Estrategias Específicas

history deals with the aesthetic values of the field. It is an approach that interrogates the processes that give films their unique forms of expression. Here the focus is not on the quality of individual films, but rather on the ways in which films in general are constructed in order to emphasize their collective value as a form of expression and communication.

From the brief overview above, it is clear that the history of filmmaking is not in itself a complex network of relationships but the processes of studying and writing it bear the burden of social, cultural and economic analyses and the necessity to locate such appraisals within specific contexts. One of such relationships, which recur in the discourse on film history, is the relationship between social history and film history as an area of academic and journalistic enquiry. Of particular interest is how films, especially African films, assume privileged positions of providing historical knowledge. This probably informs the political and cultural deconstruction approach to the study of African cinema (see Chapter 1), and for

which reason many films that fall under this category are often read (or misread) as anthropological sources and their aesthetic values appreciated more than their formal qualities. I will therefore examine how films can serve as historical memory for communities and nations.

FILM AS HISTORY

Developments in cinema studies, such as the use of sociology, anthropology, philosophy, semiotics and psychoanalysis, and film’s social functions, have broadened the relationship between social history and film history. This was true for a long time in colonial and post-colonial Africa because most of the films produced here were often received as propaganda products with serious social and pedagogical intent, or as anthropological actualities of real events, or as socio-cultural phenomena that transcended the commercial and entertainment values of films (Pfaff, 1996;

Diouf, 1996).

Not only have films acquired the unique status of revealing history in various ways, but historical events, memories and myths of the past have served to inform the aesthetic and social values of cinema. Whilst film historians have frequently appropriated the methods and values of social history to guide and inform their study of film history (Allen and Gomery, 1985), social historians do also turn to cinematic texts for evidence of the history they may be interested in (William Murphy, 1972;

John E. O’Connor, 1973).

Film as a Source for the Study of History

Francoise Pfaff, (1996) and Mamadou Diouf, (1996) have separately argued that African films have been largely consumed as anthropological products that reflect cultural and historical facts. Not surprisingly, the circumstances under which African cinema emerged, and the responsibilities it assumed, positioned African films to be consumed and appreciated as such. African cinema, especially south of the Sahara, emerged just as many nations were gaining their independence from colonialism. African politicians and filmmakers, who gained their ideological freedom and the control of production facilities, were concerned more about public education, the resistance to European cultural hegemony, and the creation of new national identities. These concerns reflected the broad political and ideological discourses that leading African politicians, philosophers and writers, such as Franz Fanon, Amilcar Cabral and Kwame Nkrumah, were engaged in.

The political impetus offered by these leading thinkers in Africa was recognised at various meetings of African filmmakers, such as the Federation of Pan-African Cineastes (FEPACI), who agreed that cinema and filmmakers in the Third World should serve to oppose imperialism and neo-colonialism (Resolution of the Third World Film-makers’ Meeting, Algiers, Algeria, 1973). In 1975 the Algiers Charter on African Cinema built on the 1973 declarations to call attention to the insidious nature of imperialism and for a continuous resistance against neo-colonialism. This was also followed by the Niamey Manifesto of African Film-makers in 1982 which spelt out the need to invest cinema with the cultural heritage of

Africans. The manifesto was an ideological blueprint that assigned political and educational duties to African filmmakers. It also recommended the technical and administrative arrangements that would serve African nations in building workable national cinema industries and to engage in mutually beneficial co-productions with one another.

The relevance of these films to the sociological discourses of African societies is even more apparent as many African films tend to reflect, in social-realist modes, the individual and collective memories and experiences of nations, ethnic communities and groups of people who share historical roots, such as Wend Kuuni (1982), Yeelen (1987), and La Vie est Belle (1987). These films can therefore be said to be products of the political and cultural histories of the societies from which they were produced.

As Pfaff has observed, “progressive films from the Third World such as Latin America and Africa… aim at conveying a particular socio-cultural and political message mirroring the aspirations and/or needs of their increasingly Westernised nations” (Pfaff, in Bakari & Cham (Eds.), 1996, p. 223).

