During the nearly three decades since they won independence from European colonial domination, the forty-odd nations of Africa have struggled to establish and maintain their unique cultural identity. Among the less well-known forms of this struggle has been the efforts to develop a viable indigenous film industry.
One might well ask why something as seemingly marginal as a film industry should be encouraged in the face of the continent's far more immediate problems of poverty, famine, and internecine warfare. Evocative films, however, by and about the peoples of these developing nations, can tell the rest of the world much of what it doesn't know about this basically terra incognita. The existence of a healthy and uniquely African cinema can moreover serve as a source of great national pride.
Filmfest DC
Filmfest DC 1988, a 100-plus film festival in Washington in April, sought to fill this gap in Western knowledge by presenting twelve feature-length and seven short films made by Africans in Africa, and by holding a pair of symposia at Howard University and the Smithsonian Institution, excerpts of which follow.
It should be understood at the outset that prior to 1960, much of what Americans knew of Africa came from visits to zoos and natural history museums. The very name Africa conjured up images of Johnny Weissmuller playing Tarzan, or Clyde "Bring 'em Back Alive" Beatty. Even such popular films as John Huston's classic The African Queen dealt principally with white people, not Africans.
American companies frequently shot films or sequences in north Africa, usually Morocco: Orson Welles' Othello, David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia, and George Lucas' Star Wars, for example. These were all films, of course, that did not deal with the people or problems of the continent.
Movies shown in African theaters were often years out of date, because local exhibitors could not afford first-run films. Films were usually American, French, or British in origin, and dealt with purely Western themes.
In the countries under British control, the authorities chose very carefully the sort of film Africans could see: short, linear movies with simple plot lines. An informal censorship operated in controlling the kind of film to which the local populations should be exposed.
Before World War II, the French also were concerned as to what colonial people under their control might be exposed to through the cinema. The Laval Decrees (1939) dictated that under no circumstances should they be allowed to see anything that might encourage subversion or raise political or economic consciousness.
Furthermore, as there was no local money anywhere to finance local film production, let alone the requisite technical resources, virtually no attempts at indigenous filmmaking ever materialized.
The advent of independence in the postwar years changed all that dramatically. Today there is a genuinely African cinema, originating in nearly all its nations--from Morocco to Tanzania, and
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