focus here is on women in front of the screen as cultural readers. They must also be present in all areas of discourse as scholars, critics and theorists of African women in cinema studies. They must be the ones to talk about the vital role that women in cinema play in creating, shaping and determining the course of their cinematic history and the knowledge that it produces.

  

The African Women in Cinema Project that I initiated in 1997, culminating with the book and film Sisters of the Screen, is a title that envisions a veritable screen culture in which the moving image visualised on myriad screen environments from white cloth to movie screen, television set, computer monitor, inflatable giant screens and now mobile phone, tablet and diverse emerging media could be the meeting point for African women in cinema to tell their stories. Moreover, the title contemplates an imaginary community where African women’s experiences of cinema may be shared, analysed, documented, historicised, and archived. 

  

Following the release of the book and film in 2000 and 2002 respectively, the Project developed into the Centre for the Study and Research of African women in cinema tracing the trajectory of women as they circulate within evolving screen cultures, mapping a historiography of strategic moments and a timeline of key events, as well as analysing trends and tendencies. The Centre’s organising principle is based on two key elements: the work of the pan-African organisation of women professionals of the moving image created in 1991, now known as the Association of Professional African Women in Cinema, Television and Video/ Association des Femmes Africaines Professionnelles du Cinéma, de la Télévision et de la Vidéo, and the experiences of these individual women recounted in interviews, speeches, artists intentions, mission statements, and in their work. Drawing from the objectives of the organisation: to provide a forum for women to share and exchange their experiences, to formulate mechanisms for continued dialogue and exchange, this formulation may extend to the realm of historiography for which an infrastructure may be developed to assemble the disparate parts.

   

The historic conference in Ouagadougou on African women film professionals during which an organized movement was born, put forth the ground rules for an infrastructure to represent and promote their interests. The fruits of these efforts are particularly visible in the institutions that form the future generations of film professionals. As women’s discourse plays an increasingly important role in global dialogue, especially via the Internet and new technologies, an infrastructure for research on African women in cinema studies is imperative. At the same time that digital technologies emerge as key to such a vast endeavor, it is a daunting task in a continent where the digital divide continues to widen.

The myriad political, social and cultural environments of African women in the audio-visual media provide the context for the analysis of current discourse on gender and cinema and its role in cultural policy development; the examination of the various networks that contribute to women’s expanding roles in cinema; the exploration of theoretical questions by African women, and critical perspectives that demonstrate African women’s contributions in cinema through pedagogy for mass communication and consciousness raising, all of which as an ensemble, connect theory, practice, research and scholarship with activism and community outreach.

While there is potentially a great deal of intellectual capital and resources for research, theory-building and dialogue, women’s film history as an academic entity is at present primarily within the boundaries of western institutions, often deemed as research for research sake from an African point of view, and is not generally viewed as a necessity as other issues prove more pressing. On the other hand, film-screening debates have long been a practice throughout the continent. Moreover, cinema as an instrument for community participation and involvement is an increasingly widespread phenomenon. In general, the non-written medias of radio, television and film have always generated dialogue and possibilities for discourse. Nonetheless, academic and activist communities in Africa do coalesce around cultural policy issues, the role of cinema as a tool for consciousness-raising, and the importance of women cultural producers as agents of change. Hence, conferences, seminars and organised debates bring together women across disciplines, from diverse sectors and regions, and as more women filmmakers join academic and film departments, this bond is increasingly strengthening.

A historiography of African women in cinema necessitates an active, protracted, ongoing practice of data collection, organisation, analysis, documentation, and archival work-  an activity that entails coordinated, committed, and sustained efforts, though not necessarily centralised. The organising principles of the pan-African organisation of women professionals of the moving image laid out the groundwork for such a continent-wide initiative and the conceptual framework has been embedded in myriad initiatives especially on the local levels. It is on this level that women are the most familiar with needs and concerns on the ground, in the community, and the local and state policies needed to implement them. On the other hand, women on the local level are the least likely to have the resources and the broad-ranging connections to participate in the outreach necessary to benefit from a larger community of women regionally and continentally, which is not to say that there are no efforts towards this objective.

   

And while Kenyan Anne Mungai, the coordinator for the East Africa region in the 1990s lamented the lack of financial and personal resources to devote to these efforts, she implored women to strive forward nonetheless. However, with the far-reaching potential for coalescing and networking via the Internet and new media technologies in the 2000s onward, the gap has yet to narrow. While projects that include women continent-wide do exist, notably at FESPACO (Pan-African Film Festival of Ouagadougou) and (Federation of African Filmmakers) FEPACI-sponsored initiatives, activities continue to be linguistically based, with the languages of communication in English or French, often at the exclusion of one or the other, a concern of the pan-African women of the moving image organisation from its beginning.

