Week #3--Films from Continental Africa

Hi all,
I was supposed to have posted this immediately after class last week, so I apologize for the delay.

Also, I will be posting these writings on the blog from now on instead of distributing them in class. You will still receive the questions to consider while watching the film in class.

DONTE

Week #3—Films from Continental Africa

As we watched a couple of films last week from Oscar Micheaux, we saw an example of a Black filmmaker attempting to present Black people in a more dignified manner. His presentation of Black middle-class life, more so than anything as a model for other Black people to follow, was also designed to attack the caricatures that convinced dominant audiences that Black people were void of any humanity or responsibility. Moreover, it further justified people’s reasons for enabling a climate of racial terror. While Micheaux may present a diversity of Black people onscreen in terms of class stratification, it nevertheless is impacted by an internalization of White supremacy, as the lighter-skinned characters demand more identification and empathy throughout the film.
As important as the topics addressed by Locke, Green, and Bernstein are, something that is also important in relation to class is how filmmakers overall fit in class stratification. Green argues that Black filmmakers were denied access into mainstream bourgeois society because their films didn’t circulate as widely with those audiences as they did with Black audiences, magnifying the different class scale that exists within these disparate racial communities. What contributed to this limited circulation was the fact that Black filmmakers such as Micheaux had to take on so many responsibilities in order to get their films made, working outside the margins of the Hollywood system while it was in its infancy. In addition to writing, producing and directing, Micheaux also had to court studios and theatres in order to garner an audience for his films, even if it was just a predominately Black one. Until the boom of Blaxploitation films (which we will begin to discuss next week), Black filmmakers were limited to this path to gain an audience.
The readings that pertain to today’s film (by Pfaff, Diawara, and Vieyra) discuss issues concerning distribution, solidarity amongst filmmakers, and transferring ancient African traditions to cinema within a colonial context. Today’s film, Black Girl, directed by Ousmane Sembene, provides a commentary on colonialism and its legacy as it focuses on Diouana, a Senegalese woman deceptively hired to be a domestic as opposed to being a child care giver, her initial reason for taking the job. As the French family she works for position her in condescending situations, Diouana silently resists their demands in spite of how vulnerable it makes her. While it is important to think about the historical moment in which this film is set, especially given the fact that it was made during a time where African countries were gaining independence from European colonialism (note the reference to Patrice Lumumba, the president of Congo who was brutally murdered after being forcefully removed from office), it is also important to think of this film in the context of the other topics mentioned above. Once you have watched the film, think of how the oral tradition of storytelling is reconfigured through cinema, especially in particular to Sembene. What do his characters represent, and how does this narrative reflect what is common in African storytelling? Also, given the transitional period of African liberation, why was it considered important for African filmmakers throughout the continent to unify in terms of production, distribution, and exhibition? Plus, consider what barriers were placed to keep African filmmakers from showing films in their own country.