self representation in african cinema

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Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art, Number 21, Fall 2007, pp.

74-81 (Article)

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SELF

REPRESENTATION

IN AFRICAN

CINEMA

Souleymane Cisse,Film still from Yeelen, 1987

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As I recently paged through a voluminous

book, Anthology of African and Indian

Ocean Photography,1

I could not help but

think about the aesthetic links between still pho

tography and film in Africa. A crucial question we

must ask ourselves, therefore, is what happened

when Africans got hold of still and motion-picture

cameras to represent themselves? Did they inherit

the stereotypes of Africans forged by Europeans,

or did they try to find a new language? There are

aesthetic links between African photography and

film that, if explored, will yield a new apprec iation

of both media in Africa. It is my aim here to show

that black-and-white photography in Africa pro

vides a powerful metaphor for pursuing the aes

thet ic signifiers in African cinema .

African Cinema in Black and White

Looking at the photographs in the anthology, one

can see the African youth movement toward

modernity framed by the still camera. Each photograph by Seydou Keita, Malick Sidibe, Samuel

Fosso, and Philip Kwame Apagya is filled with

energy, desires, and a kind of modern ist melan

cholia that constitute its aesthetic source and

pleasure. Furthe rmore, the subjects in Sidibe's

work in particular seem to imitate actors and pop

music stars from B-movies and magazines from

the West. The dress stylestight shirts, Afro-hair,

bell-bottom pants, and platform shoesand the

body languages of the characters are filled with

cinematic vignettes of the life of hip youngsters in

Bamako in the 1960s and 1970s. The mise-en-scene

is perfected, with outdoor and studio props like

motorcycles, telephones, records, and turntables

that are signifiers of the pop-culture period in

Bamako. The characters occupy the center of the

photographs like Hollywood heroes and individu

als who have conquered history.

My biggest surprise is that I found no strong

continuity between these photographs and the

African cinema coming out in the 1960s and

1970s. Only a handful of films in the seventies

gave a nod to the modern African style and aes

thetics I have referred to here.Tooki Bouki (1975)

by Djibril Diop Mambety, like Sidibe's ph oto

graphs, borrows from the mise-en-scene of

the Western and B-movies, as well as from the

French Nouvelle Vague. The poetic connotations

in the representation of the youth in Tooki Bouki

signal to the same symbols of freedom and indepe nd en ce emphas ized in the bl ac k-and-w hi te

ph otographs.

Den Muso (1974) by Souleymane Cisse is

another film with fascinating intertextual connec

tions to the photography of the 1960s and 1970s in

Africa.Den Muso tells the story of two young peo

pleTenin and Sekoucaught in the struggle

between trad it ion and modernity. Ten in's father

represents traditional nobility and wealth, while

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Sekou's family is from a poor background. But

Tenin and Sekou are united through the modern

youth culture as signified by free sex, the music of

a young Salif Keita and the Super Rail Band of

Bamako, the dress styles, and the motorcycles that

have become the new symbols of mobility in the

city. Tenin's parents are filmed like the studio por

traits of the men and women in Seydou Keita's

classic portraits of the Bamakois clad in their

embroidered grand boubous, with a red curtain in

the background. The recourse to Keita's style of

port ra it ure to represent tradit ional Bamako con

trasts nicely with the use of Sidibe's style to con

note the new and the challenge to tradition.

Both Sekou and Tenin are characters straight

out ofaSidibe photo album. In his Afro-hair, tight

shirts with long collars, and platform shoes, Sekou

looks like a rebel against all that Bamako repre

sents. He quits his job in the beginning of the film

and becomes a pickpocket. He is a playboy with

out a conscience or a commitment to anything in

life, except for the clothes he wears. He changes

girlfriends several times in the film. In one classic

scene la Malick Sidibe, shot at the beach by the

river, the youth, dressed in their bikinis, drink tea,

and play while Sekou rapes Tenin not too far

from them.Tenin is portrayed like the beautiful women we

see in both the photographs of Keita and Sidibe

with their hair braided or in Afros, and wearing

miniskirts or nicely tailored dresses. Interestingly,

Tenin is mute, which signifies the voicelessness of

women in a patriarchal African setting. When she

becomes pregnant , she is rejected by bo th her

father and Sekou. At the end of the film, she sets

fire to a house with Sekou and his new lover

inside, and killsherself.Den Muso thus gives us an

idea of the situations and stories that the youth in

Sidibe's albums might have been dealing with.

The film interpellates the Bamakois spectators

by intercutting between trad it ion and mo dern ity

through the representational techniques of Keita

and Sidibe. The scenes with Tenin's parents are

mostly shot insidein the style of Seydou Keita

while the cinematography outside reveals Malick

Sidibe' Bamako. Seeing Den Muso today makes

the spectator relive the Bamako of the 1960s and

1970s as the photographs of Malick Sidibe and the

old songs of Salif Keita and James Brown are able

to do. For that reason alone, it has become a cult

film to treasure in Bamako.

