Krotoa-Eva, servant-cum-translator-cum-diplomat, instrumental in the dealings between the Dutch and the Khoi at the Cape in the 1600s, is a woman whose story has been (re)constructed countless times. Through sparse historical documentation, she has been described as a drunk, traitor, bad mother, thief, ungrateful primitive, shrewd mediator and most recently a heroic foremother of Afrikaans-speaking South Africans. This article tracks these representations, paying particular attention to the 2017 South African-made film Krotoa, and situates this latter representation within theoretical discussions of nationalism and cinema, women in the national heritage narrative and the historic film as a vehicle to express, in its own way, the emotions, trauma and systems of the past still relevant today. We argue that the filmmakers’ attempt to tell the story of Krotoa, while masterfully crafted, artful and poignant, succumbs in the end to a weak nation-building epilogue that does little justice to the nuances of power, oppression and perseverance foundational to Krotoa’s life story.
{"title":"Tying a (rain)bow at the end: Controversial representations of Krotoa from text to film","authors":"S. Barnabas, A. Jansen van Vuuren","doi":"10.1386/jac_00026_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jac_00026_1","url":null,"abstract":"Krotoa-Eva, servant-cum-translator-cum-diplomat, instrumental in the dealings between the Dutch and the Khoi at the Cape in the 1600s, is a woman whose story has been (re)constructed countless times. Through sparse historical documentation, she has been described as a drunk, traitor, bad mother, thief, ungrateful primitive, shrewd mediator and most recently a heroic foremother of Afrikaans-speaking South Africans. This article tracks these representations, paying particular attention to the 2017 South African-made film Krotoa, and situates this latter representation within theoretical discussions of nationalism and cinema, women in the national heritage narrative and the historic film as a vehicle to express, in its own way, the emotions, trauma and systems of the past still relevant today. We argue that the filmmakers’ attempt to tell the story of Krotoa, while masterfully crafted, artful and poignant, succumbs in the end to a weak nation-building epilogue that does little justice to the nuances of power, oppression and perseverance foundational to Krotoa’s life story.","PeriodicalId":41188,"journal":{"name":"Journal of African Cinemas","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2020-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48790039","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
There has been a long-standing cooperative relationship between the Chinese film industry and African film industries since the 1950s. In recent years, more and more Chinese film and television studios have sought to sell their products abroad, which has meant investing in translation. In order to project the image of a modern China with a rich cultural heritage, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT) launched the ‘Sino-Africa Film and Television Cooperation Project’ to promote the translation and dissemination of Chinese films and television products in Africa. As a result, two models for this translation process have emerged: one government sponsored and one commercial. This article will use the translation of Chinese film and television programmes for Tanzania as a case study to analyse how each model is institutionally organized, their target audiences and approaches to distribution and the content of the resulting translations.
{"title":"When a beautiful daughter-in-law meets Africa: Translating Chinese films and television programmes for the African market","authors":"Ha Jin","doi":"10.1386/jac_00025_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jac_00025_1","url":null,"abstract":"There has been a long-standing cooperative relationship between the Chinese film industry and African film industries since the 1950s. In recent years, more and more Chinese film and television studios have sought to sell their products abroad, which has meant investing in translation. In order to project the image of a modern China with a rich cultural heritage, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT) launched the ‘Sino-Africa Film and Television Cooperation Project’ to promote the translation and dissemination of Chinese films and television products in Africa. As a result, two models for this translation process have emerged: one government sponsored and one commercial. This article will use the translation of Chinese film and television programmes for Tanzania as a case study to analyse how each model is institutionally organized, their target audiences and approaches to distribution and the content of the resulting translations.","PeriodicalId":41188,"journal":{"name":"Journal of African Cinemas","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2020-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44988261","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article focuses primarily on mirror scenes in Lionel Rogosin’s ground-breaking African film Come Back, Africa (1959). To examine how specular reflections may be influenced by a director’s identity, Rogosin’s film is compared to another African classic, Ousmane Sembène’s Black Girl (La Noire de…) (1966). Despite surprising intertextual similarities, their specular reflections signify two very different filmic gazes. Both films are structured as fictional narratives that exhibit a documentary/fictional synthesis and set in inhospitable racist societies. By exploring how these scenes inform the narrative and identities of the characters, these specular encounters add a layer of meaning to films already firmly established in African cinema history.
