Entertaining Africans: Creative Innovation in the (Internet) Television Space

In the growing scholarly literature on internet television, Africa is mentioned tangentially, if at all. This article attempts to rectify this by offering one of the first studies of Africa-based and Africa-focused internet television and video on demand (VOD) for domestic and diasporan African audiences. It begins by giving a brief overview of screen and television infrastructure across Africa before moving on to describe the landscape of internet television in Africa, focusing on six core competitive factors: content, internet connectivity, data costs, payment options, security, and multimedia convergence. Finally, it identifies and briefly analyzes the potentially most popular Africa-based and Africa-focused internet television and VOD platforms. The article draws on original interviews conducted with key players at some of the most important Africa-based and African-focused internet television and VOD platforms and with other African media scholars and filmmakers who have expertise in different regions of the continent (and specifically Senegal, Ethiopia, Angola, Rwanda, and Kenya)

On the Matter of Fiction: An Approach to the Marginalization of African Film Studies in the Global Academy

This article adopts a polemical tone to argue that factual rather than fictional media modes are gradually being privileged globally to the extent that we find ourselves—as academics, but also as citizens—in the grips of a dangerous “regime of truth” (Foucault) that is sequestering the power of the imagination, and specifically the power of fiction. The article focuses on this problematic in the hope that an analysis of some of its dimensions might offer clues as to why African film studies is marginalized today within the global academy, but also within the broader field of African (screen) media studies itself, and what we might try to do about that marginalization. It also argues that it is relevant to consider not only the ways in which we, as African film and media studies scholars, have been marginalized within the broader discipline of film and media studies, but also how we might be contributing to our own marginalization. Engaging fully with contemporary film theory and criticism, not treating Africa as an exceptional space to the rest of the globe, participating in the current move towards exploring the complex, trans-national currents and relationships through which films are made, bringing African examples to people’s attention within broader studies of narrative, genre, and media institutions—these are all moves that the article argues we need to take more decisively

Listening Between the Images: African Filmmakers’ Take on the Soviet Union, Soviet Filmmakers’ Take on Africa

This article explores the relationships between African filmmakers and communism during the Cold War period, with a particular focus on those African filmmakers who were trained in the Soviet Union, such as Sarah Maldoror, Ousmane Sembene, and Abderrahmane Sissako. The essay argues that, while affinities can be found between the work of African and Soviet filmmakers, these relationships were often compromised by utopian assumptions of “brotherhood” or racism—an issue frequently critiqued by African filmmakers in their films through creating tension between images and soundtrack. The analysis thus foregrounds the aural language of film, the sonic contexts in which films are made and viewed, and the language(s) in which research is conducted, to emphasize how the aural is an important aspect of the visual even in its absence, and to sound a note of caution against overly celebratory accounts of transnational film relationships

Intermediality in Academia: Creative Research through Film

This article provides an overview of the recent flourishing of research and pedagogy in higher education that seeks a greater rapprochement between criticism and creativity, bringing together diverse media, disciplines, and modes of knowledge production and expression. It focuses on transformations in film and screen studies and on the ethical and aesthetic possibilities of conducting creative, intermedial research through filmmaking, drawing on the author’s recent, first-hand experiences of conducting such research through her making of two films about the African women filmmakers Judy Kibinge (from Kenya) and Bongiwe Selane (from South Africa). The author gives specific examples from her filmmaking process to show how she has attempted to unsettle the generic space between documentary filmmaking, curatorial practice, and video-essay making to engage in a collaborative research practice with Kibinge, Selane, and their communities, as well as her research teams. Grounding itself in a decolonial feminist framework, this article draws on the perspectives of a wide range of thinkers and filmmaker scholars to explore ways in which the colonial, patriarchal values that have haunted many academic institutions can be reformed to allow for the envisioning of new futures that will lead to a more self-reflexive, socially just higher education environment

On Teaching and Being Taught: Reflections on Decolonising Pedagogy

In this deeply personal article, Lindiwe Dovey explores ways of decolonising teaching and pedagogy through reflecting in particular on her own lived experiences and positioning as both student and teacher. Through embedding in her writing photographs and film clips that encapsulate important moments in her life, she tries to foreground her own, embodied journey as a white-classifed South African who has been immersed for twenty years in the study and curation of African film. This foregrounding is a vital gesture as a response to decolonial theory that calls for acknowledgement of subjectivity in any research process, and as a way of submitting the writing ‘self’ to scrutiny rather than neutralising and rendering its gaze at ‘others’ invisible. Rather than simply writing about African filmmaking as ‘object’, here Dovey interrogates what attracted her to this field and her own close relationship with it as ‘subject’. At the heart of the article she describes a painful teaching experience that compelled her to try to decolonise her curriculum and pedagogical style through changing her syllabus, collaborating with others (including her “students”), and engaging with the work of decolonial thinkers (for example, bell hooks and Jill Carter) and filmmakers (for example, Philippa Ndisi-Herrmann)

The Asian-Asian Film Connection: Cross-Cultural Imaginaries, Shared Sources, Parallel Histories (introduction to special issue of same name)

This Dossier is inspired by two urgent needs in Film and Screen Studies, particularly within the UK context, but also globally – the need to transform the content of what we research and teach, and the need to transform the methodologies through which we research and teach. The articles presented here emerged out of “The Asian-African Film Connection” workshop held at SOAS University of London in July 2018 – an event specifically designed to bring UK-based African and Asian film scholars into conversation with one another, to explore cinematic sources, themes and aesthetics that both link and divide these two regions

Toward Decolonized Film Festival Worlds

This chapter is in part a manifesto and in part an engagement with the thinking and practice already re-shaping film festivals in this era of decolonization and Covid-19. We take as a starting point and analyze the provocative docu-fiction film titled Film Festival Film (dir. Perivi Katjavivi and Mpumelelo Mcata, 2019, South Africa) which raises myriad, difficult, and enduring questions about film festivals and contemporary film culture. Reading the provocations of this film alongside our own respective research into and work with film festivals and film curation (mostly in relation to African filmmaking), we then put ourselves into conversation with 22 film festival curators and filmmakers around the world who have shared their experiences with us, as well as with recent decolonial theorizing (by, e.g., Ndlovu-Gatsheni, Mignolo and Walsh). The chapter grapples with questions such as what does decolonization mean in relation to contemporary film culture? What would decolonized film festival worlds look like? And what have film practitioners learned from their work during the Covid-19 pandemic that might help us to collectively realize those worlds? In this way, we try to chart the significant work being done by many people to build more inclusive, sustainable, decolonized film cultures