teaching third world cinema screen by teshome h. gabriel

60 TEACHING THIRD WORLDCINEMA

TESHOME H GABRIEL TAKES ACRITICAL LOOK AT CULTURALEXCHANGE IN THE WESTERN

CLASSROOM

[In this study I provide examples from Africanfilms to demonstrate the three major components ofa course in Third World cinema at the Universityof California, Los Angeles. These are: theclarification of the grammar of African film; theexploration of the production milieu of Africanfilm; and the need for a critical construct of Africanfilm culture.]

IntroductionWhen the meaning of a film is inaccessiblebecause the belief systems, ideologies, culturalreferences or styles of filmic execution areforeign to the viewer, the effect is that of a'cultural curtain'. 'Reading' a film from ageographical and cultural distance may beproblematised by several factors. The mostserious example is the tendency of an audience toread a film by automatically incorporating itwithin the methodologies and critical matriceswhich are already familiar to the audience. Thisapproach is much in evidence in the Westernworld where sophisticated critical and theoreticalcategories domesticate whatever is alien to itsown cultural tradition. The domesticationprocess may enrich Western aesthetics andcultural traditions, but while doing so itnecessarily misrepresents and eventually subvertsother cultural traditions. Because students in theWest are not getting enough general knowledgeabout other cultures in school or even atuniversity, there is a lack of cultural perspectiveand intercultural understanding.

In a course of study which focuses on ThirdWorld films, there is perhaps much to be gained

in attending to the Theory of Translation.1 Intranslation theory there are two distinctapproaches: the first aims towards a 'target text'where the effort is to translate it point-for-pointinto terms of Western cognition. In suchtranslation the terms of the original culture arelost. In the second approach, the more importantfor the present purpose, the quest is for a deeperunderstanding of the 'source text', for meaningas contexted in its own terms. The pedagogicalissue for a teacher of Third World films is toinsure against the students assuming that thefeatures of a Third World film always'correspond' to something familiar in America orEurope.

Text and ContextStudents in a Third World film class must bebrought to realise that not only are surfacemeanings in Third World films replete withunfamiliar cultural clues as to point of view andsocio-political and ideological complexities, butalso that there is a deeper level of meaning whichcannot be intuited by the uninformed viewer.The first stage of teaching, then, advances thenotion that text and context of Third Worldcinema both need careful scrutiny.

For instance, in Western media liquor is oftenpoured liberally into a glass; consider the

1 Gideon Toury, 'Translated Literature: System,Norm, Performance', Poetics Today (special issue on'Theory of Translation and Intercultural Relations')Summer/Autumn 1981, vol 2 no 4, pp 9-27.

at Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Muenchen on June 17, 2010

http://screen.oxfordjournals.orgDownloaded from

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number of times this happens in a single episodeof the US television soap opera. GeneralHospital, for an indication of the pervasiveness ofthis symbol in Western visual media. What doesa lavish splashing of spirits signify to the """Western audience? If not the wealth of thepourer, it is the power to drink without censurein the-middle of the day, or whenever anunpleasant event occurs. These receivedimpressions will not carry the Westerner far inviewing African or Middle Eastern films,however. For instance, in a Moroccan filmdirected by Souhel Ben Baraka, A Thousand andOne Hands (1972), the blonde wife of theMoroccan rug businessman, Jamal, at one pointpours whiskey into a glass. In Morocco, as wellas in other Middle Eastern countries where Islamis the principal religion, alcohol is prohibited byIslamic law. The white woman's action, andJamal's acquiescence to her offer, characterisesthe couple as sacrilegious and godless. Theunwary student has missed a key signal of thefilm's meaning if the scene is analysed with onlythe Westerner's stock of cultural references.