Films often serve as mirrors of the producing nations, consciously or otherwise, even though the processes of such mirroring are far more complex than this simplistic assertion. For example, Hollywood never tires of glamorising the American style of democracy, the allegiance of Americans to their Presidency and their oft sung “American Dream.” From The Birth of a Nation, Citizen Kane, Gone With The Wind, through the Rambo series to Air Force One, Amistad, Black Hawk

Down and SWAT, American cinema has sought to create an image of American

invincibility, righteousness, conquering spirit and a strong personality. At the same time American cinema also reveals racial discrepancies within the nation, a drug and gun culture that seems impossible to change, and the media stereotyping and political marginalisation of minorities in a society that claims equality for all men.

From the United Kingdom, the James Bond movies are unabashedly exhibitionist in their portrayal of British intelligence and valour. Many other British films contain representations of the British as high-cultured, exuberant and lively people.

Similarly African films, particularly fiction films, often tend to represent Africans in realistic, and often idealistic, ways. Many such films are informed by myths obtained from social and political history. Examples include several films by Ousmane Sembene (Ceddo, Emitai, and Camp de Thiaroye), Djibril Diop Mambety (Hyenas) Med Hondo (Sarraounia), and Kwaw Ansah (Heritage… Africa).

This claim is further strengthened by the appropriation of documentary traditions and modes of representation in the fiction films coupled with a neo-realist style of film production that seeks to portray nature and society in its bare reality. The films of Gaston Kabore, Wend Kuuni and Zan Boko for example, are known for this quality and are sometimes seen as anthropological representations of the cultures in which they are set (Pfaff, 1996). Once upon a time, Africans were the objects of filmic observation, but when they acquired the means for film production they sought

to re-present and represent themselves on their own terms by visually reproducing their history and recreating images of themselves (Shiela Petty, 1992).

Ironically, it is this ostensible purpose of African films that often leads to their being read for evidence of anthropology and for illustrations of traditional and modern African customs and beliefs (Petty, ibid). This reading often tends to relegate the formal qualities of many African films to the extent that they are often judged more for their ideological content and less for their formal qualities (Mhando, 2000).

History as a Source of Film Ideology, Form and Narrative

In many ways the social, cultural and political histories of nations have provided impetus at various levels for artistic and cultural production and representation. There is a growing collection of films that are dedicated to the interrogation of the past and to link the past to the present and future. Dani Kouyate’s Keita...The Heritage of the Griot (1995) is an example of a film that reflects on historical events in relation to contemporary cultural identity.

In a paper delivered at the international conference on film history in Cape Town, South Africa in 2002 (retrieved from the internet in 2003), Mbye Cham noted that most of Africa’s cultural and artistic representations reflect the history of events on the continent. He argues that:

A significant portion of what constitutes African cultural, symbolic and intellectual thought and practices – be they oral, written, dramatic,

visual or filmic – can be characterized as responses to and interventions in the factors and forces that have shaped Africa over time (Cham, 2002, para. 2).

Citing Kwame Nkrumah, of Ghana, and Ali Mazrui, a Kenyan historian, Cham identifies the historical factors and forces that have largely shaped African film practice. These are indigenous African influences, Arab-Islamic factors and Euro-Christian forces. For example, in his book, Consciencism (1964), Kwame Nkrumah acknowledges the presence and influence of two foreign forces, Islam and Christianity, but advocates for “a new harmony” that will allow mutual co-existence

“in tune with the original humanist principles underlying African society” (Nkrumah, 1964, p. 70). Nkrumah argues that contemporary African society is not the old one but a new one that has been expanded by the influences of Islam and Christianity, and yet, that Africans must not lose sight of their humanistic principles. The merger of Christianity and/or Islam with African traditional systems has produced various cultural and social tendencies and syncretistic identities, often quite ambivalent, that many African films have sought to interrogate. Ceddo and Love Brewed in the African Pot are two examples of such films.

