Introduction
(pp. 1-30)
Kenneth W. Harrow

The « Five Formations » of African cinemas under study in this volume all had beginnings shortly after the invention of cinema. This introduction examines the historical background of African cinemas in South Africa; North Africa, including Egypt and the Maghreb; and the Anglophone countries of Ghana and Nigeria, as well as Francophone cinema.

Jacqueline Maingard begins her overview of film production in South Africa with an account of Edgar Hyman, who produced the first moving images in South Africa in 1898 and 1899, with a camera purchased from the Warwick Trading Company in England. Hyman produced films about the Boer War…

African Francophone Cinema
African Francophone Cinema
(pp. 31-80)
Olivier Barlet and Kenneth W. Harrow

The question of influence and horizon of possibilities for Francophone filmmakers is similar to that of other independent filmmakers. The need to finance a film has meant that they have had to turn to government agencies or ministries, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), or funding agencies or sources, each of which has had its own agenda. The degree of freedom any filmmaker might have is partly determined by his or her own autonomy or stature in the profession, and by his or her stubbornness as well as reputation. Thus Sembène Ousmane was largely able to determine the content and direction of his…

Anglophone West Africa: Commercial Video
Anglophone West Africa: Commercial Video
(pp. 81-116)
Jonathan Haynes

In 2003, the South African media conglomerate Multichoice, through its television channel M-Net, launched Africa Magic, a channel devoted to English-language Nigerian Nollywood films (with an admixture of Ghanaian ones), on its subscription Direct Satellite Television (DStv) platform. Africa Magic was being broadcast to forty-one countries in Africa by 2004. Two more channels were added in 2010, showing Nigerian films in the Yoruba and Hausa languages, and in 2011 a channel showing East African movies in Swahili was created. In 2012, M-Net expanded its English-language programming on Africa Magic to five channels, including programming from South Africa and across the…

Egypt: Cinema and Society
Egypt: Cinema and Society
(pp. 117-174)
Viola Shafik

With a total output of more than 3,000 full-length films since 1923, the Egyptian film industry, or the « Hollywood on the Nile, » created a commercial and export-oriented genre cinema based on a local star system and on private investment. Since then, its primary customers have been the neighboring Arab-speaking countries. More recently, Egypt’s cinematic output has been complemented by electronic media productions, including talk shows, quiz shows, variety shows, TV serials (musalsalat), and numerous Arab TV channels, in particular those of the cinema Arabian Peninsula, and this despite of an increasing competition in the Arab market and a visible diversification…

The Rise and Fall and Rise Again of the Cinemas of the Maghreb: From the 1960s to the New Millennium
The Rise and Fall and Rise Again of the Cinemas of the Maghreb: From the 1960s to the New Millennium
(pp. 175-240)
Valérie K. Orlando

This chapter offers a reflection on the constantly shifting parameters of the film industry in the countries of the Maghreb¹-Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia-since the dawn of their revolutionary movements and subsequent independences. The « cinemas of the Maghreb » is a term imbued with significant meanings, as notes Patricia Caillé, who contextualizes the region and its film culture in the following manner:

The « cinemas of the Maghreb » refer by default to a common geographical area (the Maghreb) as well as to a common language (Arabic) even though different dialects are used in different countries, to a series of colonizations, the…

Film Production in South Africa: Histories, Practices, Policies
Film Production in South Africa: Histories, Practices, Policies
(pp. 241-280)
Jacqueline Maingard

When the entrepreneur Isidore W. Schlesinger began the steady construction of his cinema empire in South Africa in 1913, which was to last more than four decades, he perceived, and believed in, the economic potential of the new tools of modernity and their ability to attract audiences. His enterprise was first geared to white audiences in the form of lavish feature film productions, as well as shorts and newsreel. By the 1920s, he was already turning his entrepreneurship not only to the service of the state but also the industrial and commercial sectors. Schlesinger’s African Film Productions (AFP) played a…