Critical Approaches to African Cinema Discourse

Critical Approaches to African Cinema Discourse utilizes an interdisciplinary approach to lay bare the diversity and essence of African cinema discourse. It is an anthology of historical reflections, critical essays, and interviews by film critics, historians, theorists, and filmmakers that signifies a dialogue and engagement apropos the ideology and cultural politics of film production in Africa. The contributors are extremely concerned, not only with the history of African cinema, but with its future and its potential. This book, then, is not limited to the expansion of the discourse on African cinema, but tries to approach the definition of the critical canon within the exigencies and manifestations of art and African sociopolitical practices. The authors view these practices as an investment in a cultural imperative stemming from the quest to delineate how critical methodologies are derived from and shape contemporary historical and cultural practices. Hence, the contributions are less about the usual constrictive method of analysis and more about illustrating manifestations of an interrogative critical methodology that is certainly an offspring of an indigenous African critical cum cinematic culture and paradigms.

Table of Contents:
Introduction: Proliferating African Film Discourses N. Frank Ukadike Part One: Critical Perspectives Chapter 1: Approaches to African Cinema Study: Defining Other Boundaries Martin Mhando Chapter 2: Theorizing African Cinema: Contemporary African Cinematic Discourse and its Discontents Esiaba Irobi Chapter 3: Tradition/Modernity and the Discourse of African Cinema Jude Akudinobi Part Two: History/Discourse and Intervention Chapter 4: Queering African Film Aesthetics: A Survey from 1950s to 2003 Martin P. Botha Chapter 5: African Cinemas and the Role of the State: The Cultural Imperialism Model Roy Armes Chapter 6: Transformation and South African Cinema in the 1990s Keyan G. Tomaselli and Arnold Shepperson Chapter 7: False Dawns Over the Kalahari? Botswana Cinema in Historical Perspective Neil Parsons Part Three: Pluralisms, Expressions, Traits: Reading the Text Chapter 8: Chahine's Cinematic Alexandria: Egyptian History and Cultural Identity Suzanne H. MacRae

About the Author :
Nwachukwu Frank Ukadike teaches in the Department of Communication and the Program in African and African Diaspora Studies at Tulane University. He is the author of Black African Cinema and Questioning African Cinema: Conversations with Filmmakers and theeditor of IRIS: A Journal of Theory on Image and Sound (Special Issue on African Cinema).

Review :
This anthology of important and provocative criticism by international authors is a welcome addition to African film studies. It offers an overview of Africa’s past and present cinematic output and explores themes, styles, politics, and socioeconomic issues. This collection challenges dominant modes of representation and scholarship and defines new paradigms of African film aesthetics. With this publication, and his previous articles and books, N. Frank Ukadike confirms his status as a keen observer and knowledgeable theoretician of African filmmaking.