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Postnationalist African Cinema

Alexie Tcheuyap

I. Introduction:

A. The study is undertaken with the following tenants:

1. African cinema has never been as homogeneous as scholars
have tended us believe;
2. in a new context of transnational circulation, nation building has
become a less prominent, if not absent, motivation in filmmaking;
3. cultural nationalism has thus far failed to give voice to laughter,
joy, sexuality and formal experimentation presently being
expounded in postcolonial narratives;
4. new analytical categories are needed to theorize a changing
corpus that is no longer limited to social contestation, binary
oppositions and essentialist cultural considerations.

B. Although the genre of committed filmmaking is close to exhausting itself,
this has not always been the case because social contestation was almost a
sacred norm. As a result, alternative and emerging film praxis was either
ignored or dismissed because of the nationalist which equally dominated
cultural criticism.

C. Films were largely concerned with providing a context (i.e. what is
shown), and far less with questions of form (i.e. how it is shown); as such, it
is possible to see in what way a diverse corpus generated an impression of
uniformity;

D. ...the African reappropriation of the camera necessarily involved a radical
reconsideration of the aesthetic as the ideological functions of the image
being depicted. Cinema was not meant for pleasure, but for (political)
instruction. In keeping with these propositions, African cinema, like African
literature, could only be a cinema of contestation.

E. Nationalism thus becomes elitist in spite of its claims to represent
subaltern classes;

F. The works of these filmmakers are predicated on an understandable
desire to define Africa against a unified 'West', a search for an
ontological 'African self ', a genuine anxiety over a lost history and a
threatened identity. A paradoxical as it may be, from its pioneering phase
and for decades thereafter, in a continent desperate for literation and
democracy, African filmmaking and scholarship were reduced to a
monolithic trilogy. This trilogy, demonstrated clearly in the above- cited
case of Algeria, is comprised of the following tenets: one 'African
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cinema', on e film association (FEPAC I) and one dominant (political)
discourse.

G. ...the 'Africa' being does not correspond to a shared view. By
incorporating new visions, genres, representations and aesthetic
expressions, today's filmmakers are not only interrogating sub-Saharan
African identities, but are furthermore staking out a place for African cultur es
in global flows where identity oscillates between 'global and local , nati on and
non nation' Pett , 2008, 1 . In a context o transnational , hybrid , shifting
and multiple identities . it is difficult to imagin e that African produ ctions
have remain ed immune to Outside influence . ;

H. The current status of African film production , with its multipli ciof
issues , discourses and languages, strongly suggests that it is necess'.!!"y to de8ign
a more innovab e and mclus1ve theoretical framework_. to accommodate a ra idl r
mu tatin cor us whose analytical paradigms stretch beyon social chalJ en es,
dualiti es and cultur al essen tia i s s

I. As Neil Lazaru s ( 1999, 78) asserts, national liberation movements
were not what they were expected or claimed to be, namely organizations
that aimed at empowering, safeguarding and helping the powerless. Instead ,
in the words of Franz Farron ( 1968, 152), the main project of the local
bourgeoi s nationali sts was 'quite simply .. . [toJ transfer into native hands
those unfair advan tages which are the l egacy of the colonial period' .

