Film-Philosophy
Journal | Salon | Portal (ISSN 1466-4615)
Vol. 8 No. 13, April 2004
Teresa Hoefert de Turegano
On Questions and Critical Methodology of African Cinemas:
Ukadike's _Questioning African Cinema_
_Questioning
African Cinema: Conversations with
Filmmakers_ Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 2002 ISBN 0-8166-4004-1 (hb);
0-8166-4005-X (pb) 319 pp. _Questioning African
Cinema_ consists of twenty interviews with African
filmmakers from Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Congo, Ethiopia,
Ghana, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Mauritania, Nigeria, Senegal,
and South Africa. N. Frank Ukadike seeks a fuller
understanding of African film practices through these
conversations, and his overarching aim is to contribute to
the debate on contemporary critical methodologies for
dealing with African cinema. The individual achievement of
each filmmaker provides a context to discuss historical,
social, political, economic, and state practices that affect
the production of films in Africa. In addition, issues such
as distribution, exhibition, video, television, acting,
thematic diversity, stylistic configurations, and the role
of cultural codes in patterns of signification are
addressed. The book is divided into
three parts. The first highlights various pioneers of
African cinema (Kwaw Ansah, Souleymane Cisse, Safi Faye,
Gadalla Gubara, Med Hondo, Lionel Ngakane, Chief Eddie
Ugbomah) and has a strong anti-colonial tone. The second
part consists of filmmakers from the second, or as Ukadike
calls it, 'new generation' (Flora Gomes, Gaston Kabore,
Djibril Diop Mambety, Ngangura Mweze, Idrissa Ouedraogo,
Brendan Shehu, Cheick Oumar Sissoko), and here there is more
discussion about contemporary realities and problems facing
the development of African cinemas. The third part provides
space for more confrontational positions (King Ampaw,
Jean-Pierre Bekolo, Salem Mekuria, Haile Gerima, Ramadan
Suleman, Jean-Marie Teno). In these last two parts,
postcolonial power structures are more crucially in
question. The choice of filmmakers and the questions are the
backbone of the book: each interview constitutes one
chapter, which Ukadike begins with a biographical
introduction about the filmmaker. The interviewer has paid
careful attention to giving even weight to directors from
both anglophone and francophone sub-Saharan Africa. This is
noteworthy because much of the attention in previous writing
on African cinemas is on the francophone directors, so this
attention to the anglophone directors makes the book
particularly useful. There is considerable diversity among
the perspectives of the individuals, although there is an
overriding anti-colonial/neo-colonial discourse resulting in
a slightly off-balance result. For many younger directors
the colonial period is not a point of reference, although
they are still concerned with inequalities and injustices of
power. Ousmane Sembene is not included in the collection for
reasons justified by Ukadike, but his role in African
filmmaking is not omitted as his name and work surface in
many of the conversations. However, it is a shame not to
have included some of the more established younger
filmmakers from the francophone sphere, such as Abderrahmane
Sissako (Mauritania/Mali) who holds a very prominent role in
the field. The conversations are quite revealing about the
personalities of each filmmaker; they not only elucidate
some of the circulating notions on African cinemas but also
indirectly reveal the internal challenges, which the
enterprise of African cinema as a whole faces, as a result
of all these divergent personal ideologies. The questions posed by
Ukadike contribute to both the strengths and the weaknesses
of the work. His knowledge of the subject allows him to pose
questions that enable the filmmakers to speak about issues
they consider crucial. Most of the conversations are long
and developed enough so that the reader can get a sense of
the filmmaker's approach to their art and to African cinemas
in general. The interviewer also asks some common questions
to all, which contributes to the cohesion of the book. For
example, each filmmaker is asked about: the possibility of a
common African film language; the role of the Pan-African
Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou (FESPACO); where
and how their films are distributed; whether they obtain
State support for their filmmaking; and, how they view the
possibilities of co-production. These are good questions,
and as might be expected the answers vary in depth and
scope. Notably a few directors refuse to discuss the subject
of African cinema as a whole. For example, Souleymane Cisse
and Safi Faye are quite clear about the issues they do not
want to discuss. The conversations reveal
the considerable rift between the English and French
speaking directors of West Africa, more than any of the
other regions. Most of the English-speaking directors
complain that FESPACO is too Francocentric. There is also a
clear difference of opinion among the English-speaking
directors, some of whom see filmmaking as a commercial
enterprise to be privately financed, while others depend
more on subsidies. In spite of the language differences
there seem to be more commonalities of approaches and
