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  • Modernity and the African Cinema: A Study in Colonialist Discourse, Postcoloniality, and Modern African Identities
  • Sheila Petty
Femi Okiremuete Shaka . Modernity and the African Cinema: A Study in Colonialist Discourse, Postcoloniality, and Modern African Identities. Trenton, N.J.: Africa World Press, Inc., 2004. 453 pp. Bibliography. Index. $29.95. Paper.

In this ambitious study, Femi Okiremuete Shaka takes up the challenge of examining what it means to be African in postindependence Africa through an analysis of the "cinematic institutions" on the African continent. He states categorically that this volume is part of the "soul-searching process" begun by other African intellectuals such as Anthony Appiah, Valentin Mudimbé, and Manthia Diawara (9). As a result, the work is as much about the crisis of contemporary African identity and modern African subjectivity as it is about African film.

The volume is organized into nine chapters, including a summary and conclusion, and spans a variety of topics such as "modern" African identities, the problematics of African film criticism, colonialist African discourse and cinema, film production structures, and the historical background of "post-colonial African historical texts." Three chapters offer critical readings of key African films such as Ousmane Sembène's Borom Sârret (1963), Mandabi (1968), and Camp de Thiaroye (1988); Med Hondo's Sarraounia (1986); as well as two colonial instructional films: Men of Africa (Alexander Shaw, 1939) and Daybreak in Udi (Terry Bishop, 1949). Shaka defends this breadth of subject matter as an attempt to provide "a proper definition and theoretical framework for the criticism of African cinema" (13).

Shaka chides seminal writers on African cinema such as Diawara, Ukadike, Armes, and Pfaff for focusing too much on charting African film history and not providing an appropriate theoretical framework for analyzing African film (22). To redress this "theoretical oversight," as he puts it, it is necessary to consider such concepts as "Africanness," "modernity" and "subjectivity" (22). Although he correctly points out that "[one] of the major problems currently plaguing the criticism of African film... [is] lack of attention to the specificity of the cinematic medium, especially with regards to the nature of narration in film" (111), he devotes long passages to explications of others' points of view. For example, in one lengthy section (111–23), he describes cinematic codes of narration and states that he will develop a framework for the criticism of African film, but this project is never fully realized, nor is it made clear how it could be put to the test with filmic texts. Furthermore, his claim about the lack of attention to the nature of "subjectivity and its attendant aspects" (111) is problematic, since in many African films the African subject is explicitly expressed as a function of ideology and aesthetics.

Other inconsistencies and inaccuracies also undermine the author's project. For example, although he asserts that "the term 'African cinema'" is used to indicate "the totality of the institutional practices of the industry" and "'African film' refers to the textual product of the industry" (12), this distinction is not always made in the text. Of more concern are factual [End Page 169] errors such as his assertion that La noire de was released in 1960 and was Sembène's "first successful feature film" (377), when in fact it was Sembène's very first feature film and was released in 1966. In another section, the author appears to confuse Sembène's various films when he refers to the presence of "parliamentarians" in La noire de or the "cart driver in Mandabi" (58–59), characters that do not appear in these films.

Of particular interest to me were chapters 5 and 6, which deal with instructional film practice in Africa during colonial times and the historical context of colonialist African cinema. To date, very little has been written on this topic in English. The author offers lengthy analyses of the instructional films Men of Africa and Daybreak in Udi, arguing provocatively that these films belong to a cinematic practice that "should be considered as alternative" to colonialist African cinema because they do not depict Africans as savages, but rather as belonging to developing societies (212).

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