African Cinematography: Colonial Film to Nollywood Lecture 12

African Cinematography: Colonial Film to NollywoodLecture 12 Derek Barker www.derekbarker.info Dr.Derek.Barker@gmail.com

Structure of presentation • Definition of African film • Defence of African film • History of Film • History of African Film • Role of film • Role of sound and music • Genre • Auteur or populist? • Feminism and Film

African Film An African film (and African filmmaker by inference) may be defined in three ways: Definition 1: • Director was born in sub-Saharan black Africa and has spent the greater part of his or her formative life in Africa • Film is set in Africa and is made primarily for an African audience • In an African language?

African Film An African film (and African filmmaker by inference) may be defined in three ways: Definition 2: • Director is born in sub-Saharan Africa [North African film belongs to the older West Asian tradition] • Films produced after independence (post 1960s – all colonial or pejorative / propagandistic films are excluded, as well as films in which Africa serves merely as an exotic background for a story targeted at Western audiences) • Film is set anywhere but is made primarily for an African audience and deals with issues relevant to people living in Africa

African Film An African film (and African filmmaker by inference) may be defined in three ways: Definition 3: • Location of birth and where the director lives is irrelevant; the definitive criteria is that the director’s work (or most of it) deals with issues relevant to Africa • Film is set anywhere and deals with African related issues

Questions on the definition of African film • Do we need a definition at all? Some African filmmakers have rejected the label "African" and would prefer to be called "Filmmakers" only, without any qualifiers. Why would they object to this label? Why do we need such categories? Or do we need them at all? • Do these definitions serve any particular agenda? Is that agenda positive or negative - that is, does it serve Africa and Africans? Or who do they serve?

In Defence of African Film (Barlet) Typical accusations levelled against African filmmakers’ films: • It is not African enough (lacks “authenticity”) • It is intended to seduce the West (contaminated by the West, since many African flimmakers are based in Western countries) • It no longer defends anything at all (it is less committed to awakening black consciousness) • It is not for the masses (it is intended for intellectuals or amateurs of exoticism)

In Defence of African Film (Barlet) Typical accusations levelled against African filmmakers’ films: • It has financial motives (filmmakers in search of Western funding and easier access to media coverage in the North) • Young people do not like it (boring, not modern enough) • It is not urban enough (should document an Africa in crisis and provide spectators with real-life situations that they can relate to) • It belongs to others (Western technicians, European money, requirements of aid committees), etc.

History of Film • The history of film began in the late 1880s with the invention of the first movie camera. • Most films before 1930 were silent. • 1895 to 1906: • motion pictures move a carnival novelty to an established large-scale entertainment industry. • movement from films consisting of one shot, completely made by one person with a few assistants, towards films several minutes long consisting of several shots made by large companies in something like industrial conditions.

History of Film Up till 1906: • First commercial exhibition of film took place on April 14, 1894 at Edison's Kinetoscope peep-show parlor. • The most successful motion picture company in the United States, with the largest production until 1900, was the American Mutoscope company. • Peep-show type films using 70 mm wide film each frame printed separately onto paper sheets for insertion into their viewing machine, called the Mutoscope. • By 1896, however, motion picture films with a projector to a large audience proved more commercially viable than exhibiting them in peep-show machines.

History of Film 1906 - 1914 • 1906 saw the production of an Australian film called “The Story of the Kelly Gang”. • More than an hour - longest ever narrative film • First shown in Melbourne, Australia on 26 December 1906 and in the UK in January 1908 • In 1907 there were about 4,000 small "nickelodeon" cinemas in the United States; silent films accompanied by music, usually pianist playing live.

History of Film 1906 - 1914 • Up to 1913, most American film production was still carried out around New York • In 1909, first production unit opened in California • By 1910, the French film companies starting to make films as long as two, or even three reels • This trend was followed in Italy, Denmark, and Sweden.