{"title":"The wo/man in the mirror","authors":"L. Wagner","doi":"10.1386/jac_00027_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jac_00027_1","url":null,"abstract":"This article focuses primarily on mirror scenes in Lionel Rogosin’s ground-breaking African film Come Back, Africa (1959). To examine how specular reflections may be influenced by a director’s identity, Rogosin’s film is compared to another African classic, Ousmane Sembène’s Black Girl (La Noire de…) (1966). Despite surprising intertextual similarities, their specular reflections signify two very different filmic gazes. Both films are structured as fictional narratives that exhibit a documentary/fictional synthesis and set in inhospitable racist societies. By exploring how these scenes inform the narrative and identities of the characters, these specular encounters add a layer of meaning to films already firmly established in African cinema history.","PeriodicalId":41188,"journal":{"name":"Journal of African Cinemas","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2020-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49136124","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Much Loved, a Moroccan movie by director Nabil Ayouch released in French cinemas in 2015 and selected at La Quinzaine des Réalisateurs in Cannes the same year, represents a major turning point in the history of national cinema. Officially banned from screens by the Moroccan Ministry of Communications one week after its premiere in Cannes, it unleashed an emotional storm and an unprecedented debate in the Moroccan society without ever having been seen by the public and only on the basis of some extracts leaked on the internet. The movie relates the lives of four young women living on prostitution in the touristic city of Marrakesh. This article provides an in-depth analysis of the factors of transgression carried by the movie and how they enable a better understanding of its violent mirroring impact on the Moroccan society.
{"title":"Much Loved transgressions: Morocco’s reflection in the mirror of its young prostitutes","authors":"Samia Charkioui","doi":"10.1386/jac_00024_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jac_00024_1","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000Much Loved, a Moroccan movie by director Nabil Ayouch released in French cinemas in 2015 and selected at La Quinzaine des Réalisateurs in Cannes the same year, represents a major turning point in the history of national cinema. Officially banned from screens by the Moroccan Ministry of Communications one week after its premiere in Cannes, it unleashed an emotional storm and an unprecedented debate in the Moroccan society without ever having been seen by the public and only on the basis of some extracts leaked on the internet. The movie relates the lives of four young women living on prostitution in the touristic city of Marrakesh. This article provides an in-depth analysis of the factors of transgression carried by the movie and how they enable a better understanding of its violent mirroring impact on the Moroccan society.","PeriodicalId":41188,"journal":{"name":"Journal of African Cinemas","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2020-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48691119","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
K. Harrow, Babatunde O. Onikoyi, K. Tomaselli, S. Petty, Vaughn Borden
{"title":"In memory of Frank Ukadike","authors":"K. Harrow, Babatunde O. Onikoyi, K. Tomaselli, S. Petty, Vaughn Borden","doi":"10.1386/jac_00030_7","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jac_00030_7","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41188,"journal":{"name":"Journal of African Cinemas","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2020-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43434640","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In 1950, the Gold Coast colonial government published the 52-page pamphlet titled Kofi the Good Farmer. In 1953, it was adapted into a thirteen-minute instructional film of the same name. The film, like the booklet, follows a farmer named Kofi as he demonstrates proper cocoa-farming methods. Depicted as a remote, rural farmer who becomes successful because of his implementation of foreign farming techniques and his acceptance of the colonial government’s authority to determine and control the cocoa grading scale, Kofi provides evidence of paternalism and racialist colonial rhetoric in British colonial filmmaking. However, 34 years after the making of Kofi, it was re-shown to rural audiences. Why was a dutiful colonial subject like Kofi instructing cocoa farmers over 30 years after Ghana’s independence? And what can his use by the postcolonial state tell us about national governance? This article argues that the persistent use of Kofi by Ghana reveals the entangled relationship between colonialism and nationalism in postcolonial governance. Following the subtle changes that Kofi has undergone in his 45 years of government service, I highlight how government-sponsored films construct their audiences as remote in order to reinforce the power of the state in moments of political uncertainty.