The Evolution of Photography

and Film in Africa

Tho ugh photography and film follow different

modes of production and entail different costs,

they are related aesthetically and politically as far

as representation is concerned. They share the

same illusion of verisimilitude provided by the

camera, which set them apar t from other modes of

representation, such as oral storytelling and sculp

ture. A brief overview of the circumstances in

which the two media developed in Africa is there

fore requ ired here to show why other African filmsdid not follow the example ofDen Muso.

Both photography and film were introduced in

Africa by European explorers, colonial adminis

trators, anthropologists, and missionaries in

search of the primitive and the exotic. It is reveal

ing, therefore, that the early photographs and

films of Africans by Europeans were concerned

with documenting nudity, tribal marks, religious

customs, and polygamous African chiefs. The

Africans in these documentaries lack subjectivity

and personal style; they are reified and framed byan outsider's gaze. In a sense, primitive photogra

phy and film were interested in asser ting and

maintaining the superiority of the European over

the African.

The history of African cinema is recent com

pared to that of its photography. To take the spe

cific case of Mali, for example, there were photog

raphers such as Mountaga Dembele and Seydou

Keita who had mastered their craft as early as the

1930s and 1940s. One might even say that Malian

photography had achieved two golden agesone

with Seydou Keita in the 1950s and the other

spearheaded by Malick Sidibe in the 1960s

before there was even one feature film produced

by a Malian director . The cost of film was one rea

son for the delay in the birth of African cinema.

Another reason was the fear that an African with

a movie camera would subvert the colonial order

of things.

The case of Mali is significant for other reasons

as well. From the beginning the aesthetic choices

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Souleymane Cisse,Film still from Yeelen,1987

of photographers were different from those of

filmmakers in the colonial era;furthermore the

markets inwhich the artwas consumed werein a

complete opposition to each other. Mali wasafer

tile ground for French ethnographic films on the

tradition andcosmology of the Dogons. French

filmmakers like Jean Rouch and Marcel Griaule

had nocompetit ion from African directors whilethe former were busy filming theDogons in their

authentic tribal dwellings. Their desiretoprivilege

primitive African culturesat theexpense of those

lived in the urban setting cemented an ideology

and aesthetic of filmmaking inAfrica that isstill

influential.

Photography meanwhile was evolving in the

cities, with African photographers increasingly

replacing their European counterparts. Malian

photographer s were opening studios in Bamako,

Kayes, Segou,andother emerging cities wherethe

black-and-white photogra phs coincided with the

modern desiresofnew population.

So,while the aestheticsoffilmin th e handsof

Europeans and for a European c onsumpt ion

remained primitive andethnographic, the art of

ph otog raph y evolved with African ca merame nand consumers ofAfrican images.Inother words,

film was stuckin an"auth entic" African tradi tion

al language that could be opposed to European

modernity, while th e photographers were busy

documenting the birth andstylized express ionsof

modern Africans. A look at the black-and-white

ph otog raphs of Seydou Keita reveals the cos

mopolitanism ofthe subjects, as wellastheir o pti

mism vis-a-vis modernity. After all, the people

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SouleymaneCisse,Film still fromYeelen, 1987

who left the rural areas to come to Bamako or

Kayes to become new heroes or heroines in a

changing world wanted above all to show the

world that they had succeeded. They were search

ing for modernity; that was the reason why they

put on the ir best clothes and jewelry to be ph o

tographed and captured on film as symbols of

modern Bamakois identities.

African Cinema in Search of an Aesthetics

It was only in the 1960safter many countries

had won their independence, and more than sixty

years after the invention of the movie camera

that a few Africans were able to make their own

films. They were suddenly encouraged on the one

hand by the cultural policies of newly independ

ent countries that needed to produce their own

images, and on the other by the French Ministere

de la Cooperation,which had reversed its policy so

as to support Africans to make films.