Understanding a Third World film involvesnot only such symbols, it also extends to the verysubject matter of films and to the treatment ofcharacters. For example, in the Ethiopian filmGouma (1973), directed by Greek-EthiopianMichael Papatakis, a murderer completes hispenitential sentence to wander, enchained andbegging, until he has made payment for hisgouma, blood guilt. Such a custom is unknown inthe West; consequently no such theme couldhave engendered a movie in the West. Thequestion of 'honour' or contrition, as opposed tovengeance by the family of the deceased, isprevalent in African folkloric cinema; yet it hassuch a foreignness to it that non-Third Worldviewers will find it hard to penetrate. Anothercharacterisation that receives an altogetherdifferent treatment in Third World films is thedepiction of a blind person. In Western films,the blind may be regarded as victims ofmisfortune; but in such African films as Goumaor Xala (directed by the Senegalese film-makerOusmane Sembene, 1974) the blind person ispresented as a seer with foresight andforeknowledge and functions as the decodingdevice to unravel not only the true meaning butalso the ultimate resolution of the film.

The most 'simple' and pervasive icons may

have radically differrent meanings outside their 61own milieu. In Western culture, for instance, theblue-eyed blonde signifies 'beauty', whereas inthe Moroccan film, A Thousand and One Hands,in the Mauretanian film, Soleil O (directed byMed Hondo, 1969) or the Senegalese film, TheBlack Prince of St. Germain (directed by BenDiogaye Beye, 1974), she (or it) stands as asymbol of the destructiveness of Europe orcultural imperialism. Also, 'white' in Westernculture is a colour which stands as a sign for'purity' or 'innocence'. In the Ethiopian film,Harvest: 3000 Years (directed by Haile Gerima,1975), however, a peasant girl's dream about thelandlord's imminent death is recounted to hergrandmother, prompting a question about thecolour of his attire, which was 'pure white', thecultural symbol of death. 'And what did yourfather wear?' asks the grandmother, to which thegirl responds, 'the same worn-out dress healways wears', a reference to life. Eor the funeralprocession in A Thousand and One Hands, whereall the mourners are dressed in white, the cross-cultural translation will be identical to dark dressworn by mourners in the West. Here is a casewhere the signifier, dependent on oppositions,reverses the order of signification.

Geographical or cultural distance may render afilm text unpalatable to a Western audience,though this effect may arise also from theaudience's limitations of consciousness, itsprejudices or strongly held beliefs. For instance,in Ceddo (directed by Sembene, 1977), Moslemimperialism is condemned for its role in thebreakdown of traditional African spirituality:devout followers of Islam may consequently findthe film difficult. Similarly, Soleil O depicts theAfrican adoption of Christianity by turning thesymbol of a cross into a sword, representing theideology of the 'white man's burden'-foundedas it is on the Christian ethos-as a violentintrusion into the peaceful and communalAfrican social fabric.

Ethnocentric readings may transform a minorincident in a narrative into a major one. Forinstance, the ritual context of animal slaughter inAfrican films immediately raises the question ofcruelty to animals: what Western studentsperceive' as brutal acts may be perfectly normalin the African context. In many rural societies,slaughtering animals for food is recognised as afact of life, whereas for Westerners whose only




52 contact with meat involves the plastic wrappedsupermarket package, such carnage may appeargratuitous. More importantly, Americanstudents, taught since childhood that their worthis defined in terms of individual achievement andresponsibility, may find representations of theclose-knit structure of the African family,involving responsibility for the community,simply bewildering.

A course on Third World cinema must providea wide range of examples, so that students havethe opportunity to develop a sense not only ofthe plurality of cultures and societies but also oftheir distinctiveness and worth. What is aimedfor is a widening of students' perspectives onartistic representation and on an understandingof the source texts on their own terms and withintheir own cultural patterns.

In making a film rooted in Third Worldcultures, the film-maker's choice iscircumscribed both culturally and ideologically.Thematic as well as stylistic features of suchfilms have been characterised as 'primitive',

reminiscent of early cinema. This kind ofjudgement is generally based on technologicalcriteria of cultural worth and an assumedtrajectory of the evolution of film language fromthe 'primitive' to the 'civilised'.

To the uninitiated eye, for instance, Emitai(directed by Sembene, 1972) appears devoid ofelementary cinematic pacing and a basic varietyof shots. Here the close-up is avoided andnarrative time seems to approximate real time.Yet in Mandabi (1968), shot three years earlier,Sembene's mastery of the technique of theconventions of close-up is quite evident. Eachfilm uses cinematic conventions that correspondto its own thematic orientation. Emitai is set inrural Africa of the colonial period: Mandabi, shotin post-independence, urban Africa, uses aquicker pace as well as tight close-ups. The useof tight close-action shots in Emitai, however,would have destroyed the film's social/collectivepercepts: isolating individuals would have jarredthe social unity and collective purpose the filmwas attempting to stress.

