Alternating Views: Malian Cinema, Television Serials, and Democratic Experience

Several studies commenting on the uneasy relationship between cinema and television in African contexts have insisted on dire prospects for current African cinema, yet interpretive problems remain, insofar as the particular relationship between television and cinema involves sets of meanings and cinematic and television practices that vary considerably according to the context and the historical moment in which they take place. I argue here that, in the case of Mali, it may be more productive to talk about an inter-related cinematic and televisual development process leading to complementary orientations. By examining the representations of democratization in cinema and television, I wish to emphasize what could be called a cinematic compromise and adjustment, in which the two modes intersect to allow the coexistence of multiple sites of reflection and alternative discourses on the Malian national experience of democracy.