A01=Josef Gugler
Africa
African directors
African Film
apartheid South Africa
Author_Josef Gugler
Category=ATF
Category=JBCC
Category=JBCT
corruption
distribution
eq_art-fashion-photography
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
film-makers
financial difficulties
Hollywood
Indiana U Press.
inequality
literary works
technical difficulties
women
Product details
- ISBN 9780852555613
- Weight: 438g
- Dimensions: 185 x 216mm
- Publication Date: 01 Dec 2003
- Publisher: James Currey
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
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This is a comprehensive analysis of some of the major films created by film-makers from Africa and the African diaspora.
The directors and films studied here set out to re-image Africa - and offer Western viewers the opportunity to re-imagine the continent and its people. Two additional, very successful films on Africa, one from Hollywood, the otherfrom apartheid South Africa, serve to highlight African directors' altogether different perspectives. The interpretation considers the financial and technical difficulties of African film production, the intended audiences, the constraints on distribution, and critical reception.
The films featured cover a wide range of topics, from new perspectives on Africa prior to the intrusion of the West, to the struggle against colonialism and white minority rule, to post-colonial issues of authoritarian rule, neo-colonialism, corruption, inequality and the condition of the peasantry, with the position of women a recurrent theme. The discussions are accompanied by reproductions of posters, of photos of the directors during the shooting, and film frames illustrating key elements in the analysis. Introductions to the thematic topics provide the historical, cultural, political, and economic context of the films.Four of the films are based on novels, two more on a play or an epic, and the transformation involved in bringing the written page, or the griot's recitation, to the screen receives special attention. Throughout, the discussion extends to other African films and literary works.
North America: Indiana U Press
Josef Gugler is Professor of Sociology & Director of the Center for Contemporary African Studies at the University of Connecticut
