Manthia Diawara

Popular Culture and Oral Traditions in African Film

In spite of the increasing number of African films released in the course of the last 20 years (from Borom Sarret in 1963 to Nyamanton [The Garbage Boys] in 1986), there has not been an African film criticism as enlightening and provocative as the criticism generated by the Brazilian Cinema Novo, the theories of Imperfect Cinema, and the recent debates around Third Cinema. This gap must be filled to overcome the repetitious nature of criticism which has addressed itself to African film in the last

New Perspectives in African Cinema: An Interview with Cheick Oumar Sissoko

Nyamanton is the most recent in a series of important historical developments in African cinema. Independent African cinema was born in Senegal in 1963 with Sembene Ousmanes Borom Sarret. Then in 1968 Sembenes The Money Order made history because, for the first time, Africans were speaking African languages on film. In 1973, Touki-Bouki by Djibril Diop Mamb6ty, also of Senegal, entered history as the first African avant-garde film. In Ceddo (1977) Sembene was internationally acclaimed for the manner in which he made innovations in film language by using the griot or storyteller as the center of narrative agency. In 1983, Finye (The Wind), by Souleymane Ciss6 of Mali, won the top prizes at Ouagadougou and Carthage-the two most important film festivals in Africa -for unprecedented cinematic depiction of current situations including student strikes and military dictatorship. Nyamanton is another landmark in the development of African cinema because it links the politics of ilm production with the aesthetics of African cinema in a new way. Bearing first politics in mind, one must realize that 80% of films in Sub-Saharan Africa are coproduced by the French government. Under this condition, the film-makers crew, the equipment of production and post-production are all from France. Most of the time, only the director and the actors are Africans. It is not hard to understand why France wants to be the biggest producer of African films. Film production enters in the politics of the transfer of technology which France needs to monopolize in Francophone Africa to maintain its post-colonial presence. In addition, the Francophone countries constitute an important economic market for France. If a film-maker turns to Japan or the United States for technological assistance, then an entrepreneur dealing with refrigerators, too, might look for an alternative supplier outside France. From one area to another, the economic leverage of France might be undermined. In the case of film, the consequences would be far-reaching-as far as Paris. The French technicians and the equipment that used to participate in the production of African films would be unemployed. In Francophone Africa, the almost omnipresent French films at the movie heaters might gradually decrease and be replaced by other foreign or domestic films. Nyamanton is the first African film to go against Frances techno-paternalism. Sissoko