Among these many endeavours, to highlight film festival initiatives emphasises the important role that the film festival has played in promotion, exhibition, marketing, and training and its potential as local and regional conduits around which women may interconnect continentally and globally. As it is at the same time a meeting place for pitching, networking, workshopping and sharing ideas, it is often a pivotal space where African women continent-wide may gather and meet. These initiatives spanning twenty years demonstrate the advocacy role that African women in cinema take on to create the requisite infrastructures for promoting African cultural production: Sierra Leonean Mahen Bonetti, founder and president of the influential New York-based African Film Festival has forged an important Diaspora network since 1993 recently creating cultural projects in her home country. The creation of Women Filmmakers of Zimbabwe (WFOZ) in 1996 ushered in a network of prolific Zimbabwean women in cinema. Notably, the International Images Film Festival for Women (IIFF) launched in 2002, the oldest women’s festival on the continent, founded by Zimbabwean Tsitsi Dangarembga, of which WFOZ is the parent organisation and the initiator of the Distinguished Woman in African Cinema Award in 2009. In 1998, Ivoirien actor-producer Hanny Tchelly established the Festival International du Court Métrage d’Abidjan-FICA (the International Festival of Short Films of Abidjan). In the same year, Burkinabè actress Georgette Paré initiated Casting Sud, a pan-African casting agency to promote African actors. To note, l’Association des Actrices Africaines/the Association of African Actresses had already been created in 1989.

The defunct South African-based Women of the Sun organisation a resource-exchange network of African women filmmakers launched in 2000, inspired several other projects in the region, notably, the African Women Filmmakers Awards in 2003, and in 2004, the African Women Film Festival. Nigerian Amaka Igwe’s BOB TV, the Best of the Best African Film and TV Programmes Market and Expo inaugurated the next year, has as objective to offer a continental platform for African practitioners of the moving image. The African Movie Academy Awards (AMAA) also an initiative from Nigeria, established in 2005 by Peace Anyiam-Osigwe, highlights the significance of African cinema by providing a platform for recognition and celebration. The African in Motion (AIM) Film Festival of Edinburgh founded by South African Lizelle Bischoff in 2006 emerges as one of the most important festivals of African films in the UK. In 2007 a portion of the festival was dedicated to African women and for a few years, Cape Verdean Isabel Moura Mendes served as director. The Festival International du Documentaire of Agadir in Morocco, founded in 2008 by the late Nouzha Drissi who died tragically in 2011, is the first festival devoted exclusively to documentaries. Festivals des 7 Quartiers, the itinerant film festival of Brazzaville founded in 2008 by Nadège Batou, honoured the women filmmakers of the Congo and elsewhere during the 3rd edition in 2010. Cameroonian Evodie Ngueyeli has taken the baton as chief representative of MisMeBinga, International Women’s Film Festival of Yaoundé created in 2009. A key objective of the Malawi International Film Festival created by Villant Ndasowa also in 2009 is to pioneer the film industry in Malawi by sourcing and providing training to talented Malawians. In the same year, Mariem mint Beyrouk formed the Association of Mauritanian Women of the Image as a means to raise women’s consciousness about women in general, issues around health, female genital cutting, marriage of adolescent girls, among others. In addition, their hope is to organise festivals and meetings with other women throughout the continent.

At the start of the second decade of the new millennium several festival-related projects were launched in Africa and the diaspora: View Images Film Festival, an undertaking by Zambian Musola Cathrine Kaseketi, founder of Vilole Images Productions, created a space to celebrate through the art of film, the abilities of all women, and particularly to integrate women with disabilities. Images That Matter International Film Festival of Ethiopia founded by Madji-da Abdi has a main objective to expose the Ethiopian public to local and international films, especially by utilising subtitles in Amharic, the national language. Kenyan Wanjiku wa Ngugi founder of Helsinki African Film Festival wants to show the diversity of the African continent to the Finnish public in order to have a conversation informed by Africans themselves thus giving a more realistic view of their realities. Similarly, Norwegian-Ghanaian Lamisi Gurah founded FilmAfrikana in order to expose the Norwegian public to films by people of Africa and the African Diaspora by providing a different perspective that counters the dominant media portrayals of a helpless, war-ravaged, disease-ridden continent. Nigerian Adaobi Obiegbosi’s desire to create a continental platform for African film students to share their work and ideas inspired the creation of the African Student Film Festival (ASFF) in 2012.

