Similar to the beginnings of an early African-American cinema in the 1910s and 1920s, the emergence of an African cinema in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s grew out of a population’s desire to tell their own stories. Early African filmmakers who were able learn how to use cinematic technology, particularly from Francophone West Africa, looked to traditions of oral storytelling from their respective countries as a source for the kinds of projects they wanted to make. Filmmakers also were compelled to comment on the current transitions within many African countries, in which they were obtaining liberation from European colonial rule. Both of these sources inform the three kinds of film genres associated with African cinema. One genre is the semi-documentary film, in which colonialism is depicted in a way that focuses on how residents of colonized countries overcome colonial rule. Another genre is the didactic/fictional film, in which the colonial relationship between European and African countries is depicted in a Manichean manner, primarily good vs. evil, or, more directly, over-resourced European nations and under-resourced African nations. The African nations, or characters, are depicted as returning to their indigenous roots as a way to solve their problems. The research film is another genre out of African cinema that is more focused on identifying the root causes to problems throughout African countries, and developing solutions that can confront these adversities. Research films are more so determined by depicting changes that could have a tremendous impact on how African countries could be depicted.
Ousmane Sembene’s "Black Girl (La Noire de…)", released in 1966, would be classified as a didactic-fictional film because he directly confronts the topic of colonial relations between Senegal and France. Through the relationship between a Senegalese domestic, Diouana, and the French couple that hires her, Sembene points to the distinct contrast between the vicarious fascination that Western popular culture prompts, and the position in which African citizens are truly shown. This contrast is further illustrated through how France is depicted in the magazines shown in Diouana’s flashbacks to Senegal, and the glimpse out of the window in the apartment where she works. Instead of the urban environment she imagines, Diouana is surrounded by white walls and captured in tight spaces. Sembene also incorporates traditions of griot storytelling, in that he uses the film to reflect contemporary issues and situations that residents of Senegal face, which largely explains why his characters represent more or less social types so that he can make effective social commentaries on colonial relations and interactions within Senegalese society itself along the lines of class and religion.
African filmmakers joined with organizations such as FEPACI as far back as the late ‘60s so that they would be able to participate, and ultimately control, the infrastructure of film production, distribution, and exhibition within continental Africa. Many of these filmmakers could not get their films shown in their native countries because organizations from outside of the continent controlled the block-booking system, which determined what kinds of films would be shown in theaters. SECMA and COMACICO felt that works by African filmmakers would detract from the profits they earned from showing movies from Europe and the United States. Resources for distribution (CIDC), production (CIPROFILM), and exhibition (film festivals such as FESPACO in Burkina Faso and Festival Panafricain de la Culture in Algiers) would be gained over the next day, until adjustments had to be made to challenge government censorship and identify other sources of funding.
The control over resources for production, distribution, and exhibition, in addition to representation, continued to be a struggle for African-American filmmakers well into the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. Melvin Van Peebles’s "Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song" (1971) was an effort to take initiative on all of those fronts, as he wrote, produced, scored, directed, and starred in the film with no studio funding or distribution. His film was designed to embody the rhetoric of the Black Power and Black Arts movements, in which the artistic production and sociopolitical activity reflected a movement towards self-determination and self-identity without the concerns of dominant White American society. The film addressed the notion of domestic colonialism, largely reflected through Sweetback’s role as a sex laborer who runs for his life after he beats two detectives unconsciously to save the life of a local revolutionary. Van Peebles also sought to disrupt the desexualized representations of Black men onscreen at that moment (i.e. Sidney Poitier), which explains the aggressive sexual content throughout. Some of the more sensationalist conventions from "Sweetback" would be appropriated by Hollywood studios that saw the money that Van Peebles’ film had made, and they wanted to replicate similar box office returns, given that mainstream movies at this time were losing money. It is important to think this week how about how an independently made film would give way to a new genre of studio-sponsored action films that starred Black characters, which would become know as blaxploitation.
