2008) that specified “women cineastes” (Kelly & Robson 2014).
The increased migration of Africans to North America for study and work, coupled with the coming-of-age of Africans born and/or raised in the African diasporas of the West have resulted in changing dynamics in the construction of identities and their politics. These conditions have informed how African women are utilising cinema to examine their social, political and cultural location, which is contextualised within the larger framework of post-colonialism, encompassing a Duboisian ‘double consciousness’ (Du Bois 1903) and a Fanonian ‘black skin white mask’ (Fanon 1967). As early as 1972, Safi Faye explored the notion of dual identity in the film La Passante, as a young woman navigates between French and Senegalese cultures. More than a generation later, Afro-Europeans – born and/or raised in the West, who have both European and African parents, or who have migrated to Europe (and now call it home) – also negotiate an Afro-European identity. However, these contemporary filmmakers pose questions on the contemporary issues of nationality, citizenship, integration, clandestine migration and the plight of the sans-papiers. And, not unlike their elders, layered within these themes are also questions of Euro-centred aesthetics, values and attitudes about beauty, culture, dress and behaviour. Filmmakers of this generation include Franco-Burkina Fasoan Sarah Bouyain (Children of the White Man, 2000 and The Place In Between, 2010); Franco-Congolese Claude Haffner (Footprints of My Other, 2011); Belgo-Congolese Pauline Mulombe (Everyone has Reasons to be Angry with their Mother, 2010); Paris-based Rwandan Jacqueline Kalimunda (About Braids, 2003); and Cameroonian Pascale Obolo (La Femme Invisible, 2008).
While much focus has been placed on African filmmakers who migrate to European metropoles to work, there is also an increasing number of filmmakers who journey to North America, both to Canada and to the United States. Furthermore, the 1990s witnessed a first generation of ‘hybrids’, born in the USA to African parents, who are grappling with and confronting issues of duality and fragmentation, as well as notions of home. Among these are Eritrean-American Asmara Beraki (Anywhere Else, 2012) and Sierra Leonean-American Nikyatu Jusu (African Booty Scratcher, 2008).
Identity has been a persistent theme in African filmmaking since its inception. The idea of a ‘triple consciousness’ explored by Akosua Adoma Owusu problematises the theme of dual identities in Me Broni Ba (2009), and is a more recent phenomenon experienced by this generation. They are not among the historical African diaspora known as African-American, yet are not wholly African in the sense of culture and language. None the less, they embrace both cultures and view the world much more universally, including their ancestral homes as part of the measure of their identities. On the other hand, the omnipresence of ‘African-American’ history and culture encourages an identification with this dominant ethnic minority that is so present and defined in the culture of the US.
The first decade of the new millennium witnessed the rise to preeminence of the Internet and the digital dominance of new media, which have become essential to the work of African women film practitioners. Websites and blogs are a popular means to showcase artists’ statements, biographies, filmographies and trailers. Online video hosting and sharing sites such as YouTube, Dailymotion and Vimeo have enormous potential in the areas of African film spectatorship and distribution. The phenomenal success of social networking utilities such as Facebook and Twitter has also not gone unnoticed by African filmmakers. On a continent that has been frustrated by the difficulties of communication, these digital platforms have been an important means for networking, especially to exchange current information and up-to-the-minute activity. This burst of energy fostered by these unprecedented media tools may indeed suggest that a new era has begun. While this is an exciting and potentially game-changing development, it must be viewed with equal caution as the digital divide continues to plague Africa in particular. As the Internet becomes the standard for communication, those in the more impoverished parts of the African continent who have limited access to these communication capabilities will be rendered less visible or left out completely.
At the start of the second decade of the millennium the African Union declared 2010–2020 the African Women’s Decade. Since the end of the UN Decade for Women in 1985, the achievements of a generation have come to fruition. The hope is that the efforts of women since the inception of African cinema some half a century ago will continue to serve as a model for this generation of women who, having learnt important lessons from their elders, will forge ahead into a future that has many more opportunities, resources and possibilities.
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Ellerson, B. ‘Towards an African Women in Cinema Studies’. Journal of African Cinemas. 4.2. (2012): 221—228.
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NOTES
1 Versions of this article have been published in: Kelly & Robson (2014) and in Ellerson (2012).
2 See Institut Panos Afrique de l’Ouest (The Panos Institute West Africa). ‘Femmes africaines des médias: Portraits de journalists et de cinéastes africaines’. January 2005. [Online]. Available: http://www.panos-ao.org/ipao/IMG/Femmes_Afric_Medias.pdf (accessed 1 March 2014).
3 While in Moscow, Maldoror met the late Ousmane Sembene, who is regarded as the father of African cinema, while studying on a scholarship at the Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography (VGIK) (formerly known as the All- Union-State Institute of Cinematography). Josephine Woll traces the connection between the Soviet Union and francophone African filmmakers who trained there, noting that in the 1960s and 1970s the Soviet Union offered support to sub-Saharan African countries (In Pfaff 2004).
4 Interview with author, February 1997 at FESPACO in Ouagadaougou,Burkina Faso.
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