African Cinema: Between the Old and the New - PDF

African Cinema: Between the “Old” and the “New” Author(s): Mbye Cham Source: Black Camera , Fall 2020, Vol. 12, No. 1, African Cinema: Manifesto & Practice for Cultural Decolonization, Part I (Fall 2020), pp. 133-139 Published by: Indiana University Press Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10...

African Cinema: Between the “Old” and the “New” Author(s): Mbye Cham Source: Black Camera , Fall 2020, Vol. 12, No. 1, African Cinema: Manifesto & Practice for Cultural Decolonization, Part I (Fall 2020), pp. 133-139 Published by: Indiana University Press Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/blackcamera.12.1.11 JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms Indiana University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Black Camera This content downloaded from 196.21.233.72 on Wed, 04 Jun 2025 15:36:29 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms African Cinema: Between the “Old” and the “New” Mbye Cham As we mark and celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of FESPACO this year, I want to dig up and share a short essay I wrote back in 1998, reflecting on trends and tenden- cies then in African cinema, focusing basically on continuities, ruptures and transfor- mations in African filmic practices over time. Although the specific time frame I was dealing with in that essay is now more than two decades past, I want to believe that the general concepts and dynamics highlighted in the essay are useful today as we take stock of and engage the very exciting shifts or lack thereof (positive or not so positive) in just about all areas of African film practices since the dawn of the new millennium. Here is what I wrote back in 1998. N ot unlike many film and narrative cultures in other parts of the world, African cinema is marked by a relatively substantial degree of inter- textuality, a description I use here to refer to the many ways in which the ensemble of films that constitute the current corpus of African cinema relate to one another, and particularly the ways in which certain recent African films relate to earlier ones, be it by way of repetition, revision, sampling, parody or transgression, or a combination of these and a few others. Many of the recent films entertain specific types of relations to ones that preceded them. They may exhibit characteristics and features (in terms of subject matter, theme, style and language) that may elicit the label of ‘new,’ but they also resonate in various ways with elements that characterize many earlier films. Convention as well as ‘common sense’ have it that few things under the sun are really new, and that few things occur in a vacuum, without reference or relationships to antecedents, whether conscious, willful, purposeful or not, and certainly, the realm of African cinema yields its own modes, patterns, and rationales of referencing, resonances and relationships. These are varied and complex, embracing not just the relations on a variety of levels between ‘old’/pioneer/first generation films and young- er/‘new generation’ films, but also the ways in which these two categories of Mbye Cham, “African Cinema: Between the ‘Old’ and the ‘New,’” Black Camera: An International Film Journal 12, no. 1 (Fall 2020): 133–139, doi: 10.2979/blackcamera.12.1.11. This content downloaded from 196.21.233.72 on Wed, 04 Jun 2025 15:36:29 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 134 BLACK CAMERA 12:1 films engage the resources of African indigenous artistic and popular tradi- tions, in particular, as well as other, mainly western, traditions and practices. They also involve relations between films made by the same director over a period of time. How do recent films such as Tableau Feraille (1999, Senegal) by Moussa Sène Absa, Clando (1996) by Jean-Marie Téno, Asientos (1995, Cameroon) by François Woukoache and Pièces d’ldentité (1998, Cameroon) by Ngangura Mweze, for example, stand in relation to earlier films such as Xala (1973, Senegal) by Ousmane Sembène, Soleil-O (1971, Mauritania) by Med Hondo, Reau Takh (1972, Senegal) by Mahama Johnson Traoré and Black Goddess (1975, Nigeria) by Ola Balogun, respectively? How do all of these films implicate their respective indigenous and other traditions of creative practice? And what lines of filiation can we trace in the work of, say, Senegal’s Safi Faye, from Lettre Paysanne (1976) to Mossane (1997), or between Wend Kuuni (1982) and Buud Yam (1997) by Gaston Kaboré of Burkina Faso and can we label Borom