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Week #3—Films from Continental Africa
Oscar Micheaux’s Within Our Gates is a dynamic film to begin our semester because it immediately brings to mind four topics. First, Micheaux tackles the subject of lynching with tremendous urgency, given that he released the film months after the Red Summer of 1919, in which there were a string of lynching that took place in more than twenty cities. Secondly, Micheaux was one of few, if any, directors who examined interracial romantic unions in the 20th century. The scene in which we learn that Sylvia Landry’s assailant is her biological father addresses disputes the myths of biracial women as sexually assertive and manipulative, and the justification that lynching was used to protect innocent White women from sexually uncontrollable Black men. Formally, Micheaux achieves this through the use of crosscutting, as shown when he cuts between Sylvia trying to aggressively escape Armand Gridlestone and the burning of the Landry family after they are lynched. The series of events takes place during a flashback that does not appear until the film’s third act. Although his central character is a woman, Micheaux also provides a cinematic image of the “Race Man,” a Black man who reflects model social and cultural values that reflect upward class mobility and the desire to establish a Black middle-class that disrupts the caricatures circulated of African Americans as inherently incompetent and willfully compliant to their suppression, or eternal victims of exploitative labor practices (i.e. sharecropping/tenant farming). Micheaux himself presents two characters, Eph and Old Ned, who would most likely be identified as caricatures, yet they are used to reveal the consequences of racial betrayal, physically and internally.
One of the most striking observations in Gates is the transfer between spaces, identified as North (urban) and South (rural). The correspondence between these locations point to two major moments in the early 20th century for African Americans: the Great Migration and the Harlem Renaissance. As early as 1915, African Americans migrated from the South to escape both racial terror and labor exploitation in search of new economic and social opportunities in Northeastern and Midwestern Cities. One specific location, Harlem (a section of Manhattan in New York City), would embody a variety of new arrivals of African descent within and outside the United States. Whether through artistic expression or economic autonomy, African Americans sought to project a set of values and demeanor that directly contradicted the image circulated after slavery through song, stage, film, and even consumer items.
Critics and scholars attribute Within Our Gates to be an example of a film created during the first decade of filmmaking activity amongst African Americans (1910-1919). In continental Africa, African filmmakers did not emerge until the 1960s, as the countries from which they hailed were gaining independence from European colonial rule. One of the most profound filmmakers to emerge would be Ousmane Sembene of Senegal, a novelist who used his film training from Russia to adapt his books into films. Sembene is more so credited for transferring the storytelling traditions of the griot to cinema, both in the structure of the narrative and its outcome. In Black Girl (La Noire de…), Sembene uses the conventions of the griot to examine the placement of a Senegalese domestic in the home of a French family. He reveals that the ideas that his central character, Diouana, had about working as an au pair in France, are quickly shattered. It is important to examine how her situation is a commentary on the colonial relationship between Senegal and France, and what the promises this relationship has to offer reveals about its realities.
Black Girl (La Noire de…) (1966)
Dir. Ousmane Sembene
Questions to consider while watching Black Girl:
1. What role does the mask play in the film? How is it reflective of the relationship between Diouana and the family that has hired her?
2. How are flashbacks used by Sembene throughout the film? What correspondence do they have with Diouana’s internal dialogue?
3. Sembene includes scenes in the film between Diouana and her boyfriend in Senegal. What kind of Senegalese citizen does he represent, and what are some contrasts between him and Diouana?
