African cinema: troubling the (cinematic world) order

Authors

  • Kenneth W. Harrow Michigan State University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.22475/rebeca.v5n2.418

Keywords:

Cinemas africanos, Cinema Mundial, Lixo, Nollywood

Abstract

Kenneth Harrow proposes to situate that new formulation of the world cinema—“transnational” or “global-local”—, in relationship to those African cinemas that are both continuing in the directions undertaken with the ascension of Third Cinema and national liberation (from Ousmane Sembène to Jean-Marie Téno), to the experimental, avant-gardist approaches of Jean-Pierre Bekolo, Mahamat-Saleh Haroun and Andy Amadi Okoroafor, and the populist cinemas of the video film industries, most notably Nollywood. The paradigms evoked by Krings and Okome (2013), and by Diawara (2010), provide an opening to the central question of how the range of filmmaking practices in Africa today, from serious Independent films to Nollywood style mini-industries, requires a reconceptualization of the new transnational notions of globalization (DUROVICOVA & NEWMAN, 2010). The article carries further the work initiated earlier by the author (HARROW, 2012), emphasizing the necessity to formulate a perspective on African films grounded in systems of value that function “isomorphically.” Normative values to be destabilized by the introduction of African films to their corpus, will be those underlying “World Cinema.” 

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Author Biography

Kenneth W. Harrow, Michigan State University

Kenneth W. Harrow é professor titular (“distinguished”) do departamento de Inglês da Michigan State University, nos Estados Unidos. Com mestrado em inglês (1966) e doutorado (1970) em literatura comparada pela New York University, ele especializou-se em estudos pós-coloniais e no cinema e na literatura da África e das diásporas. Dentre seus diversos livros publicados, os mais recentes são Postcolonial African Cinema: From Political Engagement to Postmodernism (2007) e Trash! A Study of African Cinema Viewed from Below (2013). Em 2011, ele recebeu o prêmio de “africanista distinto” (Distinguished Africanist Award) na Conferência Anual de Toyina Falola na Universidade do Texas. Como professor e pesquisador premiado pela Fundação Fulbright, ele esteve em Camarões (1977-1979) e no Senegal (1982-1983 e 2005-2006).

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Published

2017-03-31

Issue

Vol. 5 No. 2 (2016): REBECA 10

Section

Reviews and Translations

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