Sarret (1963, Senegal) the template on which the rest of Sembène’s subsequent film work is erected? I believe that pondering such questions can shed much light on issues of continuity, change, rupture and novelty in African cinema practices. Such issues have always preoccupied African filmmakers from the very start in the late 1960s and early 1970s. They persist to the present moment, and filmmakers and others continue to debate the myriad challenges that have perennially faced them, as they explore paths and strategies that could possibly enable them to break out of the confined spaces within which they have been operating thus far. For some of the younger ones, especially, the answer is a clean break with the past, the imperative of new directions, the urgency to install new modes of signification for African films to become more ‘commer- cially viable’, more appealing to audiences, both in and out of the continent, in short, to become more ‘Cinema’, period, more ‘universal.’ Such pronounce- ments of the imperative of change and renewal, of a different and viable and truly African cinema have always been a prominent feature of the creative and activist agenda of African filmmakers, evident in the numerous mani- festos (Algiers 1975, Niamey 1982, and others thereafter), as well as group- ings such as the Comité Africain des Cinéastes (Med Hondo, Ousmane Sembène, Tahar Cheriaa, Lionel Ngakane, Haile Gerima etc., the so-called “Les Anciens”) whose purpose was/is the advancement on all fronts of African cinema. Such pronouncements also animated the short-lived moves in the early and mid-1980s of the group of then young filmmakers (Cheick Naigdo Ba of Senegal, Gaston Kaboré of Burkina Faso, then still Upper Volta, Kramo Lanciné Fadika of Côte d’Ivoire, and many others) who mobilized under the banner of L’Oeil Vert to militate for new directions and practices for African cinema. Whether the results (textually speaking) matched the vigor of the rhetoric is a matter of debate. Cheick Ngaido Ba, one of the leading and most This content downloaded from 196.21.233.72 on Wed, 04 Jun 2025 15:36:29 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Mbye Cham / Between the “Old” and the “New” 135 vocal advocates of L’Oeil Vert went on to make Xew Xew (1984) before drop- ping out to become a political operator in Senegal; Gaston Kaboré came out with Zan Boko (1988), followed by a series of shorts and his latest feature, Buud Yam (1997), which can be seen as perhaps the first ‘sequel’ in African cinema; and Kramo Lanciné Fadika, after winning the Étalon de Yennenga for his film Djeli at FESPACO 1983 from Ivory Coast, followed with his most recent feature, Wariko (1994). How new and different are these in relation to earlier ones by the same directors as well as by other directors? When we consider the ensemble of issues animating current debates referred to above, are there elements that constitute a throwback to the recent period of the early and mideighties and before? What is new in ‘new’ recent African films? Commentaries by some filmmakers and critics on recent African films posit novelty and difference [thematic as well as formal] as hallmarks of the recent productions of the nineties, which, in turn, signal shifts and depar- tures in relation to their predecessors of the early days of African cinema of the 1960s and 1970s. Among many other elements, they draw attention to acceleration in the pace of some recent films (as opposed to the slow rhythm and pace of earlier ones), higher production values (as opposed to lower quality visuals, sounds, scenario), their urban, cosmopolitan, and metro- politan locales (as opposed to the predominantly rural, ‘bush’ locations of earlier films), their unabashed referencing and appropriation of western, particularly African American and MTV-type, hip-hop styles and languages (as opposed to narrow ethnic references), their more open engagement with and display of gender and sexuality (as opposed to a certain prudishness of earlier films), their embrace of hybridity, racial and cultural, as the direction of the future (as opposed to a narcissist and essentialist racial, ethnic, and cultural nationalism), their stress on the individual and desire (as opposed to the communal focus and concerns of preceding films), their deemphasis of or flight from politics and ideology (as opposed to an obsession with nation- alist politics and ideology and grand narratives of oppression and liberation characteristic of earlier films). In short, the absence of marks of the older films in