4. What are some examples of silent resistance that Diouana practices while working as a domestic?
Oscar Micheaux’s Within Our Gates is a dynamic film to begin our semester because it immediately brings to mind four topics. First, Micheaux tackles the subject of lynching with tremendous urgency, given that he released the film months after the Red Summer of 1919, in which there were a string of lynching that took place in more than twenty cities. Secondly, Micheaux was one of few, if any, directors who examined interracial romantic unions in the 20th century. The scene in which we learn that Sylvia Landry’s assailant is her biological father addresses disputes the myths of biracial women as sexually assertive and manipulative, and the justification that lynching was used to protect innocent White women from sexually uncontrollable Black men. Formally, Micheaux achieves this through the use of crosscutting, as shown when he cuts between Sylvia trying to aggressively escape Armand Gridlestone and the burning of the Landry family after they are lynched. The series of events takes place during a flashback that does not appear until the film’s third act. Although his central character is a woman, Micheaux also provides a cinematic image of the “Race Man,” a Black man who reflects model social and cultural values that reflect upward class mobility and the desire to establish a Black middle-class that disrupts the caricatures circulated of African Americans as inherently incompetent and willfully compliant to their suppression, or eternal victims of exploitative labor practices (i.e. sharecropping/tenant farming). Micheaux himself presents two characters, Eph and Old Ned, who would most likely be identified as caricatures, yet they are used to reveal the consequences of racial betrayal, physically and internally.
One of the most striking observations in Gates is the transfer between spaces, identified as North (urban) and South (rural). The correspondence between these locations point to two major moments in the early 20th century for African Americans: the Great Migration and the Harlem Renaissance. As early as 1915, African Americans migrated from the South to escape both racial terror and labor exploitation in search of new economic and social opportunities in Northeastern and Midwestern Cities. One specific location, Harlem (a section of Manhattan in New York City), would embody a variety of new arrivals of African descent within and outside the United States. Whether through artistic expression or economic autonomy, African Americans sought to project a set of values and demeanor that directly contradicted the image circulated after slavery through song, stage, film, and even consumer items.
Critics and scholars attribute Within Our Gates to be an example of a film created during the first decade of filmmaking activity amongst African Americans (1910-1919). In continental Africa, African filmmakers did not emerge until the 1960s, as the countries from which they hailed were gaining independence from European colonial rule. One of the most profound filmmakers to emerge would be Ousmane Sembene of Senegal, a novelist who used his film training from Russia to adapt his books into films. Sembene is more so credited for transferring the storytelling traditions of the griot to cinema, both in the structure of the narrative and its outcome. In Black Girl (La Noire de…), Sembene uses the conventions of the griot to examine the placement of a Senegalese domestic in the home of a French family. He reveals that the ideas that his central character, Diouana, had about working as an au pair in France, are quickly shattered. It is important to examine how her situation is a commentary on the colonial relationship between Senegal and France, and what the promises this relationship has to offer reveals about its realities.
Black Girl (La Noire de…) (1966)
Dir. Ousmane Sembene
Questions to consider while watching Black Girl:
1. What role does the mask play in the film? How is it reflective of the relationship between Diouana and the family that has hired her?
2. How are flashbacks used by Sembene throughout the film? What correspondence do they have with Diouana’s internal dialogue?
3. Sembene includes scenes in the film between Diouana and her boyfriend in Senegal. What kind of Senegalese citizen does he represent, and what are some contrasts between him and Diouana?
4. What are some examples of silent resistance that Diouana practices while working as a domestic?
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Week #2--Early Filmmakers
Last week, we spent some time watching documentaries about the representation of African Americans in popular culture, most notably in cinema. Riggs’s Ethnic Notions and Daniels’s Classified X each reveal a variety of caricatures by which many Black screen actors had to conform for nearly a century. Caricatures such as the mammy, Uncle Tom the coon, the buck, and the sambo have been re-evaluated by film scholars and cultural critics either to reinforce the condemnation of these types or to identify possibilities for subversion.
An analysis of representation inevitably transfers to a discussion about control over images, most notably about who controls them and the motives for such portrayals. In Classified X, Melvin Van Peebles explained how his increasing displeasure with the presentation of African Americans onscreen motivated him to make films that aggressively countered these practices. While his first two films directly addressed race relations (The Story of a Three Day Pass (1967), Watermelon Man (1970)), Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song (1971) focused on a sex laborer who, while running from the police for helping a Black revolutionary escape police custody, desperate seeks an escape from both mental and physical captivity. While Van Peebles sought to make a film that was consistent with the sentiments of the Black Power movement through form and content, he also received criticism for reproducing stereotypes, notably his presentation of a sexually aggressive Black man who uses violence to escape adverse situations.
