Diawara Manthia

Professor, Cultural theory and film, New York University

manthia.diawara@nyu.edu

+1 212 992 7506

tisch.nyu.edu/cinema-studies/faculty/manthia-diawara

‍

Diawara, Manthia. African Cinema: Politics & Culture. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1992.

Manthia Diawara provides an insider’s account of the history and current status of African cinema. African Cinema: Politics and Culture is the first extended study in English of Sub-Saharan cinema. Employing an interdisciplinary approach which draws on history, political science, economics, and cultural studies, Diawara discusses such issues as film production and distribution, and film aesthetics from the colonial period to the present. The book traces the growth of African cinema through the efforts of pioneer filmmakers such as Paulin Soumanou Vieyra, Oumarou Ganda, Jean-René Débrix, Jean Rouch, and Ousmane Sembène, the Pan-African Filmmakers’ Organization(FEPACI), and the Ougadougou Pan-African Film Festival (FESPACO). Diwara focuses on the production and distribution histories of key films such as Ousmane Sembène’s Black Girl and Mandabi (1968) and Souleymane Cissé’s Fine(1982). He also examines the role of missionary films in Africa, Débrix’s ideas concerning ‘magic, ‘the links between Yoruba theater and Nigerian cinema, and the parallels between Hindu mythologicals in India and the Yoruba-theater -inflected films in Nigeria. Diawara also looks at film and nationalism, film and popular culture, and the importance of FESPACO. African Cinema: Politics and Culture makes a major contribution to the expanding discussion of Eurocentrism, the canon, and multi-culturalism.

[Source: Google Books].

Diderich, Joelle. “Thebe Magugu Wins the 2019 LVMH Prize.” WWD, September 4, 2019. https://wwd.com/fashion-news/fashion-features/thebe-magugu-wins-2019-lvmh-prize-1203252173/

“Thebe Magugu on Wednesday became the first African designer to win the LVMH Prize for Young Designers, underscoring the continent’s potent appeal as a source of both creative talent and future luxury consumers. “Tomb Raider” star Alicia Vikander, speaking in French, revealed the winner at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in the presence of jury members including Dior’s Maria Grazia Chiuri, Louis Vuitton’s Nicolas Ghesquière, Clare Waight Keller of Givenchy, Loewe artistic director Jonathan Anderson and Berluti’s Kris Van Assche.”

[Source: Excerpt from the article].

Diop, Samba. African Francophone Cinema. New Orleans, LA: University Press of the South, 2004.

The major contemporary African Francophone filmmakers and their films are treated here. This short encyclopedic book discusses a certain number of themes as they are featured in African Francophone Cinema: History; Oral Traditions and Literatures; Myth, Religion, and Cosmogony; Gender, Homosexuality, and New Aesthetics; Image and Film Production; and, finally, the themes of Modernity and Post-colonialism. The interface between cinematographic language and image is also studied. This study reflects the vibrancy of the emergent field of African cinema. Furthermore, the reading and interpretation of the aforementioned themes is a testimony toward the commitment of African filmmakers who re-visit and update a certain number of topics as well as explore new avenues, thus pushing further and further outward the boundaries of filmmaking in Africa.

[Source: University Press of the South].

Dipio Dominica

Professor, African literature and film, Makere University

Email: dodipio@yahoo.com/dodipio@chuss.mak.ac.ug

Dipio, Dominica. Gender Terrains in African Cinema. African Humanities Series. Pretoria: Unisa Press, 2014.

Gender Terrains in African Cinema reflects on a body of canonical African filmmakers who address a trajectory of pertinent social issues. Dipio analyses gender relations around three categories of female characters - the girl child, the young woman and the elderly woman and their male counterparts. Although gender remains the focal point in this lucid and fascinating text, Dipio engages attention in her discussion of African feminism in relation to Western feminism. With its broad appeal to African humanities, Gender Terrains in African Cinema stands as a unique and radical contribution to the field of (African) film studies, which until now, has suffered from a paucity of scholarship.

[Source: Amazon].

Leila Djansi

Filmmaker (Cinema)

‍instagram.com/leiladjansi/

Assia Djebar

Novelist, Translator and Filmmaker

Algeria