the new ones is figured as a significant difference, which brings the latter closer to what is considered ‘normal’ or more ‘universal’ cinema, thus increasing their fortunes in the normal circuits, both domestic and beyond. And in this lies, to a degree, the future development of African cinema. As with the case of L’Oeil Vert, I believe time will be the arbiter of such prognosis. In the meantime, I want to subject some of these observations to some scrutiny to see what patterns emerge from juxtaposing old and new films. I am not interested in invidious comparisons, for such undertakings yield little of value in attempts to situate and understand the nature of the ties or lack thereof between recent and earlier African films, nor am I suggesting a stasis, a lack of movement in African cinema as a whole from earlier times to the This content downloaded from 196.21.233.72 on Wed, 04 Jun 2025 15:36:29 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 136 BLACK CAMERA 12:1 present in my argument that traces of the old mark the new in many ways. I am not speaking of influence of the old on the new, either, even though such influences have been acknowledged and can be traced and identified in some cases. Not to speak about the relations between the old and the new in terms of influence helps avoid the trap of erecting the old as norm, as the yard- stick with which to measure recent films which should be taken on their own terms. The relations are dialogic and dynamic, I believe, and the many ways in which the old is manifest in the new are, to my mind, complex, produc- tive and transformative. In this view, the old is regenerated with a differ- ence within the framework of different or even new orientations and styles. Remakes and sequels are rare, even non-existent, in African cinema at the moment. With the exception of Buud Yam which, in spite of Kaboré’s initial resistance, many spectators and critics consider Wend Kuuni Part 2, I cannot at the moment recall any other two or more African films by the same or different directors that can be placed together in this manner. Although Djibril Diop-Mambéty characterizes his work in terms of two sets of tril- ogies, one set of his feature films dealing with power and insanity, Touki Bouki (1973), Hyènes (1992) and the projected Malaika (interrupted due to his untimely death in August 1998), and the other set of his recent short films labeled “Tales of Ordinary People,” LeFranc (1994), La Petite Vendeuse du Soleil (1999), and the projected L’Apprenti Voleur (also interrupted), one cannot speak of remake or sequel in this case, either. What obtains, instead, in African cinema generally, especially between old and recent productions, is a complex web of relationships whereby recent films purposefully or uncon- sciously continue, revise, recontextualize, allegorize, parody, contest, and subvert aspects and elements of earlier films at the same time they project new concerns and new styles and expand into hitherto uncharted domains. It is unproductive to speak of a total absolute divorce and disconnect between the old and the new, for such is never the case in any narrative tradi- tion. In African cinema, the odor of the founding fathers is still present. Take an earlier film like Xala and a recent one like Tableau Ferraille. The rise of fall of Daam Diagne narrated in Moussa Sène Absa’s 1997 film Tableau Ferraille invites parallels with the fortunes and fate of El-Hadji Abdou Kader Bèye in Ousmane Sembène’s 1973 feature, Xala. Both films locate their narra- tives within discourses of post-independence betrayals, politico-financial mismanagement, double-dealings and corruption, cultural dislocations, and distortions, and urgency of real individual as well as social transforma- tion. Daam Diagne revises, repeats and re-contextualizes El-Hadji Abdou Kader Bèye in a post-devaluation, World Bank structurally-adjusted Senegal, as does Gagnesiri, Daam’s first wife, Adja Awa Astou, El-Hadji’s first wife. Female agency and subjectivity hinted at in Xala in the revolt of El-Hadji’s second wife, Oumie Ndoye, and signified in the words and acts of El-Hadji’s This content downloaded from 196.21.233.72 on Wed, 04 Jun 2025 15:36:29 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Mbye Cham / Between the “Old” and the “New” 137 daughter, Rama, are given a post-devaluation, mildly womanist, more worldly boost in Tableau Ferraille in the person of Daam’s second wife, Kiné, whose desire for financial freedom (she wishes to open an art gallery and do lots of international