Journal of African Cinemas - Volume 3, Issue 1, 2011

A pragmaticist alternative to the radical basis of identity using debates on African cinema is the objective of this article. Post-Freudian psychoanalytical film theory is thus debated from the perspective of a Peirceian pragmatism. Essentialism is critiqued. Position of the scholar is examined in terms of cultural proscriptions.

This article explores within the Nigerian context the performance of fandom and the christening of Thierry Henry of Arsenal FC fame as Igwe particularly in the South West of Nigeria. It is based on a series of interviews conducted in two South West states (Osun and Oyo), on the 'coronation' of Henry as Igwe, a monarchical title among the Igbo of the South East. Findings show that: (1) the new medium of satellite technology has increased soccer patronage/viewership in Nigeria; (2) the medium has also accelerated the mobilization of fandom; (3) the 'coronation' of Thierry Henry as Igwe among Nigerian fans across cultural boundaries, is on account of the comparison of his superior performance with that of the Igwe as projected in the videos; (4) although the sobriquet originated from the South East among the Igbo, its wide reception in the South West is for the most part a logical consequence of the popularity of the Nollywood home videos in the South West Region; (5) soccer fandom has a greater number of men than women in Nigeria. The article concludes that the christening of Thierry Henry as Igwe is due to the capacity of Nollywood to engender cultural passage/diffusion across geographical spaces. The article suggests the need to engender soccer fandom among women in Nigeria.

This article explores the communicative function of light, colour and sound, as constitutive elements of the construction of the narrative of genocide in Hotel Rwanda. Such an exploration is deliberately performed against the tendency to approach the film in ways that only emphasize the importance of ethnicity and class factors. The assumption of this article is that in film, light, colour, visuals, and sound are not external accessories but simultaneously function as the meaning, content, and form of the film. An exploration of the intersections and the uses to which light, sound, colour and visuals are put in the film can also reveal the range of a director's power to manipulate these in ways that can fortunately bring into view some narratives of the Rwandan genocide that could have been hidden from view by an overemphasis on the analysis of verbal language only, during interpretation of the film.

This article investigates the relationship between contemporary global cultural flows of media and migration in West Africa, and the perceived effects of acculturation on the African imagination. Considering acculturation as a key concern of Sissako's film Heremakono/En attendant le bonheur/Waiting for Happiness (Abderrahmane Sissako, 2002), the article explores how the construction of an African imagination is complicated by the way in which West African cinema itself works within a transnational milieu. The article firstly considers the film's representation of the disjunctures of the global economy and its negative affects on cultures and peoples of the global South. However, it continues by contextualizing the film's mode of production as part of a system that works from a Franco-Parisian centre, repositioning the film within a broader transnational milieu and complicating reading the film through a North/South cultural dichotomy.

This loosely ethnographic article analyzes the reception of Nigerian videos in a semi-domestic set-up in Gaborone, Botswana. It centres on video-viewing in the context of clients having hair plaited or styled by the author's wife. The sessions allowed for gate-keeping at the level of selection of videos and of informal critical commentary, although various levels of audience expertise contributed to the latter. The video reception is linked to the social conditions of the 'audience', many of whom were formal or informal, female economic migrants. This leads to a textual analysis of the videos with respect to genre, language, gender stereotyping, class analysis, ethnicity, modernity, consumerism and social exclusion. The video sessions provided a discursive space where Batswana and non-Batswana women could discuss, with relative freedom, important issues concerning various types of modern, urban identity.

In the films Afrique, je te plumerai/Africa, I will fleece you (Jean-Marie Teno, 1992), and Lumumba: la mort du prophete/Lumumba: Death of a Prophet (Raoul Peck, 1992), issues of cultural genocide and assimilation are explored in reference to the visual arts of two specific West and Central African countries. This article examines the lasting and multi-layered effects of colonialism as presented by the directors through the specific scenes focusing on the visual arts of the Cameroon Grasslands and Congolese Basin kingdoms. The use and meaning of visual art objects offers a complex dialogue with the colonial history of the African continent, highlighting not only their ability to readdress the ideas and methods of colonialism, but also their ability to operate as a visual index for the cultures from which they were produced. By referencing the visual arts, both directors provide powerful statements regarding the fleecing of indigenous culture during the colonial and postcolonial periods, and bring to light the ability of the visual arts to generate new dialogs regarding history, context and meaning.

Abderrahmane Sissako employs both documentary and fictional narrative strategies in his films. This simple observation opens onto a broad consideration of Sissako's aesthetic vision and its poetic and political ramifications. The article argues that the hybrid narrative form is one element of a 'poetics of liminality' that plays out at many levels of Sissako's work. Liminal spaces and the thresholds that separate them permeate the work both formally and thematically. The result is a reflection on the limits and possibilities of cinema as an art form and on its ability to act as a mediator of messages and to do political work in the world.

Cairo, or 'Hollywood on the Nile' is known for melodrama and musicals. During the Golden Age of 1950s Egyptian cinema, directors adhered to the censor's laws and to an escapist nationalist image of the country. Within this rigid context, Ateyyat El Abnoudy has been working against the grain as a documentary maker – subverting the censor's sensibilities. While a political and social engagement with her topics was established from the very first of her films, she was then still searching for the most effective style to do this in. In her earliest short documentaries Horse of Mud (1971), Sad Song of Touha (1972) and The Sandwich (1975), she experimented with the voice of her subjects and the function of the camera, while in her later and most famous film Days of Democracy (1996), the subaltern is more palpably present, both verbally and visibly. I argue that she recaptures the voice and returns the gaze to the censor, the Egyptian bourgeoisie, and the spectators of her films, while rewriting contemporary Egyptian national identity.