Remembering Djibril Diop Mambety and the two iconic women of Touki Bouki and Hyenas

Remembering Djibril Diop Mambety and the two iconic women of Touki Bouki and Hyenas

A tribute to Djibril Diop Mambety who passed away in 1998.

Djibril Diop Mambety: Sinemaabi, as told to Beti Ellerson

In our 1997 interview, Djibril Diop Mambety narrates to me—in true storytelling tradition, his own cinematic voyage, during which he conflates two characters from his two feature films as if in a departure-return scenario: the iconoclast Anta in his masterpiece Touki Bouki (1973) and the unforgettable Linguère Ramatou in his equally magnificent work, Hyenas (1992).

Ah cinema!

How did I come to cinema? As youngsters, we used to make a screen out of a white cloth and put it in the middle of the house. We lit a candle and put it behind the screen where people would sit on both sides. We cut out pictures to make characters, and the horses would make the sound “turerunturenkungkungkung.” We made this into a story and it became our film.

Then we went to the western school. But it came to a point when I realized that this school was not for me. I thought back to the pictures that I used to make when I was younger. The idea came and left, came and left. Yet it never stopped. In the middle of the school term, I thought: “No, this is not for me, this is not my way. Getting diplomas won’t be productive for me. My future is not sitting in an office saying that I am working. I belong in the streets, this is what is good for me.”

Fed up with school, I left all my belongings there and went to the street. I told people that I was an actor in the theater.

But after a time, even that became too small. There was not enough room. At that point, I thought, maybe I need to return to those things that I used to do when I was a kid, those pictures.

Well, I got into it, yet I wasn’t really in it. It was all just talk, just to show off. People started saying, “He’s crazy! Look at him, now he is saying that he is in the cinema! Why did he leave the western school where everybody is fighting to get into but there is no space? He left school and now he is saying he is going to do cinema! But he has never gone anywhere! He has never been to France, to America. He’s crazy!”

I followed that craziness and it lead me to my first film, Badou Boy. Yet, I had never left Africa. What they say about dreams: dreams that meet with daylight are dreams that are meant to happen, and dreams still happen, even today.

That is why when young people ask me, “pappa, how do you make films?” I always want to tell them how easy it is.

The kids ask, “what do you mean easy?” I say, “if you want to do it, just close your eyes. When you close your eyes, you see darkness. It is very dark. Now when you close your eyes tighter, you see lots of stars. The stars that you see in the dark, well, some of them are people, some of them are horses, and some of them are crows. You mix them all up, as if mixing cement. While you mix them, you tell them how to come together. You tell them where to go, when to stop, and where to fall. That is called a scenario. Once you finish, you name it. Then you open your eyes. When you open your eyes, you have a film. That is just how easy it is. It’s just that easy with everything else. You put your mind to it. You can spend the day thinking about it. You sleep with it, and you dream about it. When you wake up you will see its value.

That is cinema; that is cinema.”

Touki Bouki, is all about darkness, the night. Somebody is travelling. Who is travelling? A bird? A person? No, a hyena is travelling. What is this Touki Bouki all about? Well, a hyena will wait until it is late, very late. Until it sees a lion. Despite the weight and strength of the lion, the hyena will follow it ; follow it, wherever it goes. The lion keeps walking and walking until it is tired, very tired, and weak. Now it can only rest and sleep. It has no more strength. It is then that I will say: “It is my turn to reign. The reign of the hyena is now.” What is the reign of the hyena? Well, this is what Touki Bouki is about. It is about those days when we dreamed of going abroad. We dreamed the white’s dream of making movies. It was as if we were foreigners in our own homes here in Africa. Foreigners because our “everything” was abroad. It is there that you go to succeed, to make pictures.

Then when you come back, people will call you “sir”. Then we say, “well, we need to travel.” “But how will you go?” “Oh there are ships here!” “But how much does it cost?” “Oh, there are ways!” “But why are you going there?” “When we get there with our beauty, with our stature, with our blackness. People will clap their hands, and say, ‘Here is the king, the ruler.’ This was our dream, and in dreaming this, we forgot our own country. What a pity!

Twenty-five years later, I realised that it was not true. I escaped from that ugly dream. I wanted my generation and all Africans to escape from that dream too. And build our country where we are not foreigners. Forget those dreams of elsewhere. Let us dream our dreams and plant our seeds here in Africa.

That is what I felt when I made Touki Bouki.

