Postnationalist African Cinemas

by Alexie Tcheuyap

Overview

Postnationalist African cinemas convincingly interrogates the ways in which African narratives locate postcolonial identities and forms beyond essentially nationalist frameworks. It investigates how the emergence of new genres, discourses and representations, all unrelated to an overtly nationalist project, influences the formal choices made by contemporary directors. By foregrounding the narrative, generic, discursive, representational and aesthetic structures of films, this book shows how directors are beginning to regard film as a popular form of entertainment rather than political praxis. Tcheuyap investigates filmic genres such as comedy, dance, crime and epic alongside cultural aspects including witchcraft, sexuality, pornography and oracles.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780719083365
Publisher:	Manchester University Press
Publication date:	04/01/2011
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	5.43(w) x 8.50(h) x (d)

About the Author

Alexie Tcheuyap is Professor of French and Francophone Studies at the University of Toronto.

Table of Contents

List of images
Acknowledgements
Introduction: African cinema, nationalism and its discontents i African cinema and national(ist) constructions ii Wealth and poverty of nationalist scholarship iii Postnational(ist) imaginary and new paradigms
1. Comedy and film i Comedic archetypes ii Verbal and visual comedy
2. Choreographing subjects i Dance on stage ii Dance, syntax, and discourse
3. Crimes, society and the “commandement”
i Africa and theories of (impossible) crime fiction ii Absent investigation and the triumph of the commandement iii Flawed investigations and the decline of the commandement
4. Myth, tragedy, and cinema i On African cultural “specificity” and tragic forms ii Oedipal conflicts, enemy brothers, and families in crisis iii Absolutism, oracles and the tragic
5. Epic constructions i Narrative performance ii Epic magnification
6. (Un)masked sexuality i African sexuality as category of analysis ii Sex in the nation and the trouble with representation iii Framing bodies and the temptation of pornography
7. Witchcraft and the postcolonial i From sorcery imaginary to the imaginary sorcerer ii Occult side of power, power of the occult
Conclusion: What is African cinema (today)?
Bibliography
Filmography