travel) lures her to work with her husband’s erstwhile colleagues to eventually bring about his downfall. The narrative strategies of Tableau Ferraille evince instances of repetition with a difference in relation to those of Xala. Both operate within the presentational modes of realism, and a certain linearity mark each narrative movement. However, Tableau Ferraille employs flashback to tell its story through the eyes of Gagnesiri. The cautionary thrust of Xala is very much present in Tableau Ferraille. These elements, as well as numerous others which space does not permit me to detail, enable us to place a new film such as Tableau Ferraille in a frame of continuity, comple- mentarity and revision in relation to an antecedent one such as Xala, as well as another earlier Senegalese film, Sey Seyeti (1980) by Ben Diogaye Bèye. Reou Takh (1972) by Mahama Johnson Traoré, Black Goddess (1978) by Ola Balogun and Asientos (1995) by François Woukoache are related by their overarching concern with slavery and its legacies for Africans as well as people of African descent in the Diaspora. However, the representational codes deployed by Woukoache stand in radical contrast to those used by his predecessors, notwithstanding the imaginary flashback to slavery times in Reou Takh and in Black Goddess. All three films privilege a search motif. Reou Takh anticipates partially the much-heralded Roots TV series of the late 1970s in the US to the extent to which it has an African American return to a now independent Senegal in search of his roots. Black Goddess is a kind of Roots in Reverse. A Nigerian goes back to contemporary Bahia in Brazil in search of descendants of his family captured and taken away during the slave trade. To help his search, he carries with him the piece of a pair of twin carvings that are his family heirloom that remained in Nigeria. The other piece was taken away at the time of capture. Armed with this carving, he succeeds in reconnecting with family on the other side when the other piece is produced and identified. Asientos is also an exercise in reconnec- tion, an imaginary one this time. In Reou Takh, the visit to Gorée Island by the African American protagonist of the film triggers a series of imaginary flashbacks to the times when the island was active as a slave fort, the last point of contact with Africa for the millions of captured Africans on their way across the Middle Passage to the New World of plantation slavery in the Americas. His encounters with contemporary Senegal also reveals the cruel legacies of colonialism, a proximate cousin of slavery, in the social inequi- ties, conflicts and injustices rampant in the society. Reou Takh reconstructs the African past and speaks to her present in the same breath. Asientos repeats this feat, but with signal differences. It retraces the institutions and practices of slavery and inserts them within prevailing discourses of race This content downloaded from 196.21.233.72 on Wed, 04 Jun 2025 15:36:29 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 138 BLACK CAMERA 12:1 and capitalism, all from the point of view of a young African attempting to come to grips with this repressed chapter of history. The film visually revises the image of Gorée Island and, thereby, extends its significance for the present. Like Reou Takh, its most apparent concern is slavery, and to the extent to which the latter is emblematic of human suffering the film posits possible parallels with contemporary abuses of human beings in Africa, in general, with visual references to Ethiopia and Rwanda. It ruminates on the past while linking it to the present, and it poses questions about the future. Unlike the linear realist narrative mode of Reou Takh, Asientos undertakes the task of re-memory, reconstruction and reconnection by means of a skillful and highly imaginative blend of collage (of disparate images, sounds and silence), of documentary and invention, juxtapositions, contrapuntal montage, direct address and rhetorical questions. Its visual style and rhythm endow the film with formal elements that mark it as different, if not ‘new’, relatively speaking. However, in spite of its novelty Asientos bears certain formal and stylistic marks of Djibril Diop-Mambéty’s 1972 classic Touki Bouki as well as Med Hondo’s Soleil-O. Perhaps as to be expected within the oeuvre of any one filmmaker, there is a fair amount of continuity, revision, self-quotation, recontextualization, and transformation evident in the old and recent work of Med Hondo, with his overarching engagement