Sada Niang - Nationalist African Cinema: Legacy and Transformations

Nationalist African Cinema

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Niang, Sada, 1953

Nationalist African cinema : legacy and transformations / Sada Niang.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-7391-4907-2 (cloth : alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-0-7391-4909-6 (electronic)

1. Motion pictures--Africa--History--20th century. 2. Nationalism--Africa--History--20th century. 3. Motion pictures--Social aspects--Africa, North. I. Title.

PN1993.5.A35N53 2014

791.43096--dc23

2013050230

TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

To Frederick Ivor Case

With gratitude and respect

In memory of

Ibrahima Niang

Ndiaga Niang

In the process of writing this book, I have benefitted from the support of and discussions with many colleagues and friends in various institutions around the world where, as a guest speaker, my ideas were first tested. My students at the University of Victoria provided me with weekly opportunities to respond to challenges generated by my readings of the present corpus.

The support of Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada has been critical in the conduct of the research leading to this book. Starting in 2003, this agency has provided funds for a research program involving Sheila Petty, Alexie Tcheuyap, and myself. Our collaboration over the years has been both intense and stimulating and this work is only one of the fruits of our ongoing partnership. The University of Victoria has provided me with yearly conference grants, sabbatical leaves, and several research grants. Yushna Saddul and Elvis Njike Nouemsi have helped locate many documents and films. Finally I was fortunate to benefit from many useful conversations with Samba Gadjigo, Alexie Tcheuyap, Clarence Delgado, Ben Diogaye Beye, Madieye Mbaye, Moussa Sene Absa, Momar Thiam, Gaston Kabor, Idrissa Oudraogo, Dany Kouyat, Jean Marie Tno, Sheila Petty, Mamadou Diouf, and Ahmadou Saloum Seck. May they all find the expression of my gratitude here.

I am equally grateful to Abdou Fary Faye, Madieye Mbaye, Ghael Samb Sall, and Laurence Gavron for the pictures included in this book.

Versions of chapter 2 appeared in French Presence Francophone 71, in English as Neorealism and the Nationalist African Cinema in GlobalNeorealism: The Transnational History of a Film Style edited by Saverio Giovacchini and Robert Sklar, published by University Press of Mississippi, 2012. An earlier version of chapter 5 has also appeared in French as Les films danimation de Moustapha Alassane: innovation et continuit in Jean Oudraogo (ed) Figuration et mmoire dans les cinemas africains. Paris: LHarmatan, 2010.

Finally my deep gratitude goes to Moussa and Momar for putting up with my repeated long periods of self-isolation.

During the last decade, a certain discomfort, at times even impatience has set in among critics of African cinema. The onset of such uneasiness, can be traced back to the demise of liberationist discourse, to the questioning of the monolithic expression African cinema, and finally to the critical exploration of various forms of visual narratives developing at a fast pace on the continent. Diawara (1992:16465) sheds doubts on the existence of a monolithic African cinema, while David Murphy argues against the proposition that any cinematic practice on the continent could be typecast as authentically African (2000:240). Given the funding structures and the distribution pattern of films on the continent (Andrade-Wartkins, 1993), given the ever-widening cohort of African filmmakers living in various parts of the Euro-American diaspora, and finally in light of the radical shift that has occurred in African film aesthetics in the last decade, Olivier Barlet boldly queries whether contemporary African films can still legitimately be considered African (2003:4349). But perhaps the most cogent, yet, the loudest, most forceful and vigorous reexamination of African filmic practice and criticism has come from one of its most faithful North American critics. After a decade of writing on African cinema, and the challenges it faces, Ken Harrow (2007) briskly sends forth polemical broadsides in a passionate call for a change in the criticism of African films:

It is time for a revolution in African film criticism. A revolution against the old, tired formulas deployed in justification of filmmaking practices that have not substantially changed in forty years. Time for new voices, a new paradigm, a new viewa new Aristotle to invent the poetics we need for today. (xi)

Such brazen moves in a critical war of positioning feed on the shifting socio political conditions that also informed Bartlets thinly veiled disavowal. It comes on the heels of a moribund national construction discourse, after scores of national governments in Africa failed to provide for their citizenry, after a spate of unheeded studies on the effects of corruption on local African populations, after the widely decried scourge of adjustment programs, after horrendous genocides in Rwanda, Nigeria, and after much reevaluation of the basic tenets of the FEPACI Charter by a new generation of African filmmakers. Furthermore, Harrows radical, self-professed revolutionary discourse grows out of the revolt of the Collectif de loeil vert, out of the nonplussed gaze of a Djibril Diop Mambty on the ideology-driven aesthetics of his contemporaries, out of the relentless questionings of Mweze Ngangura, Moussa Sene Absa, or Jean Pierre Bekolo. Rather than a tool for preaching political ideals to illiterate African populations, the time was ripe for African cinema to claim its status as cinema first and African second or at least concurrently. The sweeping following statement from Harrow (2007) should be understood in this context.

There is no history to represent, to correct in film. There is only authority that represents itself, and in its power represents its images and narrative as authoritative, as authorized, as official or worse still as real. (xi)

Film, for this critic, is akin to a text, that is, a mere construct of the mind, an invention which owes very little to its extra-textual situation. It exists by its own generic and internal rules, and acquires meaning only through these features. In fact as was the case a decade ago with the new criticism of literature, Harrows statements herald, perhaps too soon, the death of the filmmaker, in order to hail and focus on the semiotic features of the filmic narrative.