At that time, the artistic policies of many of the

newly independent countries mirrored those

espoused by European Marxist and African

Diaspora intellectuals such as Jean-Paul Sartre,

Aime Cesaire, and Frantz Fanon. They embedded

art in the project of nation building and believed

that its true function was to be revolutionary andto reflect the social reality of the people. To quote

Sekou Toure, "it is the responsibili ty of the State to

create a cinema which, in turn, emphasizes the

positive things in the revolution in order to mo ti

vate people and prepare them for changea cine

ma which is unabashed about its educational role,

and its power of transformation."2

A look at Sembene Ousmane 's filmsfrom

Borom Saret (1963), to Mandabi (1968)reveals

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that they derived their aesthetic resource from the

socialist cultural policiesofAfrican independences,

and that they emphasized a social transformation

in thestoryat theexpense of characterizationand

plot co ns tr uc ti on . In both Borom Saret and

Mandabi, themain characters areantiheroeswho

are sacrificed to the need of the people to rise

againstthesystem that isoppressing them .In fact,

the narratives of both films enfold against their

pro tagonists: weidentify less with the cart driver

in Borom Saret because he remains blind to the

system that exploits him; we take our distance

from him, to paraphrase a Brechtian expression,

because of his failure to rise up and change his

social environment. In Mandabi, too , we are as

angry with Elhadj Dieng, the main character, asweare with thesystem and thepeoplewho arebent

on robbing him. Sembene positions the spectator

to reject the pompous attitude of Elhadj Dieng,

who is, after all,nothingbut apaper tiger,a sexist

pig,and a reactionary.

For Sembene,who isonly interested in an ideal

reality-a reality that issymbolized by justiceand

democratic principles in his narrativesfilm

becomes atool forsocial transformation andrev

olutionary grandstanding, and thehero turn sout

as less important than th egroup that shapeshim.

There are no high mimetic stories or epic narra

tives in Sembene's Africa. By adopting the

oppressed masses as the "heroes" in such films

as Mandabi, Xala (1974), and Ceddo (1978),

Sembene seems to berobbing theAfrican specta-

OusmaneSembene,Film still fromMandabi,1968

tors of the narrative pleasure that they are so

accustomed to in the art of traditional oral story

telling and popular Western cinema. Clearly,

therefore, therevolutionary cinema that Sembene

is proposingidealist, anticolonialist, andagainst

"archaic" African traditionsfinds its echo more

in theUtopia ofPan-Africanism astheorized by

men like Kwame Nkrumah, Patrice Lumumba,

and Fanon than in the reality of the people.

Aesthetically speaking, it is therefore fair to say

that theSembenian cinema alienates the majority

of African spectators bydepicting menlike Elhadj

Dieng, who symbolized traditional nobility, as

caricaturesanddemagogues,onthe one hand,and

literate Africans asassimiles andworthless,on the

other hand.When we turn to the input of the French

Ministere de laCooperation foraesthetic consider

ationinAfrican cinema , we find that itmade every

effort tocounter the Brechtian film language pro

posed by Sembene. TheBureau du Cinema was

created at the Cooperation in 1963, with Jean-

Rene Debrix as itsdirector. It soon became the

most important source for African film produc

tion, providing many Francophone Africans with

the first opportunity to realize their dreams as

filmmakers. As early as 1975, 185 filmsshorts

and featureswere made in Francophone Africa,

four-fifths ofwhich were produced withthe finan

cialandtechnical helpof the Bureau that prompt

ed Debrix to brag that "any African directorwho

thinks,asLouis Malle pu ts it,thathe'hasafilmin

Ousmane Sembene,Film still fromCeddo,1977

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Souleymane Cisse,Film still fromYeelen, 1987

his stomach,' can find the means to make that film

in freedom at Bureau du cinema."3

Debrix, who described himself as a student of

Abel Gance, wanted to be at the origin of a new

cinema created by Africans and distinct from

Western film language. For him, Western film

makers had reached an impasse because they

allowed rhetorical and dialectical styles to take

over their films, subjecting the art of cinema thus

to Cartesianism and to the precepts of literature

and theater. Under the spell of a notion that an

African contribution would save cinema by restor

ing to it "sorcery," "magic," and "poetry," Debrix

seized the opportunity offered him by his new job

to become the architect of this new cinema.

The reality is that while the Bureau and other

French political and cultural institutions enabled

some of the best-known African directors to make

films, they also trapped these directors into aself-representation that remains reassuring to the

Western imagination of Africa as primitive. At

best , African films like Yeelen (1987, by

Souleymane Cisse), and Tilai (1990, by Idrissa

Ouedraogo), by attempting to correct European

representations of Africa, have legitimized the

search for anthropological aesthetics in their nar

ratives. Critics are justified therefore to point to

the appropriation of Negritude and prirnitivism

in these films. The slow narrative pace, the abun

dance of long takes, and long shotsat the

expense of a dynamic editing for character psy

chology and individualismalso link these

African films to ethnographic cinema.

At their worst, what Debrix calls "magic" and

"sorcery" in this kind of film can simply be dis

missed as bad anthropological cinema that rein

forces the stereotypical themes of Afro-pessimism,

or Africans' lack of capacity to adjust to the mod

ern world. In 1968, in a celebrated statement,

Sembene argued that Rouch's camera depicts

Africans as insects. 4 Still today, what reassures

European television and film festivals are African

directors taking the place of the entomologist

/anthropologist, and showing Africans like insectscaught outside of human history and trapped in

Afro-pessimism.

