Cinema of Africa
Cinema of Africa refers to the film industries and films produced in the continent of Africa. It covers both the history and present of the making or screening of films on the African continent, and also refers to the persons involved in this form of audiovisual culture. It dates back to the late 19th century, when film reels were the primary cinematic technology in use. Cairo has been the capital of film industry in Africa since the early 20th century to the present day.
As there are more than 50 countries with audiovisual traditions, there is no one single 'African cinema'. Both historically and culturally, there are major regional differences between North African and sub-Saharan cinemas, and between the cinemas of different countries. The Egyptian film industry and the Tunisian are also among the oldest in the world. Cinema of Egypt in particular is the most established and flourishing industry in Africa. Pioneers Auguste and Louis Lumière screened their films in Alexandria, Cairo, Tunis, Susa, Libya and Hammam-Lif, Tunisia in 1896. Albert Samama Chikly is often cited as the first producer of indigenous African cinema, screening his own short documentaries in the casino of Tunis as early as December 1905.
The first film to be produced was 1923's Barsoum Looking for a Job in Egypt. Alongside his daughter Haydée Tamzali, Chikly would go on to produce important early milestones such as 1924's The Girl from Carthage. In 1927, Egypt produced Laila, the first feature-length film produced by Aziza Amir and directed by Stephan Rosti and Wedad Orfi. In 1935, the Studio Misr in Cairo began producing mostly formulaic comedies and musicals, but also films like Kamal Selim's The Will. Egyptian cinema flourished in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, considered its Golden Age. Youssef Chahine's seminal Cairo Station laid the foundation for Arab film.
The Egyptian film industry is the largest in Africa in terms of revenue and popularity, while the Nigerian film industry is the largest in terms of volume and number of annual films, it is also the second largest film producer in the world. In 2016, Nigeria's film industry contributed 2.3% to its gross domestic product.
History
Colonial era
During the colonial era, Africa was represented largely by Western filmmakers. In the first decades of the twentieth century, Western filmmakers made films that depicted black Africans as "exoticized", "submissive workers" or as "savage or cannibalistic". For example, see Kings of the Cannibal Islands in 1909, Voodoo Vengeance and Congorilla. The first film to be produced was the Egyptian film Barsoum Looking for a Job.File:Barsoum_Looking_for_a_Job__10.jpg|alt=Barsoum Looking for a Job 10|thumb|Bishara Wakim in Barsoum Looking for a Job, the first African film production.
Colonial era films portrayed Africa as exotic, without history or culture. Examples abound and include jungle epics based on the Tarzan character created by Edgar Rice Burrou, and the adventure film The African Queen, and various adaptations of H. Rider Haggard's novel King Solomon's Mines.
One of the first films to be entirely produced in Africa was the South African dramatic film The Great Kimberley Diamond Robbery. It was followed by De Voortrekkers, South Africa's first epic film and oldest surviving film, about the Great Trek and targeted at an Afrikaner audience. A notable theme in early South African cinema was the ethnic confrontation between Afrikaner and British South Africans.
Much early ethnographic cinema "focused on highlighting the differences between indigenous people and the white civilised man, thus reinforcing colonial propaganda". Marc Allégret's first film,Voyage au Congo respectfully portrayed the Masa people, in particular a young African entertaining his little brothers with a baby crocodile on a string. Yet Africans were portrayed merely as human, but not equals; a dialogue card, for example, referred to the movements of a traditional dance as naive. His lover, writer André Gide, accompanied Allégret and wrote a book, also titled Voyage au Congo. Allégret later made Zouzou, starring Josephine Baker, the first major film starring a black woman. Baker had caused a sensation in the Paris arts scene by dancing in the clad only in a string of bananas.
In the French colonies, Africans were prohibited by the 1934 Laval Decree from making films of their own. The ban stunted the growth of film as a means of African expression, political, cultural, and artistic. Congolese Albert Mongita did make The Cinema Lesson in 1951 and in 1953 Mamadou Touré made Mouramani based on a folk story about a man and his dog. In 1955, Paulin Soumanou Vieyra originally from Benin, but educated in Senegal along with his colleagues from Le Group Africain du Cinema, shot a short film in Paris, Afrique-sur-Seine. Vieyra was trained in filmmaking at the Institut des hautes études cinématographiques in Paris, and despite the ban on filmmaking in Africa, was granted permission to make a film in France. Considered the first film directed by a black African, Afrique Sur Seine explores the difficulties of being an African in 1950s France.