concerns among the French-speaking and South African
directors, more so than between the French-speaking and the
Nigerian and Ghanaian directors. One of the strengths of the
book is that the readers will get a sense of the situation
in the different regions of sub-Saharan Africa and the
challenges specific to each area. As Teshome Gabriel notes
in his forward to the book, African cinema does not follow a
simple path and there are many strands within it. As one
reads through so many divergent opinions, the challenge of
understanding the *nature of African cinema* becomes more
evident. On issues that are fundamental to the history of
the subject, such as the social and educational character of
African cinemas and their political role, there are totally
disparate views. On the idea of cinema as a tool for
teaching, readers will note that many (although not all) of
the filmmakers included in this book are still very
concerned with such a role for cinema in Africa. For some
the idea of the educational role of cinema is still linked
to a more didactic approach, while for others priority is
given to entertainment without entirely dismissing an
educational responsibility. Here a generational difference
can be noted. Equally so, the responses to the idea of a
common African film language are also totally diverse. But
the presentation of these diverging perspectives is
illuminating and in itself points to a better understanding
of this cinema. If there is one overwhelming and recurring
concern for these directors, they are almost all looking for
ways to make low-budget, quality films that could survive
independently through distribution on the African
continent. However, the questions
posed by Ukadike also reveal that the interviewer has a very
defined vision of what African cinema should be, and this
inevitably shapes the book. For Ukadike the nature of
African cinema lies in its link with African oral
traditions, and without doubt this is an important site of
nourishment for many African filmmakers, but the author's
wish for such structural authenticity is somewhat
tendentious. More disturbing is Ukadike's moral stance on
what are appropriate images for African films, and so Cheikh
Omar Sissoko is questioned because he allows the young boys
in his film _Nymanton_ to swear and use bad language. Even
more Victorian on Ukadike's part are the many comments on
the inappropriateness for African audiences of sexual
explicitness, and that this is the fault of Western
influence. In addition readers may note an antipathy toward
any non-African intervention or involvement in African
filmmaking. Through his comments Ukadike also seems at times
to reinforce the divisions between anglophone and
francophone film interests with his accusatory
tone. On a stylistic note there
are a few problems with the English in the book, some of
which seems to be due to the translation from French into
English. Also of note is the questionable use of anglophone
and francophone as nouns instead of adjectives, and
striking, although not incorrect, the repeated use of
'alien' rather than 'foreign'. Overall, the book is a
welcome contribution to the writing on African cinema
because it gives voice to these filmmakers outside of their
filmic work. It provides an update to a somewhat similar
work done by Francoise Pfaff, _Twenty-five Black African
Filmmakers: A Critical Study with Filmography and
Bio-biography_ (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood
Press, 1988). In
contrast to Ukadike, Pfaff's work is more of a dictionary.
She did not individually interview the filmmakers but
completed a more biographical study, with bibliographical
references for each director, and references of critical
writing about each director and the main themes of their
work. In _Questioning African
Cinema_ Ukadike's seems to have an agenda apart from the
book's objective of a fuller understanding of African film
practices. When this agenda is to challenge some of the
obvious problems with which African filmmaking is confronted
he moves the subject forward. In contrast, when he uses a
moralising attitude on what are appropriate and acceptable
images for African films, when he perpetuates and encourages
the rift and boundaries of African and European, English and
French, black and white, the work loses its
force. In terms of contributing
to contemporary critical methodologies for dealing with
African cinema the book is useful in spite of its drawbacks
because it illuminates some of the directions that are not
yet sufficiently addressed in critical writing in the field.
Finally, the question that Ukadike is trying to get at is
crucial because, in trying to delve deeper into the nature
of African filmmaking, we see that it is through the
process, rather than a specific answer, that we learn more
about the subject of African cinemas. University
of Lausanne,
Switzerland Copyright ©
Film-Philosophy 2004 Teresa Hoefert de
Turegano, 'On Questions and Critical Methodology of African
Cinemas: Ukadike's _Questioning African Cinema_',
_Film-Philosophy_, vol. 8 no. 13, April 2004
<http://www.film-philosophy.com/vol8-2004/n13hdt>. Join the _Film-Philosophy_
salon, and receive the journal articles via email as they
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