The hyena continued to follow me and follow me. Then I said, “wait, come, the hyena is calling for another `simb.’ So let’s play another game.” That is when I did the film Hyenas. I returned to the people who went on the journey in Touki Bouki. One travelled, one stayed behind. She said she was going, he said he couldn’t leave. She was gone away for thirty years working as a prostitute, a prostitute. She went to Japan, she went to New York, she went to Paris. She collected a lot of wealth. Then one day she decided to come home. She said to the griot: “tell the man who let me go, that I’m coming back, and there will be no peace.” Yes, in a sense there will be, since they only want money and refrigerators. Well, they will have all they need, until they will not want any more of it, until they are sick of it. The griot went to announce this to the people of Colobane. They said: “tell her to come and bring what she promises. We will give her our lives, our souls, our hearts, everything.” The woman has returned from her journey. Some butts are going to be kicked!

What a shame!

It is as if Africa is something that can be bought. You can buy its people, you can buy its dignity. What a victim, what a pity. What a pity in the face of God!

That is the reason that I made Hyenas.

What is next ? I cannot say. After all, I only wanted to express my love for my country. My country is like my stomach, which is more precious than anything abroad. Everybody has to have something to fight for. I am fighting for Africa. People elsewhere are fighting for their countries. It is time to fight for Africa.

It is almost too late, but it is never too late for beauty.

And Africa’s future ?
(what follows was told in French by Djibril Diop Mambety)

The future could be brighter if we are sufficiently cautious of the indulgence of Linguère Ramatou, she who collected the scum of the earth and brought it back to Africa to capitalise on it. If we are able to demystify wealth, the future is brilliant, the future of Africa is brilliant. The future of black people resides in its mission that goes back to the age of the pyramids and spreads far beyond. We do not cease to produce beauty. We only need be wary of the pathetic contagion of western Enlightenment, which is really not illumination at all, but simply electricity.

The interview, spoken in Wolof, was presented on Reels of Colour in 1998, a series that I produced and hosted, televised locally in Washington, D.C., USA.  The Wolof was translated by Cheikh Oumar Diouf.

The False Lion Dance (Simb in Wolof) is an event organized in all regions of Senegal, on certain occasions such as Independence Day, Youth Day, Summer holidays, etc.







 

 

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.

Sisters of the Screen : African Women in Cinema

“African women must be everywhere. They must be in the images, behind the camera, in the editing room and involved in every stage of the making of a film. They must be the ones to talk about their problems.”*

 



Sarah Maldoror’s words inspired me to do just that, discover the voices and experiences of African women in the myriad sectors of screen culture: directors, producers, actors, DPs, screenwriters, editors, and the numerous technical crew members, and also, to extend that idea to encompass those in front of the screen as cultural readers, scholars, critics and theorists of African women in cinema studies; as they too have a vital function in the study and analysis of cultural production as it relates to women’s role in creating, shaping and determining the course of their cinematic history, the intellectual and cultural capital that it produces, and the intangible cultural heritage to which it contributes.


 

Hence, I took on this call, initiating the African Women in Cinema Project in 1996 as a postdoctoral study, which includes the book (Sisters of the Screen, Women of Africa on Film, Video and Television), published in 2000, Africa World Press, and the film (Sisters of the Screen, African Women in the Cinema) completed in 2002, distributed by Women Make Movies. Sisters of the Screen, a title that envisioned a veritable screen culture in which the moving image visualized on myriad screen environments from white cloth to movie screen, television set, computer monitor, inflatable movie screen, mobile phone, tablet and diverse transmedia platforms that continue to emerge, all of which become the meeting point for African women in cinema to tell their stories. Moreover, the title contemplated an imaginary community where African women’s experiences of cinema may be shared, analyzed, documented, historicized, and archived.

 

Following the release of the book and film, the Project developed into the Centre for the Study and Research of African Women in Cinema whose organizing principle is based on two key elements: the work of the pan-African organization of women professionals of the moving image created in 1991 and the experiences of these individual women recounted in interviews, speeches, artists intentions, mission statements, and in their films. Drawing from the objectives of the organization: to provide a forum for women to share and exchange their experiences and to formulate mechanisms for continued dialogue and exchange, I have worked to develop a historiography in an attempt to chronicle and bring together the disparate parts.

 



What drew me to “African Women in Cinema” as a study and research focus was its extremely broad range of discourse and practice. Women on, in front, behind the screen—as storytellers, makers, producers, scriptwriters, actresses, role models, consciousness raisers, practitioners, technicians, organizers, fundraisers, social media community managers, bloggers, agents of change, activists, advocates, audience builders, cultural producers, cultural readers, film critics, scholars and researchers—all contribute to the idea of “African Women in Cinema” as a conceptual framework.



 

In have built on this organizing principle throughout the past two decades in my teaching, presentations, research and writing on African women in cinema. Based on the initial research I have developed materials to be adapted for courses, seminars and presentations in women’s studies, African studies, film studies, communications, modern language and culture, art history and visual culture, to a global public: students, specialists, stakeholders and interested cultural readers.