History of Film 1914 – 1919 • films changed from short programmes of one-reel films to longer shows consisting of a feature film of four reels or longer • exhibition venues also changed from small nickelodeon cinemas to larger cinemas charging higher prices after the advent of the “film star”. • move in USA towards shooting more films on the West coast around Los Angeles continued during World War I, until the bulk of American production was carried out there. • The Universal Film Manufacturing Company formed in 1912 as an umbrella company for many of the independent producing companies, and continued to grow during the war.

History of Film • 1926, Hollywood studio Warner Bros. introduced the "Vitaphone" system, producing short films of live entertainment acts and public figures and adding recorded sound effects and orchestral scores to some of its major features. • During late 1927, Warners released The Jazz Singer, which was mostly silent but contained synchronized dialogue (and singing) in a feature film; • Not at first considered viable, later "talking pictures", or "talkies", boomed.

History of Film 1940s • Demand for wartime propaganda created a renaissance in the film industry in Britain, with realistic war dramas like 49th Parallel (1941), Went the Day Well? (1942), The Way Ahead (1944) and Noël Coward and David Lean's celebrated naval film In Which We Serve in 1942, which won a special Academy Award. Etc.

History of Film 1940s • The US entry into World War II also brought a proliferation of films as both patriotism and propaganda. • American propaganda films included Desperate Journey, Mrs. Miniver, Forever and a Day and Objective Burma. Notable American films from the war years include the anti-Nazi Watch on the Rhine (1943), etc. 1950s onwards saw major boom in filmmaking in all industrialized countries

History of Film - Africa • During the colonial era, Africa was represented [almost] exclusively by Western filmmakers. • The continent was portrayed as an exotic land without history or culture. • Examples: • Tarzanand The African Queen, King Solomon's Mines and, in the mid-1930s, the Bantu Educational Kinema Experiment (BEKE) was carried out in order to educate the Bantu peoples. • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzcRa6n_qoE • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otze5gxzjck

BEKE • The Bantu Educational Kinema Experiment (BEKE) was a project of the International Missionary Council in coordination with the Carnegie Corporation of New York and British colonial governments of Tanganyika (Tanzania), Kenya, Uganda, Northern Rhodesia (Zambia) and Nyasaland (Malawi) in the mid-1930s

BEKE • The project aim was that of realizing educational films to be played by mobile cinemas for the education of the black ("bantu") people. • Approx35 such films, on 16mm, were produced between 1935 and 1937, when the project's Carnegie grant expired.

BEKE • BEKE productions were silent, low quality films with naive plots that usually involved a "wise guy" (giving the good example) prevailing over a "stupid guy" (impersonating bad habits). • While some actors were black, everything else in the production was British, building on a stereotypical representation of Africa and Africans.

BEKE • The main teachings conveyed by the films were about hygiene rules, methods of cash crop cultivation and cooperative marketing, and "prestige films" that highlighted the institutions of British rule. • Only three of the BEKE films survive and are held at the British Film Institute Archives: • "Veterinary Training of African Natives" (1936). http://www.colonialfilm.org.uk/node/1533 • "Tropical Hookworm" (1936). http://www.colonialfilm.org.uk/node/735 • "African Peasant Farms - the Kingolwira Experiment" (1936). • http://www.colonialfilm.org.uk/node/230

Colonial Film Unit • 1939 – 1955 • Over 200 short films • The CFU was originally established under the Ministry of Information to produce ‘propaganda’ films, encouraging African support for the war effort. • After 1945, under the Central Office of Information, the CFU produced instructional films for African audiences • From 1950 onwards, the Colonial Office finally assumed full control of the CFU; ceased film production, instead supporting and sponsoring the establishment of local film units and training schools.

Examples • Landing of Savage South Africa 1899 http://www.colonialfilm.org.uk/node/1186 • Father and Son 1945 http://www.colonialfilm.org.uk/node/1755 • Colonial Month 1949 http://www.colonialfilm.org.uk/node/387 • Star Beer 1949 http://www.colonialfilm.org.uk/node/1887 • Nairobi 1950 http://www.colonialfilm.org.uk/node/1698

Barlet I Western criticism reflects the [paying] public’s desires and thus the success of these films in Europe, films by directors of African descent must intrinsically prove their African identity. They can then receive the supreme blessing: general recognition of their “authenticity.”