At any rate, the Sembenian film language that

critiques neocolonialism and imperialism has

completely disappeared from the grammar of

African cinema produced in France or by televi

sion channels likeArte in the last decades. It is not

as if Africans no longer need to worry about

underdevelopment and regional conflicts as

induced by the structural adjustments of such

financial insti tutions as the World Bank and the

International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Ironically, Africans are the audiences most

alienated from African cinema today. They fail to

identify with characters who are inarticulate, dis-

empowered, and portrayed by nonprofessional

amateur actors. With African cinema caught in

this kind of Afro-pessimism, one wonders why

European critics and producers continue to

bes tow awards and lavish praise up on the films

that are considered "authentically" African.

Conclusion

Perhaps one positive reaction to the hegemony of

a Francophone African cinema out of touch with

its audience is the emergence of Anglophone

videos. This also brings me back to my discussion

of the links between cinema and African photog

raphy. Like the black-and-white photographs of

Seydou Keita, Malick Sidibe, Samuel Fosso, and

Philip Kwame Apagya, the Nigerian videos are col

ored with the desires and fears of the African mid-

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die classes. The videos reveal beautiful houses wi th

lush living rooms, refrigerators, television sets,

telephones, and cars. The narra tives often revolve

around love, betrayal, and the power of religious

faith versus greed and money. Most importantly,

the videos, like the photographs, address Africans

as their primary audience. This crucial aesthetic

choice reflected in the videos contrasts sharply

with Francophone cinema's intention to address

only Europeans.

Personally, I feel that we have to be careful

about an uncritical endorsement of Nigerian

videos, too. Like the Francophone films, they also

contain their share of primitivism. Their stories

are often trapped in outdated or invented tradi

tions. Furthermore, they have not yet achieved thetechnical and aesthetic perfection of the black-

and-white photographs of Seydou Keita and

Malick Sidibe. Most of the videos are limited in

terms of poor shooting and editing. But in spite of

their imperfections, the videos draw audiences

because they tell stories with characters who are

involved in situat ions that everybody can identify

with. Like the photographs, the videos show

Africans as agents of their own history, as cosmo

pol itan figures, and as actors in the global world

something that is lacking in Francophone cinema.

I believe that both Nigerian videos and

Francophone cinema can learn a few things from

the classic era of African black-and-white photog

raphy. For one thing, when it comes to aesthetics,

every universalism has a local basis. The early suc

cess of photography in Africa was grounded in the

fact that each photographer had adjusted his cam

era to the taste of his people and envi ronment .

The African photographer did not content himself

with the notion that photography has a universal

languageas Francophone filmmakers are fond

of saying about filmrather they created a black

aesthetic of photography.

The photographers, like the tailors and barbers

who are popular from Bamako to Cotonou, suc

ceeded in their communities because they provid

ed consumers with the best products. If the world

is discovering Seydou Keita today, it is because he

perfected his art for the Bamakois first. I believe

that the Nigerian video makers too are well aware

of the technical and aesthetic requirements of

their audience, and realize that they must work

hard to rise to their level to survive. The fact is

that, as a mass consumer product, no cinema can

afford to ignore its audience.

I have had heated debates with African film

makers who refute this argument as simplistic. For

them, the problem is complex because African

movie theaters are colonized by American and

Asian films that leave a very small market share for

African films. They argue that they have to play

the game of French and European institutions as

long as there are no alternative production facili

ties in Africaas long as there are no Africans to

invest in film. The African filmmakers see festivals

like Cannes and Berlin not as French or German,

bu t as universal sites for film language. For them,survival depends not on African audiences, but on

the taste of the organizers of these festivals and

prog ramme rs of European television.

Some African filmmakers in Paris even suspect

that racism is behind the recent success of

Nigerian videos in Europe an d America, which

they argue is related to the desire to turn back the

wheel and to once again ghettoize Africa cinema.

They see paternalism in European and American

praise of African videos that would have no artis

tic merit if they were made by filmmakers in theWest. Perhaps these critical African filmmakers

have a point insofar as the politics of production

and distribution is concerned. But how about

black-and-white photography as a model?

Manthia Diawara is the Distinguished Professor of

Film and Comparative Literature and Director of

the Institute of African American Affairs at New

York University.

Notes

*Anthology ofAfrican and Indian Ocean Photography (Paris:

Revue Noire, 1998).

2 Ahmed Sekou Toure, LaRevolution Culturelle (1965),

p. 365.

^Manthia Diawara,African Cinema: Politicsand Culture

(Bloomington: Indiana UniversityPress, 1992), p. 26.4

Ibid., p. 174.

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