Interestingly enough, Van Peebles’s The Story of a Three Day Pass was adapted from a novel he wrote entitled La Permission. His entry into film resembles that of Oscar Micheaux, whose first film, The Homesteader (1919), was initially a novel. Micheaux saw film not only as a promising business venture, but also a more dynamic way to tell stories, many which were semi-autobiographical. Embedded within his films was a desire to depict an upwardly mobile Black middle class who aspired to be recognized as U.S. citizens. Micheaux referenced figures such as Booker T. Washington through his male protagonists, as he focused on issues such as education and literacy, racial stratification and labor, and racial terror in the form of lynching. He may have been critical of institutions such as the Black church, in which Micheaux criticized ministers for deceiving their patrons, but he was as much the subject of criticism. Not only was Micheaux frequently censored for his desire to address topics that even Black audiences found to be controversial, but later Black filmmakers and critics felt that he reinforced the color-caste system that depicted light-skinned Blacks as heroes and dark-skinned Blacks as villains.
As you watch Within Our Gates (1919), focus on what the central issues of the narrative are. It is important to note that this film was released during the period of the Great Migration, the end of World War I, the Red Summer of 1919, and the beginnings of the Harlem Renaissance and the emergence of the “New Negro.” Also, pay close attention to the central characters. How are they photographed, and what kind of space are they placed in to emphasize the way they are characterized? To continue with space, think of how Micheaux depicts the North and the South in terms of geography and the characters who are placed within these regions. What are some characteristics about the film’s production quality that show it to be deficient? At the same time, what does the limited production quality offer that is absent in mainstream films that depict Black characters?
An analysis of representation inevitably transfers to a discussion about control over images, most notably about who controls them and the motives for such portrayals. In Classified X, Melvin Van Peebles explained how his increasing displeasure with the presentation of African Americans onscreen motivated him to make films that aggressively countered these practices. While his first two films directly addressed race relations (The Story of a Three Day Pass (1967), Watermelon Man (1970)), Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song (1971) focused on a sex laborer who, while running from the police for helping a Black revolutionary escape police custody, desperate seeks an escape from both mental and physical captivity. While Van Peebles sought to make a film that was consistent with the sentiments of the Black Power movement through form and content, he also received criticism for reproducing stereotypes, notably his presentation of a sexually aggressive Black man who uses violence to escape adverse situations.
Interestingly enough, Van Peebles’s The Story of a Three Day Pass was adapted from a novel he wrote entitled La Permission. His entry into film resembles that of Oscar Micheaux, whose first film, The Homesteader (1919), was initially a novel. Micheaux saw film not only as a promising business venture, but also a more dynamic way to tell stories, many which were semi-autobiographical. Embedded within his films was a desire to depict an upwardly mobile Black middle class who aspired to be recognized as U.S. citizens. Micheaux referenced figures such as Booker T. Washington through his male protagonists, as he focused on issues such as education and literacy, racial stratification and labor, and racial terror in the form of lynching. He may have been critical of institutions such as the Black church, in which Micheaux criticized ministers for deceiving their patrons, but he was as much the subject of criticism. Not only was Micheaux frequently censored for his desire to address topics that even Black audiences found to be controversial, but later Black filmmakers and critics felt that he reinforced the color-caste system that depicted light-skinned Blacks as heroes and dark-skinned Blacks as villains.
As you watch Within Our Gates (1919), focus on what the central issues of the narrative are. It is important to note that this film was released during the period of the Great Migration, the end of World War I, the Red Summer of 1919, and the beginnings of the Harlem Renaissance and the emergence of the “New Negro.” Also, pay close attention to the central characters. How are they photographed, and what kind of space are they placed in to emphasize the way they are characterized? To continue with space, think of how Micheaux depicts the North and the South in terms of geography and the characters who are placed within these regions. What are some characteristics about the film’s production quality that show it to be deficient? At the same time, what does the limited production quality offer that is absent in mainstream films that depict Black characters?
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