Syllabus
African Safari, 1972, Horace Ové
The Battle of Algiers, 1966, Gillo Pontecorvo
Hyenas, 1992, Djibril Diop Mambéty
Breaded Life, 2021, Biodun Stephen
Candyman, 2021, Nia da Costa
Super Fly, 1972, Gordon Parks Jr.
Do the Right Thing, 1989, Spike Lee
Daughters of the Dust, 1991, Julie Dash
Love is the Message, the Message is Death, 2016, Arthur Jafa
Apex, 2017, Arthur Jafa
Beyoncé: Lemonade, 2016, Beyoncé, Kahlil Joseph
Handsworth Songs, 1986, John Akomfrah
I May Destroy You, 2021, Michaela Coel
Tongues Untied, 1989, Marlon Riggs
Rafiki, 2018, Wanuri Kahiu
Space is the Place, 1974, John Coney
The Last Angel of History, 1996, John Akomfrah
The Black Panther, 2018, Ryan Coogler
Neptune Frost, 2021, Anisia Uzeyman, Saul Williams
Annotation
This seminar will provide introduction to history, politics and traditions of cinematography in selected African countries and African diaspora in the Unites States and Great Britain. Focusing on key directors and films, connections between early Postcolonial, Post Human-Rights era and contemporary filmmaking will be drawn. The class will use decolonial critical perspective to show how African filmmakers employ and reframe western cinematic tradition to tell their own stories.
The course is divided into three parts: The first part will focus on selected film traditions on the African continent - Third Cinema in the newly independent Algeria, Senegalese avantgarde filmmaker Djibril Diop Mambéty and Nollywood films in Nigeria – and the way they reflect postcolonial African reality.
The second part will show how filmmakers in United States undermine power structures of Hollywood genre cinematography by introducing their own genres of Horror Noire and Blaxploitation. The work of independent authors such as Spike Lee, Julie Dash and visual artist Arthur Jafa will reveal history and impact of systemic racism. Meanwhile the rise of racial tensions in the 1980s Great Britain gave birth to film collectives – Black Audio Film Collective, Sankofa – who strategically deployed the languages of film avantgarde to question the British colonial legacies.
The final part of the class will introduce filmmakers, both from Africa and its diaspora, who examine topics of identity and belonging – emerging women filmmakers from Kenya and Rwanda, key works of queer cinematography and/or challenges of British multicultural society. The very last section will be dedicated to a short history of Afrofuturism in film, highlighting mutual exchange of ideas and forms along the shores of the Black Atlantic and through time.