Journal of African Cinemas - Volume 2, Issue 2, 2010

The genre of short film has largely arisen as an alternative during the Zimbabwe political and economic crisis post 2000 because film-makers could not afford longer projects. It also provides a site and space for training new film-makers. The short films are making thematic innovations departing from the traditional didactic approaches usual in older Zimbabwean films that carried messages on, for example, HIV and AIDS, teenage pregnancy and women's rights in line with donor prescriptions. Although the short films remain donor-sponsored, they are exciting thematically and cinematographically because they are experimental, tackling issues on oratures, animation, the Zimbabwean personality and cosmopolitanism. However, these productions are striking in their avoidance of political subjects for material produced during an obvious crisis period. This article traces the thematic subjects and critically speculates on the absence of political material.

This article considers the relationships between aesthetics and ideology in donor-funded development film-making from Zimbabwe, examining in particular how the films' producers have attempted to popularize a genre of film-making that has its roots in colonial cinema. Making close reference to two productions from the Harare-based Media for Development Trust (MFD) Neria (Godwin Mawuru, 1992), and Everyone's Child (Tsitsi Dangarembga, 1996) (both of which may be regarded as archetypal examples of their genre) the article demonstrates how the films deploy a range of aesthetic strategies to imbue a set of narratives drawn from colonial development films with greater impact and cultural resonance for contemporary local audiences. The article also suggests that close analysis of these strategies may provide insights into the relationships between the films' aesthetic dimensions and wider ideological issues in the region.

This article discusses the gender relations around the ritual of excision as presented in Sembene Ousmane's Moolaade. The gigantic mosque and the anthill that stand side by side do not only reflect, but also symbolize, the ideological link between tradition and Islam in the context of the film. Islam is used to endorse retrogressive cultural practices that benefit the dominant interest group. While Moolaade is the purification ritual that all females must undergo before puberty, embedded in this mandatory practice is the sacred right of asylum in this community. In providing refuge for the four girls who flee the purification, Coll uses the symbolic power of Moolaade to garner support from the community for the war she has started that initially pits her against the majority of the community members who unquestioningly submit to the tradition. The relationship between religion and culture, and women's position in this, is analysed.

A striking characteristic of many films from across the African continent is their focus on childhood experience and the centrality of child protagonists. Unlike many films in the West, such films are not necessarily produced for young audiences, but express broader social, communal and cosmological concerns. This article focuses on Southern Africa and has two broad points of focus the one is what I have called lived geographies, a focus on the representation of children in the context of space and place; the other is what I have come to think of as rites of passage, in this case, not those formal ceremonies that bring about a transformation in identity, but the circumstances and experiences of children that are so profoundly life changing. In discussing the films Malunde, Yesterday, and The Wooden Camera particularly, it is argued that rather than trying to formally categorize childhood representations, it is important to recognize such representations as transformative and dynamic.

Keyan G. Tomaselli's book Encountering Modernity: Twentieth Century South African Cinemas (Rozenberg UNISA Press, 2006) is an effective and incisive summary of the various theories, ideas and analytical frames that have characterized how Tomaselli has continued to approach the study of South African cinemas throughout a period of 25 years. Not content to merely provide readers with a collection of previously published writings, Tomaselli has extensively revised and reworked the essays and book chapters contained in this collection as a means to (re)write South Africa into modernity and provide South African cinema with a history, resulting in a theoretical undertaking that is part intellectual autobiography and part critical attempt to frame South African cinemas in African historical, narrative and theoretical terms. It is indeed within these lines blurring the conceptual and epistemological tension between the concepts of historicity, modernity and autobiography if not subjectivity that we formulate our critical analysis of this review-essay. This review-essay includes two main sections. First, we critically look at the ways in which Tomaselli writes and rewrites theoretical articulation making possible his analyses of South African cinema. Second, we engage in a short dialogue with him, asking him to clarify some of the conceptual tensions we found in his book.

Notes from the South: some thoughts on the African Film in the Digital Era Conference

The ZIFF 2010 Festival Review

Defining DIFF: Film Development Through Participation

The Nollywood DIFFerence: Finding Nigeria at the 31st Durban International Film Festival

SAMBA FLIX NDIAYE: CINASTE DOCUMENTARISTE AFRICAIN, BY HENRI-FRANOIS IMBERT, PARIS, L'HARMATTAN, 2007 359 pp., 31 (paperback), ISBN: 978-2-296-03862-2