of questions of immigration and resistance. So also in the work of Safi Faye, Haile Gerima, Ousmane Sembène, Idrissa Ouédraogo, Djibril Diop-Mambéty and countless others. The work of Djibril Diop-Mambéty is particularly instructive in this sense, for if one takes a global glance at his films from the earliest to the latest, from Contrast City, Badou Boy, Touki Bouki, Hyenas to Le Franc, the varying modes of rela- tions (formal and thematic continuity, revision, subversion etc.) between them simply impose themselves. Of greater interest for me in the context of this present discussion are the ways younger Senegalese and other film- makers consciously or otherwise position themselves vis-a-vis the thematics, styles, demeanor and orientations of Diop-Mambéty’s work. A clear case in point involves the work of people like Ahmet Diallo, who unfortunately passed away at a young age, Joe Gai Ramaka and, as pointed out earlier, even François Woukoache. Ahmet Diallo’s Boxulmaleen (L’An Fer, 199?), in particular, stands in a relation of parody and revision to films like Contrast City, Badou Boy and Touki Bouki, both from the points of view of subject matter and style. Boxulmaleen constructs a counter society ruled by pread- olescent and young people, a counter culture which mimics, yet simultane- ously parodies and transgresses the institutions, actors, norms, conventions and practices of established society, a staple in the oeuvre of Diop-Mambéty. The radically unconventional tone and temperament of the film echoes Diop- Mambéty’s films. This content downloaded from 196.21.233.72 on Wed, 04 Jun 2025 15:36:29 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Mbye Cham / Between the “Old” and the “New” 139 Some critical circles have hailed Mohamed Camera’s Dakan (1997, Mali) as the first African film to engage frontally and extensively the issue of gay sexuality in African cinema, and other recent films like Jean-Pierre Bekolo’s Quartier Mozart (1992, Cameroon), Fania Nacro’s Puk Nini (1994, Burkina Faso), Adama Drabo’s Tafe Fanga (1997, Mali) and Safi Faye’s Mossane (1996, Senegal) have been held up as instances of African cinema’s jettisoning of prudish attitudes in regard to sex, sexuality and nudity. While accurate to a certain degree, the novelty and difference usually attributed to these films should be given some perspective. In such discussions, it is vital to bring into the picture the many antecedent films that in one way or another prepared the ground for these later films. Dakan’s exposition of homosexuality revises and subverts the somewhat satirical or even stereotypical portrait of African gay sexuality offered in Djibril Diop-Mambéty’s 1972 classic Touki Bouki, as well as the fleeting hint in the character of one of the servants at the wedding celebration in Ousmane Sembène’s 1973 Xala. The bolder and less nuanced displays of heterosexual love scenes and female as well as male nudity in Henri Duparc’s Bal Poussiere (1989, Ivorian), Tafe Fanga, Mossane and Fools (1997, Ivorian) by South African filmmaker Ramadan Suleiman, among many others, stand in a relationship of repetition and revision to similar scenes in forerunner films like Touki Bouki and Desiré Ecaré’s 1985 contro- versial and sexually explicit Visages de Femmes, a film started in the early 1970s but completed more than ten years later in 1985. The corpus of African films made from the 1960s to the present provides ample instances of repetition, revision, and transformation, and we can multiply the examples in the above paragraphs along these and many other lines and levels. What makes this possible is the staying power, appeal, and openings of a great deal of the thinking, practices and examples of the pioneers of African cinema, for within their practices are inscribed elements that invite and compel repetition, revision, subversion, parody, contesta- tion, and change. I believe that we can get a more productive understanding and appreciation of African cinema, particularly the compelling achieve- ments and innovations of the present moment, with such patterns of rela- tions in mind. Mbye Cham is a Professor and former chair of the Center for African Studies at Howard University and co-editor, with Imruh Bakari, of the anthology African Experiences of Cinema. His research interests include oral traditions, modern African literature of West Africa and South Africa, and African and Third World cinema. This content downloaded from 196.21.233.72 on Wed, 04 Jun 2025 15:36:29 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms