cultural spheres. It is not simply a matter of engaging in a dialogue with some other culture’s products, but of using one’s understanding of another cultural practice to re-perceive and rethink one’s own cultural constellation at the same time (Willemen 2006:37–38).
In offering this assemblage as bricoleurs we have brought together some of the most vocal and instrumental female-identified cultural practitioners working in film on the African continent today. We follow hereby a notion of creative understanding that not only demands that the writer and participant be subject to making meaning but also, as Bakhtin suggests, invites the reader to rethink their own position when engaging these contributions.
REFERENCES
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Bryce, J. ‘Myself as a puff of dust: A ghost story’. EXIT: Endings and New Beginnings in Literature and Life. Ed. S Helgesson. New York: Rodopi, 2011. 289–300.
Bryce, J. ‘Outside the machine? Donor values and the case of film in Tanzania’. Viewing African cinema in the 21st century: Art films and the Nollywood video revolution. Eds. M Saul and RA Austen. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2010. 160–177.
Diawara, M. African Cinema: Politics and culture. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1992.
Garritano, C. African Video Movies and Global Desires: A Ghanaian history. Series: Ohio RIS Africa. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2013.
Lorde, A. ‘The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house’. Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches. Berkeley, CA: Crossing Press, 2007[1984]. 110–114.
McCluskey, AT. Ed. The Devil you Dance with: Film culture in the new South Africa. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2009.
Mulvey, L. ‘Visual pleasure and narrative cinema’. Screen 16.3. (1975): 6–18.
Mulvey, L. ‘Afterthoughts on “Visual pleasure and narrative cinema inspired by Duel in the Sun (1946)’. Feminism and Film Theory. Ed. C Penley. New York: Routledge, 1988. 69–79.
Mulvey, L. ‘Feminism, film and avant-garde’. Visual and other pleasures. London: Macmillan, 1989. 111—126.
Newell, S and O Okome. Eds. Popular Culture in Africa: The episteme of the everyday. Series: Routledge Research in Cultural and Media Studies. New York: Routledge, 2013.
‘Radicalesbians. The woman-identified woman.’ Documents from the Women’s Liberation Movement. Special Collections Library, Duke University, 1970. [Online]. Available: http://library.duke.edu/rubenstein/scriptorium/wlm/womid/ (accessed 11 June 2014).
Rogers, M. ‘Contextualizing theories and practices of bricolage research’. Qualitative Report 17. (2012): 1–17.
Ukadike, NF. Black African Cinema. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994.
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NOTES
1 ‘In societies adopting mythical rationalities, Levi Strauss explains, meaning-making processes mirror a bricolage process. Like an “intellectual bricolage”, he explains, mythical-knowers piece together their life-history with artifacts (e.g. texts, discourses, social practices) of their given cultural context to construct meaning’ (Rogers 2012:3).
CHAPTER 1: AFRICAN WOMEN IN CINEMA: AN OVERVIEW1
BETI ELLERSON
African cinema born during the African independence movements of the 1950s and 1960s re-appropriated the camera as a tool to counter the colonialist gaze that had dominated representations of Africa up until that time. The emergence of women in African cinema coincided with this nascent period during which a cadre of film professionals positioned themselves for the creation of a veritable African cinema culture. One such professional of note is the pioneer of Senegalese media culture, Annette Mbaye d’Erneville: feminist, journalist, writer, communications specialist, media activist and culture critic. The first Senegalese to earn a degree in journalism, she studied in Paris in the late 1940s, and since returning to Senegal in 1957 she has devoted her life to the cultural politics of the country, forging important institutions such as the Association Sénégalaise de la Critique Cinématographique, Rencontres Cinématographiques de Dakar (RECIDAK), and the Henriette Bathily Women’s House.2
Similarly, Guadeloupean Sarah Maldoror, who was born and raised in France, joined forces with artists from Africa and the Caribbean during a time of heightened cultural, intellectual and political discovery. In the early 1960s she went to Moscow to study filmmaking. 3 Having already joined the pro-independence movements, it is not surprising that her films would take on similar anti-colonialist themes. She has been a mentor and role model to many African women filmmakers, notably Togolese Anne-Laure Folly Reimann, whose film Sarah Maldoror ou la nostalgie de l’utopie (1998) traces her own life as filmmaker engagée.
Several women were among the film professionals who established the Pan African Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou (FESPACO) and the Pan African Federation of Filmmakers (FEPACI), both created in 1969. These two exemplary African cinema institutions continue to be a reference for continental co-operation and organisation in the area of culture. Zalika Souley, trailblazing actress from Niger, served on the founding committee of FEPACI, while Burkinabé Alimata Salembéré, one of the founding members of FESPACO, and whose compatriot Odette Sangho was also a member, presided over the organising committee of the first festival. The documentary Tam Tam à Paris, made in 1963 by journalist Thérèse Sita-Bella, was among the entries at the festival and is considered the earliest film by an African woman. Four years later, in 1967, Ghanaian dramatist and writer Efua Sutherland collaborated with the US television network ABC in the production of Arabia: The Village Story, a major documentary film. These pioneering women continued in their respective fields of journalism and drama, having made only one film, a common practice among the women who also utilise the moving image as a mode of expression in their chosen career. Moreover, recent developments in the seminal organisations FESPACO and FEPACI attest to the desire to continue to include women in key decision-making positions. Seipati Bulane-Hopa of South Africa served as general secretary of FEPACI from 2006 to 2013, and at the 23rd edition of FESPACO, in 2013, women took on leadership roles – one of them as president of the main juries. At the same edition, Alimata Salembéré was in the spotlight as guest of honour, in recognition of her pioneering role in the organisation.
The 1960s also witnessed the first World Festival of Black Arts, a seminal event hosted in Senegal in 1966, during which Safi Faye, Senegalese film director and ethnologist, and the first sub-Saharan African woman to direct a commercially distributed feature film, would enter a world that would change the course of her career (Pfaff 2004).
The 1970s, a decade of unprecedented global focus on women, heralded a call to action in all spheres of women’s lives: the declaration of the United Nations Decade of Women (1976–1985); the evolution of a universal women’s rights movement; and the maturation of second-wave feminism, which would influence the development of women’s studies in the academy, feminist film theory and a critical inquiry into the visual representation of women all brought about global changes. A noteworthy development during the decade was the emergence of the bilingual feminist research group the Association of African Women for Research and Development (AAWORD), created in 1977 and based in Senegal. Moreover, from this defining decade emerged a sustained presence of African women filmmakers. Pioneer Safi Faye recalls the curiosity in the early