Dayna L. Oscherwitz  (Southern Methodist University)
How Can We Speak of African Cinema?

Changing attitudes towards the nature and significance of the nation coupled with the increasingly globalized dynamics of film production and distribution have lead some scholars to question the validity or even possibility of discussing national cinemas. This raises questions for African cinema, which is not national, but continental, and which is, for the most part, neither funded, produced, distributed or seen by Africans. Questions about who funds or edits or produces a film are certainly relevant, and questions about intended audience and audience reception have been central to film studies from quite early on.

Film's centrality to the Western colonial mission in Africa is well known. Western nations nearly from the very moment of creation of cinema decided that Africa should only receive images produced in the West and not produce its own cinema. Africa was and is frequently represented in Western film, and yet when it is it typically functions as a stereotypical backdrop. Africans, if they are present at all, function quite typically to reinforce the colonial notion of Western superiority. For this and other reasons, Thomas Sankara of Burkina Faso, held the creation of an African cinema to be central to Africa's post-colonial independence. African filmmakers have battled overwhelming issues with financing, equipment, production and distribution and have increasingly been successful in creating films that represent Africa and Africans and that put both at their center.

And yet, in their move to create an African cinema, filmmakers, many of whom no longer live in Africa, work in a medium that is often seen as inherently Western. These filmmakers are often dependent on Western funding, utilize Western production facilities, rely on Western distributors, and more often than not the films are viewed by far more Westerners than Africans. This begs the question of whether one can speak of an African cinema, or at least that post-colonial African cinema that Sankara sought. And if we can, what defines the cinema as African, and what defines it as post-colonial?

I propose a tentative answer to this question. Recognizing the significance of questions about reception, audience, funding and production, I will argue that African directors have from the beginning worked to create a cinema that is not simply in opposition to Western cinema, but that breaks from it completely. Through a reinvention of film aesthetics and particularly film language, I will suggest that directors have, indeed, created a cinema that is both post-colonial and African. Moving beyond the frequently asserted role of orality, I will attempt to outline several characteristics which are present in films that would fall into that category, including aspects of aesthetics, film language, subject, content, audience and reception. Through these I will demonstrate the ways in which African filmmakers consciously position their films as African and strive for the creation of post-colonial African film audience, and thereby work to create an Africa and not just a cinema that is in fact post-colonial.