Journal of African Cinemas - Volume 13, Issue 2-3, 2021

This practice-led participatory study seeks to probe the extent to which ordinary people, in their everyday spaces, and whose voices are absent or co-opted in ‘traditional’ cinema, can actively participate in narrating their stories through short films. The project, titled Utaifa, entailed working with a focus group of eleven members of the Abakuria community in Kenya, over eight days, to prod-use three shorts. It relies of Homi Bhabha’s cultural difference ideas, Nico Carpentier’s maximalist media participation theory and conceptual discourses on self-representations. The article has three broad sections. The first offers insight into the Utaifa participants discussing their three shorts. The second unpacks the study’s rationale discussing opportunities presented by access to digital platforms, gender dynamics in marginalized communities, dominance by media elites in representations, ubiquity of grand narratives at the expense of self-representations and the language question. The third section delves into the study’s important insights and lessons.

This article argues that Rider Haggard’s 1885 novel King Solomon’s Mines and filmed versions of it were a major influence on Ryan Coogler’s 2018 hit film Black Panther. It examines ways in which the modern film in reversing some of the plot and colonial tropes of the original nonetheless remains indebted to it and that this source helps explain some of the weaknesses and inconsistencies of the plot of Black Panther.

In the history of African cinema, there is a nexus between films and the colonial imperial project. That is, products of cinema and cinematic practices shaped the process of colonialism in the specific case of Africa. Predicated largely on archival documents, this study explores how cinema was regulated in the major towns and cities in the Gold Coast during the colonial era. Ghanaian cinema has a considerably long historical narrative, however, much of what is known about the history of cinema in Ghana, particularly, on film screening, censorship and exhibition practices, is rather little. Thus, it is with this gap that this study attempts to fill and make a useful contribution to Ghanaian film history. The colonial experience set the basis for cinematic houses, film production, censorship, distribution and ideological concerns in African cinema. This study is framed within the relationship between cinema and history, with a specific focus on Ghana. This article concludes that while film exhibition, censorship and licensing stimulated the growth of art, particularly cinema, they further inflated the colonial imperial agenda in the Gold Coast.

For Moussa Sène Absa, music does not merely complement a film’s narration; it is an integral part of it. A careful analysis of his feature length films Tableau Ferraille (1997) and Madame Brouette (2002) reveals his unique use of music to convey commentaries on the difficulties of constricted daily social life in postcolonial Senegalese urban society. Though both films tackle gritty social issues and denounce corruption and injustices, they are beautiful and melodious, built around bright colours and positive, vibrant and cheerful music. In this article, I examine in detail the links between the songs’ lyrics and the films’ narration and social messages. In particular, I demonstrate how the messages of the films appear through the emancipatory hopes of the two female protagonists.

Censorship decisions on cinematic works in Egypt have been characterized by their inconsistency due to the intentional lack of definition of what would constitute a threat to politics, religion and morality. Such fluidity has forced filmmakers to practise self-censorship and deterred them from tackling Coptic problems for fear of igniting sectarianism, as censorship would claim. This article shows the role of public opinion during the period of political instability and aspiration for freedom after the 25 January 2011 Egyptian Revolution in facilitating the approval of the controversial script of Amr Salama’s Excuse My French (2014), which deals with the issue of discrimination against minority Copts in public schools, after five rejections by the censors.