Barlet II LOADED GAZE OF THE WEST: two criteria come into play: • demand for exoticism: films must be limited to both a geographic territory [Africa] and an ideological territory (an Africa that is magical, immemorial, legendary, mythical, and so on). • demand for reality: films must document contemporary African problems, which, in general, are limited to those of the urban milieu. Fictions must be based on the experiences of a disintegrating Africa.

Barlet III – 1960/70s • Early post-independence films of 1960s and 1970s were about re-appropriating one’s own gaze • Widespread belief that affirming one’s culture was part of the solution to economic and political problems • Radical films attacking neocolonialism (for example Xala), corrupt new elites, denunciations of obsolete traditions and beliefs • Self-affirmation led to idealisation of difference and belief in a fixed identity proved to be xenophomic, negative and circular

Barlet IV – 1980s • The 1980s saw a turn to “novelistic” type strategies by favouring events over action, avoiding explaining causes and instead presenting successions of events • Messages less explicit, neorealistic narratives that are not didactic or do not carry and overt political message • However, merely documenting Africa through film in this way (“fictionalised reporting”) or a realism without a clear directing hand (TILAI?)

Barlet V – 1990s • 1990s saw realism still dominant, but a shift from “fictionalised reporting” to a “realism that made the visible readable” • The more you show reality, the more you manipulate it • Depending on the veracity / believability of the characters rather than using them / turning them into symbols, avoiding didacticism and forcing the audience to think outside of the habitual box of representation

Barlet VI – 2000 and beyond Post 2000 strategies: • Depict the complexities: The aim is not to dress a story in reality, but to grasp it in all its complexity, in short, to scramble the markers to depict Africa’s complexities and to move away from reductive simplifications. • Viva Riva?

Barlet VII • Go beyond autochthonism. This presupposes letting one’s characters exist freely, for themselves, in all their singularities. It presupposes not making them the emblematic symbols of a cause • Bamako?

Barlet II • Capture the present. The filmmakers show not pity, of course, which would be a slight on dignity, but a deep tenderness for their characters, an affection on the order of respect. Their behavior is never anecdotal: it is that of human reality. • Dry Season?

Barlet II Use the intimate to disorient. The purpose of this quasidocumentary approach is to affirm the human. The filmmaker manages to reveal what reality beholds by opening him or herself up to the intimate, far from grand discourses. Far from offering a globalized vision of Africa, the filmmaker affirms a here and now, a place and a country, a relationship.. • Tsotsi?

Barlet II Examine memory. This does not rule out the fact that slavery, colonialism, and apartheid still cast their shadow on thought and dignity. But rather than focusing on the torturers’ guilt and repentance, these films carry out a salutary examination of memory. • Teza?

1960s • African Filmmakers: odd “pioneers of decolonisation” aiming to re-appropriate the gaze, reacting against ideologically charged representations by colonial filmmakers, ethnologists, missionaries. = Locked in a negative dialogic relationship = Odd because considered extraneous to the project of decolonisation, a luxury, an import

1960s • Fighting against the “negation of self” conveyed by colonial images • “militant” but not “banner waving” • Replacing the “civilising mission” by the “progress mission” • Denouncing obsolete customs and corrupt elites

1960s • Not only a “decolonisation of gaze and thought” but a positive project of cultural assertion, claiming one’s own space and self-image • English colonists left film units established during the colonial era for purposes of propaganda; French colonists did not • Filmmakers depended on co-productions, little or no independent African production

1970s • 1969 “Week of African Cinema” first held in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso • 1972 Panafrican Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou (Festival panafricain du cinéma et de la télévision de Ouagadougou or FESPACO) • 1979 Durban International Film Festival