{"title":"The persistent instructor: 45 years of Kofi the Good Farmer in Ghana","authors":"J. Blaylock","doi":"10.1386/jac_00028_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jac_00028_1","url":null,"abstract":"In 1950, the Gold Coast colonial government published the 52-page pamphlet titled Kofi the Good Farmer. In 1953, it was adapted into a thirteen-minute instructional film of the same name. The film, like the booklet, follows a farmer named Kofi as he demonstrates proper cocoa-farming methods. Depicted as a remote, rural farmer who becomes successful because of his implementation of foreign farming techniques and his acceptance of the colonial government’s authority to determine and control the cocoa grading scale, Kofi provides evidence of paternalism and racialist colonial rhetoric in British colonial filmmaking. However, 34 years after the making of Kofi, it was re-shown to rural audiences. Why was a dutiful colonial subject like Kofi instructing cocoa farmers over 30 years after Ghana’s independence? And what can his use by the postcolonial state tell us about national governance? This article argues that the persistent use of Kofi by Ghana reveals the entangled relationship between colonialism and nationalism in postcolonial governance. Following the subtle changes that Kofi has undergone in his 45 years of government service, I highlight how government-sponsored films construct their audiences as remote in order to reinforce the power of the state in moments of political uncertainty.","PeriodicalId":41188,"journal":{"name":"Journal of African Cinemas","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2020-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48731315","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract Using Amir Baraka's conception of Afrosurrealism as a black aesthetic form that is imbricated with 'lived life', this article proposes an Afrosur/realist reading of Djibril Diop Mambéty's Touki Bouki ('The hyena's journey') (1973). I explore the trajectory of the iconic lovers Anta and Mory and their recourse to petty criminality as a means of escaping to Paris. I first consider how petty criminality or 'hustling' can be read in relation to Abdoumaliq Simone's notion of 'people as infrastructure' or a realistic reproduction of the African urban. I then turn my attention to Membéty's surrealist portrayal of Anta and Mory as 'hyenas' ‐ or the archetypal figure of the stranger who poses a threat to the city's social order. Central to my analysis of the surreal as an expression of desire is the filmic reproduction of post-independence Dakar on-screen. I pay attention to place-identity, and the filmic depiction of nodes and modes of mobility as sites of potential disruption to the city as a form of social order. The article thus subverts and complicates the dichotomy between the real and the surreal as cinematic forms that reproduce the postcolonial African urban as both lived and imagined.
{"title":"Hyenas/hustlers: An Afrosur/realist reading of Touki Bouki (1973)","authors":"Polo B. Moji","doi":"10.1386/jac_00016_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jac_00016_1","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Using Amir Baraka's conception of Afrosurrealism as a black aesthetic form that is imbricated with 'lived life', this article proposes an Afrosur/realist reading of Djibril Diop Mambéty's Touki Bouki ('The hyena's journey') (1973). I explore the trajectory\u0000 of the iconic lovers Anta and Mory and their recourse to petty criminality as a means of escaping to Paris. I first consider how petty criminality or 'hustling' can be read in relation to Abdoumaliq Simone's notion of 'people as infrastructure' or a realistic reproduction of the African urban.\u0000 I then turn my attention to Membéty's surrealist portrayal of Anta and Mory as 'hyenas' ‐ or the archetypal figure of the stranger who poses a threat to the city's social order. Central to my analysis of the surreal as an expression of desire is the filmic reproduction of post-independence\u0000 Dakar on-screen. I pay attention to place-identity, and the filmic depiction of nodes and modes of mobility as sites of potential disruption to the city as a form of social order. The article thus subverts and complicates the dichotomy between the real and the surreal as cinematic forms that\u0000 reproduce the postcolonial African urban as both lived and imagined.","PeriodicalId":41188,"journal":{"name":"Journal of African Cinemas","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2019-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45582732","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The cinematic city: Desire, form and the African urban","authors":"Danai S. Mupotsa, Polo B. Moji, Natasha Himmelman","doi":"10.1386/jac_00015_2","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jac_00015_2","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41188,"journal":{"name":"Journal of African Cinemas","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2019-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48626141","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract In this article, I am concerned principally with Taxi Driver (Oriahi, 2015), Gbomo Gbomo Express (Taylaur, 2015), Just Not Married (Patrick, 2016), Ojukokoro (Greed) (Olaitan, 2016) as well as Catch.er (Taylaur, 2017). These films are characterized as much by the depiction of clever criminals as the cultivation of a cynical disposition from which transgressions of this sort appear stylish and violence is rendered 'cool'. Almost all of them turn on a scheme to dupe others of a large sum of money, and are punctuated by backstabbing partners in crime, tables turning by chance, edgy armed standoffs and a surprising number of bodies in car trunks. Given the dark portrait of Lagos these films present, one might be inclined to read the genre cycle as a reiteration of the role Lagos has historically played as embodiment of popular anxieties concerning insecurity, material inequality and social breakdown. And yet, in recent years, conditions within the city have markedly improved over those of the deepest point of urban crisis in the 1990s when Lagos was, indeed, paralysed by a generalized condition of insecurity and dysfunction. New Nollywood's repertoire of film styles has expanded to include international film cycles and genres such as romantic comedies, psychological thrillers, police procedurals, among others. This raises important questions about the nature of correspondences between cinema and the city, such as whether New Nollywood genre films tell us anything about social, cultural or historical circumstances in Lagos, or the place the city occupies in the popular imagination, for instance. Recent upmarket film noirs speak, instead, to the evolution of Lagos as a media capital. I examine the different kinds of work genre performs in New and Old Nollywood films and propose a number of ways to critically interpret genre's various registers.
