« [A] welcome and important addition to the literatures on African cinema, and beyond that, on the praxis of cultural production in Africa and elsewhere. » ­Akin Adesokan, Indiana University

A new critical approach to African cinema one that requires that we revisit the beginnings of African filmmaking and the critical responses to which they gave rise, and that we ask what limitations they might have contained, what price was paid for the approaches then taken, and whether we are still caught in those limitations today.

Table of Contents
Preface: Out with the Authentic, In with the Wazimamoto
Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Creation of a Cinema Engagé
1. Did We Get off to the Wrong Start? Toward an Aesthetic of Surface versus Depth
2. Sembène’s Xala, the Fetish and the Failed Trickster
3. Cameroonian Cinema: Ba Kobhio, Teno, and the Technologies of Power
4. From Jalopy to Goddess: Quartier Mozart, Faat Kine, and Divine Carcasse
5. Toward a Žižekian Reading of African Cinema
6. Aristotle’s Plot: What’s Inside the Can?
7. Finye: The Fantasmic Support
8. Hyenas: Truth, Badiou’s Ethics, and the Return of the Void
9. Toward a Postmodern African Cinema: Fanta Nacro’s « Un Certain Matin » and Djibril Diop Mambéty’s Parlons Grand-mère
Notes
Filmography
Bibliography
Index

« [A] welcome and important addition to the literatures on African cinema, and beyond that, on the praxis of cultural production in Africa and elsewhere. » ­Akin Adesokan, Indiana University

A new critical approach to African cinema one that requires that we revisit the beginnings of African filmmaking and the critical responses to which they gave rise, and that we ask what limitations they might have contained, what price was paid for the approaches then taken, and whether we are still caught in those limitations today.

Table of Contents
Preface: Out with the Authentic, In with the Wazimamoto
Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Creation of a Cinema Engagé
1. Did We Get off to the Wrong Start? Toward an Aesthetic of Surface versus Depth
2. Sembène’s Xala, the Fetish and the Failed Trickster
3. Cameroonian Cinema: Ba Kobhio, Teno, and the Technologies of Power
4. From Jalopy to Goddess: Quartier Mozart, Faat Kine, and Divine Carcasse
5. Toward a Žižekian Reading of African Cinema
6. Aristotle’s Plot: What’s Inside the Can?
7. Finye: The Fantasmic Support
8. Hyenas: Truth, Badiou’s Ethics, and the Return of the Void
9. Toward a Postmodern African Cinema: Fanta Nacro’s « Un Certain Matin » and Djibril Diop Mambéty’s Parlons Grand-mère
Notes
Filmography
Bibliography
Index