1970s • 1970 FESPACI (Pan-African Filmmakers Federation) established • Promoted films that were militant and panafricanist - cinema as “tool of liberation” • “Commitment” films flourish; however, in practice, many introspective films made in this period: “finding the self” and populating the screen with individuals embedded in a place, thus working against the use of “Africa” in films as a “setting”

1980s • “Fiction of the self” : facing the disillusionment of independence, films depicted new perspectives for social change and world views • 1982 Niamey filmmaker manifesto: called for the construction of a cinematographic industry for “anti-colonial” struggle; called for non-binding state support • CIDC – first Inter-African Consortium of Cinematographic Distribution; bankrupt by 1984

1980s • Films mirrored life: dictatorships, economic struggle • African films “broke out” and entered world stage • 1987 Jury Prize at Cannes Film Festival to Yeelen/The Light by LouleymaneCisse brought wide-scale recognition and commercial success • 1980s: European Film industry stale, boring: African films taken up by European audiences in this period of imaginative drought

1990s • “Individual and the World” – struggle to find a path between individualism and the illusion of identity • Success of black African films decreased “because we no long knew how to listen to what they had to say” (Barlet) • 1990 Cannes Jury prize for IdrissaOuedraogo’s “Tilai” – last film to achieve real international success for that decade

1990s • End of cold war and end of Africa’s role as a pawn in the struggle US-Soviet contest • Rejection of Negritude / essential “African” identity • Soyinka: “A tiger does not proclaim its tigritude; it pounces on its prey and eats it” • New cinema taking risks in form and content, asking questions without answers

2000s • Journey into the Human: return to cultural roots while still rejecting fixed identities • Use of techniques of oral literature: • vagueness about the direction of the narrative; • many digressions • direct address to the camera

2000s • Oral literature techniques used in films give it a rhythm comparable to the blues • Films asking questions about “journeying” into the world • Intertextual references to global cinema (Daratt uses “Hitchcock like aesthetics”; Bamako makes global appeal for a world that functions more humanely)

2000s • Acutely conscious of the state of Africa • Rather than idealizing origins, African cinema questions Africa’s place in the world • Marginality no longer an issue • Films “vibrate with the complex and violent relationship to the West” • No definite answers: “no longer shapes a truth, but encourages us to reinvent it”

Role of film? • Vehicle for cultural expression and dissemination? • Didactic / education ? • Leisure and pleasure ? • Propaganda? • Pure escapism?

Role of popular video film in Nigeria? • Karin Barber: Primary role of popular arts in Africa is making sense of the experience of the city and modernityfor the masses • Emmanuel Obiechina: popular arts are a way address the dislocations of modernity and to provide some kind of guidance and direction to the masses of the people caught in the violence and confusion arising from these changes

Is cinema good for you? • Collective experience • One of the most powerful media in today‘s world – primary mode of consumption of cultural values and ideas • Positively contributes to mental health • Cinema is a safe environment in which to experience roles and emotions we might not otherwise be free to experience • Exercise of personal preferences – empowering • Conclusion: cinema attendance can be both a personally expressive experience, good fun, and therapeutic at the same time

List of Films • 1. Ousmane Sembene (Senegal) – Xala (1975) • 2. Idrissa Ouedraogo (Burkino Faso) - Tilaï ("The Law") (1990) • 3. Tsitsi Dangarembga (Zimbabwe) – Everyone’s Child (1996) • 4. Kingsley Ogoro – Osuofia in London, Part 1 (2003) & Part 2 (2004) • 5. Gavin Hood (South Africa) – Tsotsi (2005) • 6. Mahamat-Saleh Haroun (Chad) – Dry Season (2006) • 7. Abderrahmane Sissako (Mauritania) – Bamako (2006) [set in Mali] • 8. Haile Gerima (Ethiopia) – Teza (2009) • 9. Djo Munga (DRC) – Viva Riva (2010) • 10. David Gitonga (Kenya) – Nairobi Half Life (2012)

Auteurs or Populists? • Which of the directors are Auteurs and which are populists?

African Cinematography: Colonial Film to Nollywood Lecture 12