Emitai: social unity and collective purpose represented in long shot.




The long takes and leisurely rhythm evident inmany African films may be read as conveying anapproximation of time as perceived by ruralpeople, for whom land is both a means oflivelihood and the source of a strong sense of -identity. The Angolan films Pathway to the Stars(1980) and Conceigao Tchiambula (A Day in aLife, 1981), both directed by Antonio Ole, as wellas the Ethiopian Harvest: 3000 Years,characteristically use long shots of a man orwoman walking across a landscape. The smallscale of human figures in relation to thebackground, a general feature of African pictorialrepresentation, suggests the traditionalcosmology, in which the individual is dwarfed bythe land.

The Western student, situated within aparticular film culture, brings to film viewing acodified set of perceptions and interpretivemethods. For this audience, long and/or groupshots may be thought of as merely delineations ofnarrative space: for the Third World viewer witha strong sense of identification with land andcommunity, the long shot and long take of theland and group scenes may in fact function in thesame way as a close-shot does for a Westernspectator. Most student viewers, for instance,find the pilgrimage scene in A Thousand and OneHands extremely boring, yet for the Moroccan, itcan operate as a powerful representation ofcountry, family and past.

African films which depict life in thecountryside often emphasise space rather thantime. The skilful manipulation of time thatcharacterises Western cinema is sparinglyemployed. Furthermore, in shots of rural lifespace tends to be depicted as communal or socialrather than as individual. However, whenAfrican life within an urban or European contextis depicted, space is frequently constructed as'individual' and not 'social'. Individual spaceassigns the narrative discourse to a protagonist,an individual character. Social space, on theother hand, submerges the individual within anarrative which deals with a group and can onlybe understood in terms of its social context.

When African film-makers, on the other hand,treat an urban or metropolitan subject, the paceis quicker and the cutting more rapid. Theseelements of style convey a particular set ofmeanings in the African context. For example,Soleil O deals with an African working in Paris.

It makes use of cross-cutting, rapid cameramovement and other devices familiar to aWestern audience to portray the role of France insapping African energy. These devices are used,not to build suspense as so often in Westerncinematic practice, but to represent frustration.Because the film is dichotomised along race andclass lines, cross-cutting signals not thedevelopment of an interpersonal clash, but rathera political and ideological conflict. The tug-of-war between these two stylistic approaches, oneanchored within a Western cinematic traditionand the other in African culture, is increasinglybecoming a central issue in characterisingAfrican cinema. Many African films employ bothapproaches within a single film, particularlywhere the theme of migration from rural tourban areas is dealt with.

Production and the TechnologicalDeterminants of CultureNo course on Third World cinema would becomplete without a discussion of the problemsattendant on the film-making process itself: inthe African case, state governance andregulations, dearth of finance, the lack of atechnical infrastructure, the virtue of 16 mm filmfor filming in the field, and the absence of anynetwork for distributing films to their properaudience-the rural masses. Exposing Westernstudents to the rough conditions many ThirdWorld film-makers face in the field shouldtemper standardised aesthetic judgements as towhat films should be and how they should look.The cultural dominance of Western cinema tendsto enforce 'ideological carry-overs'. Westerntechnological flash in particular impresses theurban African film viewer (and would-be film-maker) as well as the Western spectator, andabundantly imported American, European,Indian, Hong Kong and Egyptian films leadaudiences to expect a certain level of technicalbrilliance from everything they see on the screen.This is a problem for the African film-makerwho tries to develop a different style, a problemperhaps resolvable by eschewing the urbanmarket for the rural audience. But the ruralaudience is troublesome because it is difficult toreach, given the cost of 35 mm film and theabsence of distribution outlets.2 The creation ofan indigenously African film culture depends on

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64 finding the means to show films on a continuingbasis to this majority of the African population,which should form both the audience and thesource of inspiration for an African cinema.