在这篇文章中，我主要关注的是出租车司机(Oriahi, 2015)， Gbomo Gbomo Express (Taylaur, 2015)， Just Not Married (Patrick, 2016)， Ojukokoro (Greed) (Olaitan, 2016)以及Catch。er (taylor, 2017)。这些电影的特点是对聪明的罪犯的描绘，以及对愤世嫉俗性格的培养，这类违法行为显得很时髦，暴力被渲染得很“酷”。几乎所有的故事都是为了骗走别人一大笔钱而策划的，而且还不时出现同伙背后捅刀子、偶然的局势逆转、激烈的武装对峙以及汽车后备箱里惊人数量的尸体。考虑到这些电影所呈现的拉各斯的黑暗形象，人们可能倾向于将这种类型循环解读为拉各斯在历史上所扮演的角色的重申，它是对不安全感、物质不平等和社会崩溃的普遍焦虑的体现。然而，近年来，与上世纪90年代城市危机最严重的时候相比，拉各斯市内的状况有了明显改善，当时拉各斯确实因普遍的不安全和功能失调状况而陷入瘫痪。新瑙莱坞的电影风格已经扩展到包括国际电影周期和类型，如浪漫喜剧、心理惊悚片、警察程序片等。这就提出了关于电影和城市之间对应关系本质的重要问题，例如，新瑙莱坞类型电影是否告诉我们拉各斯的社会、文化或历史环境，或者这个城市在大众想象中的位置。相反，最近的高档黑色电影反映了拉各斯作为媒体之都的演变。我研究了新旧诺莱坞电影中不同类型的工作类型，并提出了一些方法来批判性地解释类型的各种注册。
{"title":"Dark and gritty/slick and glossy: Genre, Nollywood and Lagos","authors":"Connor Ryan","doi":"10.1386/jac_00022_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/jac_00022_1","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In this article, I am concerned principally with Taxi Driver (Oriahi, 2015), Gbomo Gbomo Express (Taylaur, 2015), Just Not Married (Patrick, 2016), Ojukokoro (Greed) (Olaitan, 2016) as well as Catch.er (Taylaur, 2017). These films\u0000 are characterized as much by the depiction of clever criminals as the cultivation of a cynical disposition from which transgressions of this sort appear stylish and violence is rendered 'cool'. Almost all of them turn on a scheme to dupe others of a large sum of money, and are punctuated by\u0000 backstabbing partners in crime, tables turning by chance, edgy armed standoffs and a surprising number of bodies in car trunks. Given the dark portrait of Lagos these films present, one might be inclined to read the genre cycle as a reiteration of the role Lagos has historically played as\u0000 embodiment of popular anxieties concerning insecurity, material inequality and social breakdown. And yet, in recent years, conditions within the city have markedly improved over those of the deepest point of urban crisis in the 1990s when Lagos was, indeed, paralysed by a generalized condition\u0000 of insecurity and dysfunction. New Nollywood's repertoire of film styles has expanded to include international film cycles and genres such as romantic comedies, psychological thrillers, police procedurals, among others. This raises important questions about the nature of correspondences between\u0000 cinema and the city, such as whether New Nollywood genre films tell us anything about social, cultural or historical circumstances in Lagos, or the place the city occupies in the popular imagination, for instance. Recent upmarket film noirs speak, instead, to the evolution of Lagos as a media\u0000 capital. I examine the different kinds of work genre performs in New and Old Nollywood films and propose a number of ways to critically interpret genre's various registers.","PeriodicalId":41188,"journal":{"name":"Journal of African Cinemas","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2019-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44306057","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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