These film festivals and meeting places, both women-focused spaces and general milieu created by women have mechanisms set in place for the kinds of activities necessary for the organisation, analysis and archiving of information, as the events, meetings and activities are often recorded and filmed, biographies, artists’ statements and filmographies amassed and newsletters and catalogues and directories published, all foundational components for the acquisition of resources and data collections.  These initiatives demonstrate the genuine effort to globalise the experiences of African women in cinema and their potential as information-gathering strategies, for opening avenues for access to informational networks and for creating archival sources for research and consultation.

 

Building a Historiography of African Women in Cinema. Originally published in Africa Update Newsletter. CCSU, Vol. XIX, Issue 4 (Fall 2012) Beti Ellerson

The following text is drawn from my article "50 Years of Women's Engagement at FESPACO," published in Black Camera, an international film journal, Spring 2021.

How do we safeguard our images with the ubiquity of the Internet?
Sarah Maldoror

The year 2021 will mark the 30-year anniversary of the historic conference of African women film professionals in Ouagadougou. The fruits of these efforts are particularly visible in the institutions that form the future generations of film professionals. Building on the intentions of this gathering: to establish an environment to exchange views, to create a framework for free expression, to elaborate an action program, to fast-track women’s integration at all levels of the cinematic process, to present a woman’s perspective of the world, to have power over their own images, to mobilize funds and human resources—many of these objectives have been concretized throughout these past decades at local, regional, continental and international meetings related to African women in cinema. While there have been varying levels of success at reaching these goals, the resources offered in this digital age may heighten the chances and the capacity for all African women to participate in the global dialogue. At the same time they continue to make invaluable contributions on the local level, devising mechanisms to extend networks regionally and beyond. FESPACO’s status as the pan-African cinema network, and with its level of prominence, may facilitate outreach into local initiatives to support the development of alliances and relationships.

The interchanging dynamics of the centrality of women in FESPACO’s evolution and the importance of FESPACO to women’s empowerment have been evident throughout the festival’s history. Drawing from the discussion above regarding my research following are proposed initiatives for continued engagement in the historiography of African women in cinema

The JCFA (Cinema Days of African Women of ithe Moving Image), a structure created through the auspices of FESPACO to promote women in cinema, distributes a print newsletter during the alternate-year event to festival participants. This documentation may continue throughout the year developing into an ongoing electronic publication in the form of a participatory blog inviting women in all areas of the moving image to introduce themselves and announce relevant information. This format could include a participatory user-generated continuous timeline of women’s cinematic histories, managed by interested users and volunteer facilitators. A main goal of this structure would encompass the maintenance of a data-base.

Also under the umbrella of JCFA, the FESPACO website could be used to host individual webpages for women to include content about their film-related activities. Moreover, to promote the training and development of women film critics, initiatives could include internships and workshops for journalists to cover events at the JCFA and FESPACO to be published in the festivals’ newsletters, again the information would be stored and maintained in a data-base.

Parallel to the main JCFA event could include a traveling section in partnership with other Africa-based women’s film festivals and women-focused initiatives, such as the Ndiva Women’s Film Festival of Ghana, the International Images Film Festival for Women (IIFF) of Zimbabwe, the South African-based Mzansi Women’s Film Festival, the Udada Film Festival in Kenya or the Mis Me Binga Festival of Cameroon, to name several events in different regions of the continent. The key to this JCFA network would be to ensure a centralized system for the knowledge production of African women in cinema.

To facilitate African film research in general, and particular to this discussion, African women in cinema, the JCFA network maintained on the FESPACO website may serve as a database for selected films of each edition. Retaining information about the filmmakers and the films, serving as a primary source for research.

While continent-wide projects that include women do exist, activities continue to be linguistically based, with the languages of communication in English or French, often at the exclusion of one or the other; which has been a concern of the pan-African women of the moving image organization from its beginning. As an established pre-eminent bi-lingual festival, FESPACO is in a distinctive position to use its prominence to address this enduring concern--the JCFA network could ensure this endeavor..

FESPACO has the structures already in place for knowledge management, retention and dissemination. Thus, it may take on the vital role as gatekeeper of a continental database for African cinema. The need for a cohort of journalists, scholars and researchers is vital, in order to probe, examine and study the rich history of African cinema and women’s engagement in particular—a task that FESPACO may facilitate, for instance, in partnership with FEPACI which initiated Ecrans d’Afrique, the International Revue of Cinema, Video and Television (1992-1998). Its preeminence as the pantheon of pan-African film organizing offers the opportunity to draw the energy and forces of the continent and diaspora to coalesce and network with the diverse institutions that have emerge in the last several decades—thus functioning as a center for the production and retention of cinematic knowledge. And in so doing, it will continue forging a path for the empowerment and development of women.