Toward a Critical TheoryThe theoretical3 component of this course onThird World cinema strives to bring students toan understanding of the avenues available tothem as future critics and theorists of cinema.Just as the textual component of the coursefamiliarises students with, in this case, thesubtleties of African cultural symbols, and aconsideration of conditions of productionenhances awareness of the need to maketechnique serve ideas, so in the last part of thecourse, students begin to deal with the criticaland theoretical challenges presented by Africanfilms. The challenges emerge most clearly when

2 Teshome Gabriel, The Developing African Cinema:An Introduction, Los Angeles, ASA/Crossroads press,forthcoming 1983.3 For a detailed discussion of Critical Theory as itpertains to the African film experience, see my articleentitled 'Toward a critical theory of African cinema',in Bennetta Jules-Rosette (ed), Popular Art and theNew Media in Africa, Norwood, New Jersey, AblexPublishing Corporation, forthcoming, 1983.

students find that received theories do not easilyfit the films viewed in class.

What are the analytical tools that will permit aconsideration of film texts and their conditions ofproduction to inform an understandfng ofcinematic institutions in the Third World? Thecontent and pedagogy of the course outlined hereopen up a possible means of answering thisquestion, by suggesting three phases, orcomponents, of a critical theory for Third Worldcinema, namely: a) 'the text', the films and theirspecific organisation of codes and sub-codes; b)'reception', where audience expectations andprior knowledge of cinematic and culturalconventions govern the consumption of films;and c) 'production', where ideologicaldeterminants and factors of production shape thefilm industry and its organisation.

In Third World cinema in general, and inAfrican cinema in particular, the thematic/formalcharacteristics of films and the critical/theoreticaltools for understanding both texts and contextsare founded on traditional culture, and on socio-political action for self-determination andliberation. In a pedagogy which sets out withsuch different aesthetic and political conceptions,the position of the viewer/student is redefinedand ideally, not only a cultural, but also anideological, exchange takes place in theclassroom.




SEFT in collabora

The English Novelon Screen:

GREAT EXPECTATIONS?

If

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Brighton Polytechnic, Palmer, iaturday 30th April

We all know — or think we know — what to expect when classicnovels are dramatised for the screen. Indeed, literary adaptationshave long played a large and familiar part in our film and television

culture both domestically and in the international market Byborrowing from the "original' book its cultural kudos, its place in

the 'great tradition' and its plot such adaptations do createexpectations of prestige, pleasure and profit, while functioning as a

ready-made and reliable formula (or the screen.

However, the literary adaptation remains a relatively unquestionedform; critical comment is usually restricted to notions of 'fidelity'

This day event is divided into two parts1 an examination of thehistory and variety of screen adaptations o l Dickens followed by thescreening and discussion of John Fowles' French Lieutenant's Woman.

Course Fee: £4.50 (£3.00 unwaged)Send s a.e. for details

n Cornish. South East Arts, 9-10 CrescentTunbndge Wells, T N I 2LU

Tel. (0892) 41666.

NEWGERMANCRITIQUEan interdisciplinary journal o: german s.ucies

Our current issue (n. 24-25, Fall/Winter >yc.-_i i ICLCVSSPECIAL DOUBLE ISSUE ON NEW GERMAN CINEMAEric Remschler: New German Cinema in America

Miriam Hansen: Cinema and Oppositional Public SphereSheila Johnston: Fassbinder and the New German Cinema

Kaja Silverman: Mauser's "Terrible Fall"Tim Corrigan: Wender's Kings of the RoadThomas Elsaesser: Syberberg's Our Hitler

Judith Mayne: Women's CinemaLessen, Fehervary, Mayne: From Hitler to Hepburn

Miriam Hansen: Introduction to AdornoTheodor Adorno: Transparencies on Film

» V<w German Critique is the first American journal to develop a comprehensive discus-1 sion of German politics, social theory, art, and literature on an international level.

Vow German CritiqueGerman Department Box 413

The University of Wisconsin-MilwaukeeMilwaukee, Wisconsin 53201




teaching third world cinema screen by teshome h. gabriel

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