 

While the book has only been published in English, though the women included also gave interviews in French, I was able to broaden the conversation linguistically in the film version with both French and English subtitles, and in 2017, a German version was available to viewers based in Germany and to other German speakers. Through the African Women in Cinema Blog and the numerous social media platforms that have emerged since the publication of the book and release of the film, I have been able to present a variety of resources, as I have not been bound by the limitations of accessing materials and to linguistic restrictions. Thus drawing from a range of languages, information and technologies. 


 

Moreover, I have attempted to frame the tone of my work within a spirit of affirmation in order to show the empowering and positive visual representations, voices and discourse, from the pioneers and trailblazers to the students and newcomers—all have their story to tell and their place on the continuum of the ever-expanding timeline of African women in cinema history.



 

What I learned above all from the experiences of teaching and developing materials on this sub-discipline was the irrefutable fact that when African women’s historiography is mined, structured and archived, their rich experiences are available and accessible for all to draw from.



 

My work throughout these two decades have centered on nine broad themes, which are ever-expanding, in order to highlight the breadth and scope of women’s experiences:



 

1.    Towards an African Women Cinema Studies: Theory and practice


2.    Women voices


3.    Women's stories, experiences and realities


4.    Visual representations of African women


5.    Interrogating identities, bodies, sexualities, femininities


6.    Intergenerational perspectives


7.    Social media, new technologies


8.    Global and transnational diaspora


9.    Gendered sensibilities


10.  Women researching, mentoring, organizing



 

Hence, I have been able to bring together women across disciplines. One of the regrettable downsides to this endeavor, and even with the ubiquity of the Internet, is that those whose work are accessible, whose presence is visible, who are studied, focused on, talked about, written about, promoted, are often the ones who are most likely to be included in courses, studies, chapters, on websites and pages as well as social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram… Hence, I consciously avoid any “starification” encouraged by gatekeepers and self-promoters. And thus, my objective is to give visibility to as many as possible, no matter how tiny their (online, researched, written, English-language) presence, by a variety of methods, and above all, by my own acknowledgement and recognition of their work.



 

The Sisters of the Screen project has been the point of departure for my work going forward, as a means to highlight women speaking for themselves, about their experiences with cinema.

Women Filmmakers' Voices: In the initial project, diverse women filmmakers spanning the continent talk about diverse themes, from how they came to cinema, the specificities of being women directors, to the hazards of the profession. In recent interviews and discussions with women of the current generation, one finds similarities with many of the women interviewed in the mid- 1990s, in terms of themes, approaches and the reasons that brought them to cinema and the roles they want to play. This is not to say that there have not been changes and mutations in the past two decades. In fact there have been an incredible dynamism and phenomenal progress. Nonetheless, the commentary by women reflecting their desire to tell stories about the conflicts in their societies are echoed in the contemporary works of their compatriots, about the courageous women who are continuing to fight for their society. The women who spoke of their desire to makes films about women, their accomplishments, perspectives and experiences as a way to highlight women as role models, is in tune with current perspectives on women’s desire to tell stories to highlight the dearth of women as role models for their daughters.
 

Women Visualizing Their Stories: Several African women discuss their work or provide critical perspectives that are linked to specific excerpts from their films. Film topics include: Experiences of women in the countryside, whose men go to the urban sectors for work; women refugees, the practice of female excision, and also more uplifting positive stories of an adolescent’s dream of becoming a singer. Contemporary films continue to probe the question of migration with a focus on current issues, such as the outflow of young girls from the village who go to the city to be employed as domestic workers, which have similar consequences as other forms of external migration. Moreover, current films reveal that the practice of female excision continues with the same consequences for women and girls.



 

Actors' Experiences In Cinema includes a continuum of the role of actresses from veteran to beginner, as they talk about their experiences in various internationally acclaimed African films. While African women as actors were not always embraced by their societies, especially during the nascent period of African cinema in the mid-1960s, they have been dedicated artists, playing an important role in the evolution of African cinema. The historic general assembly of African actresses which took place from 12-16 November 2019 at the FESTILAG Festival international du film des lacs et des lagunes (International Lakes and Lagoons Film Festival) in Côte d'Ivoire, highlighted the well-deserved recognition of African women on the screen.
 


Critical Perspectives of African Women and Visual Representation:
 Women from diverse areas of the cinema (director, actor, producer, critic) give critical perspectives on the visual representation of African women in cinema as well as the public reception of the African female image on screen. It is from my experience in bringing together the voices of these women that my deeper exploration of African women as cultural readers developed, sketching in broad strokes, African women's engagement with the moving image as stakeholders and participants in both on-screen visual representation of women, and off-screen and behind-the-scene roles throughout and beyond the film production process. The first—on the screen—recalls the initial visual engagement with the film leaving the viewer to contemplate the actor’s role and the filmmaker’s intent. The second—behind the screen—conjures a team of film industry practitioners: screenwriter, director, cinematographer, crew, producer, editor, distributor, festival organizer and other professionals, and the third—in front of the screen— as cultural reader, evoking a discerning audience and the film critic. While African women cultural critics of the moving image have existed as long as African cinema practice, a cadre of African women researchers, scholars and professors is taking shape on the continent and the diaspora.