J. The decadence of the cinema of endless contestation...

K. uch stands by Ouedraogo, Maldoror, Bekolo and Ram aka clearly indicate
the extent to which Sembene Ousmane's concepbon of cmein::r=as 'eventng school '
for consciousness-raising an d social transf ormation has become, in a way, som
ehow outdated for several directors. This book aims to re- conceptualize
contemporary sub- Saharan African cinema by foregroundin g the narrative and
aesthetic structur es of recent films. The failure of liberationist discour ses to
secure perman ent gains has r esulted in fifmmak er s selecti n g n ew a esth
etic a pproa ch es th a t m pye b eyond anti - imperialist, historical contestations
and cultural claim s; accord ing to chille Mbembe (2002a , 272), 'the very proj
ect of an esse r:-er ic1a recovery o e [A ri canJ self is . . . oom ed
' .Thu s, the movementaway from liberationist aesthetics may have less to do with
the Westernization of sub -Saharan Afr ican cinema or a facile 'fashion ct e em
er en ce of a h brid cin em ati c st le intend ed to interrogate constructs n ow
becoming unsettled in the context.of gk;balization.Ihe third and perhaps
m ost decisive factor in und erstanding
contem orar African films is the near dissolution of the African nation- tate and the
resultant need to rethink nationalism.
L. ...contemporary productions have significantly modified their formal and
discursive architecture for a public which only wants to see good films, be they
'African' or not.
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M. What is indisputable, though, is that liberationist aesthetics and paradigms
seem to have played themselves out. N. }frican identity politics are
concerned .with re udiatin Western imposition , developing instead a language
infused with African 'auth enti city ' (244). The result of sue attltu e is e mvention of
a narrativ e of li berab.on bUilt ar und a dual temporality: on the one hand, the i;tfucaI,
glorious , vanished past tradition or history, and on the other e hope of a
better funire fa be secnred tEliGHgf:! eemmit:ment to tionalist ideaE.....G--49-250).
Typi cal of this tendency is Manthi a Di awara's return to the source' films which he uses
in his typology ( 1992, 159-164). The second thrust, which Mbembe refers to as
'nativism,' foregrounds 'the i dea of a 1micp 1e African identity founded on
1+1e1+1b@rship ef the black re' (2002a, 240 241) . In this view transnational
solidarity is buil t on a collective narrative that emph asizes a past gf dauer)'i
cglgnizsatiem and apartheid .

N. One of the main arguments of this book is precisely that fixed identities and
social realism are no more a fatality, the must feature of african film

O. ...it is obvious that the nation becomes less important, in not only absent,
signifier. Although it has not been entirely abandoned, the idea of nation building has
been somewhat overshadowed by a shift in focus to more quotidian priorities.

P. Because 'the natur e of African cinema has too often been traped
'rithin reductive opposition between Western and African cultur e'
Mur hy, O , 241 ), in e context o g o a iza
Postnationali sttifr;can Cwmas stigates how the emergen ce of n
ew genres, discourses ard re resentations, some of which are
totally unr elated to the nationalist dictates ou ence th e formJ]
elisiees FRaEle 1-i, tire I1ew directors . It ex lores sub -Saharan
cinema in terms of 'the emer ence of new thou ht forms' Me er 1
999, 108), orm s t at ave itt e, if an thing, LO do with moribund
fifty-year-old imperatives. e o j ectives of this book are as
follows:{I)describe the limits of current taxonomi es and
critical:mestigations in light of new produ ctions; etermin e e new
enres i:ti!Pe movies, epics, comedies) that have arisen; @.explore
how n nnovations issu es and concerns are addressed in these genres
and et apart from the foundational oeuvres; xamine how films
ro ose ew mod es of representation , sexuality, end er and / or African
identiti es; vestigate w at role is played by global cultur al forces and
forms.
Q. Shelbi e instead inscribes Black cultur al forces in transnationa l
formations that cannot be limited to an 'ethnic' milieu .The shaping of new,
hybri d cultur es d oes not in any way suggest that Bla cks cannot
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build communit y spirit, or that brut e racial discrimination no longer
exists.

L. In thi s book, I show that the fra mentation of experience and the
appearance of tran snation al associations have brought a out nationa
c_;isis; the reprodu cti on of alternative cultur al forms has become
accelerated and accentuated in places where n ation building and social
outcry are no lon ger. priorities . [ call narratives created in this context po
stnationali st becau se tpey are th ematically beyond the mode of resistan
ce. Far from advocating a strict social d eterminism , my argument here
is that new contes have generated new forms and representati ons.

M. Althou h we all know that Western scholarship was born within a
specific hi storical and discu sive setting that conso i ate its e emon the
encounter with the African 'other' as een, or better or wors e, mutuall y
(gan s)format1ve ID that director s, writers md artjsts now ex per i
ence h brid identities. African filmmaker s have borrowed and
substantially s bverte categories or codes indebted to foreign spaces and
cultur es.
N. ...theories of national cinema ought to interrogate the conceptual limits
of nation, positioning it within transnational and international settings.