Contemporary African Cinema

(4 Credits)

The class explores major issues in African cinema from the politics of representation, decolonization, to authorship and aesthetics. A special focus will be on film language, apparatus ideology, politics, and reception. The main area of concentration will be the cinemas of sub-Saharan Africa. We will look at the aesthetic and political evolution of African film from the social, radical neo-realist cinema of Sembene Ousmane to the present. With the view of defining new aesthetics, since Sembene’s groundbreaking films, we will analyze films by such directors as Djibril Diop Mambety, Souleymane Cisse, Idrissa Ouedraogo, Abderrhamene Sissako, Safi Faye and Mati Diop, among others.