Part 1 Early days, first rites: human beings, not ants; decolonizing the imagination; "proverbs were once people" - referring to the past; closing one's eyes; prizing open the cracked identity; the open gaze. Part 2 The roots of story-telling: black humour; men die but words remain - narrative and the oral tradition; if your song is not more beautiful than the silence, then be quiet; speaking your own language; towards a critique of necessity. Part 3 A black perspective?: "if you want honey, you've got to take on the bees" - the difficulties of film-making; the African public - diversity itself; northern audiences spinning like a weathervane; "when you have meat to cook, you seek out the one who has a fire" - the logic of Western aid; televisual strategies. Annex - where is black African cinema heading?
This title won the French National Film Centre's Best Filmbook of 1997 award.
Olivier Barlet is film critic and chief editor of the monthly magazine Africultures (L Harmattan, Paris). He has translated many books about Africa and by African authors.
'This is an excellent book: fresh, graceful, perspicacious, intelligent, current, and always alive with passionate sympathy for its subject... Barlet has impressive powers of synthesis, fashioning an insightful and often elegant thematic argument out of a vast quantity of material... It is hard to do justice to the richness of the book in a brief review... This is very much a book about understanding across cultures and the necessity of multiculturalism ... it is an "invitation au voyage", as Barlet says, and a singularly attractive introduction to African film' - Jonathan Haynes in Research in African Literatures 'The reader will discover the book's depth and a wealth of information on the varied cinemas of Africa' - International Journal of African Historical Studies
 |
Ask a Question About this Product More... |
|
