African Cinema

Abstract

AFRICAN CINEMA: ADDRESSEE UNKNOWN Thirty years after Sembene's pioneering Borom Sarret, this is a moment of celebration but also of self-assessment for emergent African cinema -- an opportunity to think through questions of funding, the basis of production, and the way that various African films address their different audiences. Pieces of Identity In Europe and North America a nebulous imaginary unity is projected onto Africa. This lazily assumed misconception continues to underpin the distorting insularity and ignorance of the north. It is precisely an imaginary, implicit unity and not to be confused with the distinct political unity proposed by the project of Pan-Africanism, built from conscious political and cultural alliances. One does not have to be too familiar with the continent to understand that there are also many Africas -- culturally, politically, socially. Indeed more than a thousand languages are spoken in Africa and there are as many...