 



Identities: The myriad identities of African women are explored in this theme--bi-raciality, immigration, exile, dislocation, transnationality. In the works of some filmmakers during the last two and a half decades, one may find intersecting themes on nationality, racialized identity, especially as it relates to the search for self in the interstices of “in-betweenness”, as well as personal stories of womanhood and femininity, of national identity and transnational hybridity.



 

Women Coming Together: In the initial project on Sisters of the Screen, a complexity of issues around women organizing and working together is intertwined with a discussion of the place of women of the African Diaspora as especially from the United States. Twenty-five years later, as the U.S. African Diaspora incorporates immigrant and first-generation Africans, the discourse on visualizing diaspora expands and deepens. Moreover, with the coming of age of western-born African women or those who are settled in the west, issues of identity are negotiated in their films. The identity politics brought out through these voices are an important prelude to the discussion on the emergence of a cohort of first-generation Diaspora filmmakers of African parentage. Where is their positionality located? Contemporary women filmmakers who live “in between” cultures, races and ethnicities, problematize and explore this vexed space.



 

Is There an African Woman Sensibility?: The varying responses to this question reveal the fact that the concept "African women in the cinema" is not a monolith. That there are diverse cinemas and women experience them in different and varying ways. Some agree that there is a sensibility specific to women; others observe a complimentary between women and men; while still others conclude that there is ultimately only a human sensibility. Gauging from the number of women’s festivals and literature that has emerged in the last two decades, there is an implicit “yes” to the question and that the follow up question, “if so, what does a woman’s sensibility look like?” continues to be relevant.

 

While the women’s testimonies in the film and book date to 1997-1999, ongoing interviews that I have conducted and published on the African Women in Cinema Blog, as well as those by others—in particular, the impressive collection of interviews in Sierra Leoneon Mahen Bonetti's New York African Film Festival series—provide a continuum of experiences and a measure in which to evaluate the trends, tendencies and evolution of themes attitudes and technologies, and transformations in the world based on myriad phenomena: migration, economic, and intracontinental and global developments.



 

*Sarah Maldoror : "Il faut prendre d'assaut la télévision / "We have to take television by storm by Jadot Sezirahiga. Ecrans d’Afrique | African Screens, no. 12, 1995.

 

This article was originally published on the African Women in Cinema Blog, October 2020

Beti Ellerson: About me

I have a Ph.D. in African Studies (Howard University, USA) with interdisciplinary specialisations in Visual Culture, African Cinema Studies, and Women Studies; after which I carried out postdoctoral research on African Women in the Visual Media on a Rockefeller Humanities Fellowship. As a feminist I have always been interested in critically engaging women's issues, and academically I wanted to make a critical inquiry into African women's experiences through the medium of the moving image. This inquiry led to my interest in forging an African Women Cinema Studies subdiscipline, which encompasses research in historiography and spectatorship as well as the hands-on work of advocacy and production.

 

My research on African women in cinema, includes the book Sisters of the Screen: Women of Africa on Film, Video and Television (Africa World Press, 2000), the film documentary, Sisters of the Screen: African Women in the Cinema (2002, Women Make Movies) and the Centre for the Study and Research of African Women in Cinema founded in 2008. The Centre encompasses the African Women in Cinema Blog, and a presence on social media.

 

Before producing the documentary, Sisters of the Screen, I was involved locally in community television and video production in Washington DC, and was executive producer and host of the 27-episode series, "Reels of Colour", which aired from 1997 to 2000 in the Washington DC area.

 

I am globally engaged on the topic of African women and the moving image, including: keynote speaker at the 2012 colloquy on Francophone African Women Filmmakers in Paris; moderator of the Afrika Film Festival Cologne 2016, Fokus: Sisters in African Cinema Roundtable in Cologne, Germany; filmmaker/scholar-in-residence at Texas Tech University in spring 2017; research presentation at the International Women’s Film Festival of Salé in Morocco in September 2017. I have had a visible presence on the jury at several prominent African film festivals: member of the Grand Jury at the International Images Film Festival for Women held in Harare (2011), FESPACO (2013) as president of the Diaspora Jury, member of the Grand Jury at the Carthage Film Festival (JCC) in 2018.  I lecture widely on Africana women in visual culture--beginning with my signature course Black Women in Visual Culture, created in 2000 at Howard University, African women in cinema studies and African women and screen culture. Since 2015 I have been contributor of the African Women in Cinema Dossier for Black Camera International Film Journal.