In a television documentary series, The Africans: A Triple Heritage (1986) Mazrui traces evidence of the forces of Islam and Christianity on traditional African societies. In Part Three of the nine-part series, for example, Mazrui examines the host of factors that have influenced religion in Africa. He explores the extent to which

Christianity and Islam are being practiced within Africanised contexts, and their impact on African life, language, law and learning.

Just as the actual history of Africa informed Mazrui’s documentary series, which in turn examined that history, many other African films have their ideological and narrative roots in the social history of the continent. Cham argues that the appropriation of history by African filmmakers has become a prominent characteristic of cinema on the continent. He submits that:

Since its inception in the 60s and 70s, a significant portion of African cinema has focused and continues to focus on issues of racism, colonial exploitation and injustice, tradition and modernity, hopes, betrayals and disaffections of independence, immigration and many other social justice issues. Historicizing these issues, as well as creating narratives based primarily on events, figures and subjects of history, has emerged in recent years as a prominent trait of African film culture (Cham, 2000, para. 4).

Because of the post-colonial context of their emergence, many African films have focused on issues of history, not just for the sake of revealing it, but rather to contest previous narratives that may have been seen as disfigurements of historical reality, and to negotiate a revision of the culture and history of African peoples. The ostensible task of African cinema was to repair the ‘historiographic’ and psycho-cultural damage caused by the negative and stereotypical portrayal of African peoples by European and other foreign films.

Whilst many Africans viewed these films with pride and were satisfied that their histories had at last been written from an African point of view, European spectators saw them as “polemic, poorly constructed, and belonging to the 1960s rhetoric of violence” (Diawara, 1992, p. 152).

According to Diawara, both the French and British governments used the above argument and rhetorical labelling to shun Sarraounia and Heritage…Africa. In the United States, Gerima’s Sankofa suffered similar rejection by the main stream.

Diawara declares that “with regard to Sarraounia and Camp de Thiaroye (1987), it is remarkable that the French government has deviated from its commitment to the production and promotion of African cinema; neither film was selected for the Cannes Film Festival” (Diawara, ibid, p. 152). Even though Diawara does not give exact reasons why the two films were rejected, it is inferred that the contents of the films were politically unsavoury to the French.

Acceptable or not, African films that appropriate historical realities often set out to achieve three broad objectives; to re-present the history of Africans from purely African perspectives, to re-present the fight by Africans against all forms of colonialism and to re-present the role of women in Africa’s development.

Sembene is a good point of departure to illustrate this point. His film Emitai (God of Thunder) (1971) is set during the Second World War, and is a narrative about

the resistance of the Jola people of Cassamance (Southern Senegal) against the oppressive behaviour of the French colonial army. In the film, which is based on actual WWII events, the French army forcibly drafts able-bodied African males to be

sent to the war front. They also coerce the villagers into parting with their harvest of rice to support France’s war efforts. When the villagers resist, the French soldiers torture them in an effort to weaken their opposition.

Similarly, Camp de Thiaroye, which Sembene co-directed with Thierno Faty Sow, is based on factual incidents that France would have preferred left untold. The film reconstructs events in a transit camp for African soldiers returning from WWII.

Its power lies in the portrayal of the French colonial authorities as insensitive to the sacrifices that the African soldiers had made in favour of France during the war.

Rather than grant the African soldiers their demands for fair treatment the French chose to massacre them at night whilst they slept.

In both films Sembene, a former draftee himself, reaches back into history to produce images that invoke deep emotions, especially for African spectators, and strips colonialism of its false cloak of civilisation to reveal its true ugliness. Having fought for France in WWII himself, Sembene’s rendition of this piece of history is from personal experience, and his attention to detail and building of credible characters allows him the artistic licence to tell the story “with irrefutable credibility, its authenticity being a hallmark of a truly revisionist history” (Ukadike, 1994, p.

292).