Portuguese colonies came to independence with no film production facilities at all, since the colonial government there restricted film-making to colonialist propaganda, emphasizing the inferiority of indigenous populations. Therefore, little thought was given until independence to developing authentic African voices.
In the mid-1930s, the Bantu Educational Kinema Experiment in eastern and south-eastern African countries was conducted in an attempt to "educate the Bantu, mostly about hygiene. Only three films from this project survive; they are kept at the British Film Institute.
Before the colonies' independence, few anti-colonial films were produced. Examples include Statues Also Die by Chris Marker and Alain Resnais, about European theft of African art; the second half of the film was banned for years by the French authorities. The 1950 film Afrique 50 by René Vautier, showed anti-colonial riots in Côte d'Ivoire and in Upper Volta, and was likewise banned, with Vautier being jailed for several months.
File:Lobna_Abdel_Aziz__2.jpg|thumb|Lobna Abdel Aziz in Bride of the Nile
Also doing film work in Africa at this time was French ethnographic filmmaker Jean Rouch, controversial with both French and African audiences. Film documentaries such as Jaguar, Les maitres fous, Moi, un noir and La pyramide humaine. Rouch's documentaries were not explicitly anti-colonial, but did challenge perceptions of colonial Africa and give a new voice to Africans. Although Rouch was accused by Ousmane Sembene and others of seeing Africans "as if they are insects," Rouch was an important figure in the developing field of African film and was the first person to work with Africans, of whom many had important careers in African cinema.
Because most films made prior to independence were egregiously racist in nature, African filmmakers of the independence era, such as Ousmane Sembene and Oumarou Ganda, among others saw filmmaking as an important political tool for rectifying the image of Africans put forward by Western filmmakers and for reclaiming the image of Africa for Africans.
Post-independence and 1970s
The first African film to win international recognition was Sembène Ousmane's La Noire de... also known as Black Girl. It showed the despair of an African woman who has to work as a maid in France. It won the Prix Jean Vigo in 1966. Initially a writer, Sembène had turned to cinema to reach a wider audience. He is still considered the "father of African cinema". Sembène's native Senegal continued to be the most important place of African film production for more than a decade.With the creation of the African film festival FESPACO in today's Burkina Faso in 1969, African film created its own forum. FESPACO now takes place every two years in alternation with the Carthago film festival in Tunisia.
The Pan African Federation of Filmmakers was formed in 1969 to promote African film industries in terms of production, distribution and exhibition. From its inception, FEPACI was seen as a critical partner organization to the Organisation of African Unity, now the African Union. FEPACI looks at the role of film in the politico-economic and cultural development of African states and the continent as a whole.
Med Hondo's Soleil O, shot in 1969, was immediately recognized. No less politically engaged than Sembène, he chose a more controversial filmic language to show what it means to be a stranger in France with the "wrong" skin colour.
1980s and 1990s
's Yeelen was the first film made by a Black African to compete at Cannes. Cheick Oumar Sissoko's Guimba was also well received in the West. Many films of the 1990s, including Quartier Mozart by Jean-Pierre Bekolo, are situated in the globalized African metropolis.Nigerian cinema experienced a large growth in the 1990s with the increasing availability of home video cameras in Nigeria, and soon put Nollywood in the nexus for West African English-language films. Nollywood produced 1844 movies in 2013 alone.
The last movie theatre in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo, shut down in 2004. Many of the former cinemas were converted to churches. In 2009 the UN refugee agency screened Breaking the Silence in South Kivu and Katanga Province. The film deals with rape in the Congolese civil wars In neighboring Brazzaville, Republic of the Congo, a 200-seat cinema, MTS Movies House, opened in 2016, and in April 2018, construction began on another new cinema.
A first African Film Summit took place in South Africa in 2006. It was followed by FEPACI 9th Congress. The Africa Movie Academy Awards were launched in 2004, marking the growth of local film industries like that of Nigeria as well as the development and spread of the film industry culture in sub-Saharan Africa.