Ethiopian filmmaker, Haile Gerima is also preoccupied with reconstructing and re-presenting history in order to rescue African history from the margins of global history and into the spotlight. His films Sankofa (1993) and Adwa, An African Victory (1999) are motivated by the need to re-conceptualise history in ‘Africanist’

perspectives. Sankofa is a fictionalised story about a spiritual journey into the past that reveals the lives and experiences of black slaves in the American South, and their resilience and subsequent revolt against oppressive enslavement. On the other hand Adwa is a documentary that relies on African oral traditional narrative techniques to

re-present the victory that Ethiopian forces won over Mussolini’s invading Italian armies.

Keita...The Heritage of the Griot (1995) by Dani Kouyaté derives its essence

from the actual history of the legendary 13^th century Mande king Sundiata Keita.

Kouyate picks on a slice of this history, re-conceptualizes it for the benefit of contemporary society. In the film, as in many others, history is not presented merely for the sake of it, but rather for audiences to be able to engage critically with that history in relation to their present identities and perceptions of society.

There are many other films that are informed and aesthetically influenced by historical events and experiences in Africa. Some best known titles will include Sarraounia which re-enacts the confrontation between French colonising forces and

the Aznas of Niger. War epics such as L’Opium et le Baton (1970) by Ahmed Rachedi and Chroniques des Années de braise (1975) by Mohamed Lakhdar-Hamina are informed by events characterising the struggles of the Algerian National Liberation Front (FNL). Sambizanga (1972) by Sarah Maldoror is set in Angola and is informed by the struggles of the Popular Liberation Movement of Angola (MPLA).

The films mentioned above are by no means exhaustive. There is a plethora of examples of films that have relied on social and political history to inform their

ideology, stylistic form and narrative, what Diawara (1992) refers to as “return to the source”. These films attempt to re-present history in order to problematize and question the post-colonial predicament of African nations. By engaging in the social and political histories these films easily serve as sources for the appreciation of the real histories of nations, of communities and of cultures.

The Return to History

Amidst the flurry of intellectual and anthropological work to re-discover the African past, history is beginning to reveal that the African world view was reflected in the way people communicated with each other, in music, dance and other art forms, in their practice of religion, their concepts of God, and their general approach to life in relation to their physical environments.

Examples are given of ancient Ghana, which had stable and well functioning political, educational, religious and economic institutions and its trade with neighbouring Kingdoms - a flourishing mutual relationship. There are numerous stories about the great kingdoms of Axum, Kush, Mali and Songhai. Civilisations like Egypt and Kemit (the life centre of the ancient world) are said to have attracted educationists, philosophers and many other pilgrims, such as Plato, Pythagoras and Thales, who travelled to Africa seeking knowledge of science, the arts and philosophy. Africans are credited for discovering the elements of the arts and sciences and the civil and religious dogmas and systems that still govern the universe. The Greeks are said to have been so intrigued by the African accomplishments that they

represented their most favourite goddess of wisdom, Minerva, in the image of an African princess.

The rationale behind this investment in history to define an African consciousness is motivated by the need to resist pre-colonial and colonial misrepresentations of what was believed to be the unspoilt African universe. This consciousness, which alludes to an African identity, in a sense, is a generalisation of all the individual and unique ethnic, cultural and physiological features of peoples and communities that make up the African world-space. The argument is that all Africans suffered, albeit in varying degrees, the dehumanisation and cultural alienation caused by colonialism and that this offers justification for a collective project of returning to history and reclaiming those individual and unique qualities.

This project of cultural renewal is not only for the benefit of African people but also the rest of the world. Most of what people outside of Africa knew about the continent and its people were from European explorer travelogues and manuals or from early European films about Africa.

There is textual evidence of the arrogance of Western culture and discourse, which even tends to colonise history, (Mudimbe, 1994) such that the existence of a people, especially in Africa, their configuration and styles of living are to be decided solely by Western philosophy and anthropology. In this way, only the civilisation of the West matters whilst the rest of the world pales into historical insignificance.

There is textual evidence of the arrogance of Western culture and discourse, which even tends to colonise history, (Mudimbe, 1994) such that the existence of a people, especially in Africa, their configuration and styles of living are to be decided solely by Western philosophy and anthropology. In this way, only the civilisation of the West matters whilst the rest of the world pales into historical insignificance.