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  • Dictionary of African Filmmakers
  • Sada Niang
Roy Armes . Dictionary of African Filmmakers. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008. xiv + 398 pp. References. Index. Bibliography. $65.00. Cloth.

Roy Armes's Dictionary of African Filmmakers is divided into three parts preceded by an introduction and ending with an index and a bibliography. Armes's introduction starts with a delicate yet fully substantiated delineation of his corpus. Focusing mainly on feature fictional films on Africa, Armes opens up with an exposition of the dilemmas facing the bibliographer of a field so recent, yet so varied as far as participants and materials are concerned. For example, the documentaries crafted early in their careers by many first-generation African filmmakers were not included in the corpus examined; among the most accomplished documentary filmmakers of the post-independence era (as Armes terms them), only a few have been mentioned: Jean Marie Teno (Cameroon), Simon Bright (Zim-babwe), Issa Genini (Morocco), Nana Mahomo (South Africa) and Samba Félix Ndiaye (Senegal). One drawback of such a choice is that the rich and varied educational documentaries on AIDS (many of them scripted by aspiring and cash-strapped female filmmakers), were left out of the dictionary. Another, yet more controversial, omission relates to the "Nollywood" productions usually referred to as "Nigerian videos." Roy Armes's argument that these productions are "destined for domestic consumption within the family context" and therefore not worthy of inclusion in The Dictionary of African Filmmakers is hardly tenable. The continent over, these films are sold at the same corner store as the more respected—albeit fraudulently copied—Hollywood and other African films. Today whole Web sites are dedicated to the commercialization and promotion of these films. In Cameroon alone, shopkeepers in Yaoundé have turned part of their local businesses into small movie theaters in which any spectator may view a Nollywood, Hollywood or Bollywood film for a fee. Similar trends exist in Senegal, Ivory Coast, Niger—and Paris.

This being said, the Dictionary of African Filmmakers is an invaluable treasure trove of information. It turns what is an obstacle course for most critics into a walk of discovery—perhaps even of innovation. Here, African cinema is conceived broadly as a global activity free from the limitations of race, nationality and indigenous culture. The entries daringly put side by side native and diaspora African filmmakers—African filmmakers born and bred on the continent and Italian, Dutch, and German producers whose creations in Egypt and South Africa launched an industry whose impact is [End Page 211] now felt throughout the continent. Genre issues, which scholars are starting to investigate, are noted. Above all, Armes's Dictionary of African Filmmakers concisely lists the underlying trends in African cinema by identifying filmmakers, the institutions where they were trained, and their major influences.

Thus, of the 1250 African filmmakers listed in the dictionary, the autodidacts like Ousmane Sembene are rare; the large majority were educated in European schools where major film aesthetics trends were in vogue: the Conservatoire libre du cinéma français, the École supérieure des études cinématographiques, The Polytechnic Centre of London, the Centro Sperimentale de cinematographia in Rome, and the Fondation européenne de l'image in Paris, among others. And in this profusion of information a few vitally important facts for the scholar/student of African cinema stand out: for example, most Cameroonian and Senegalese filmmakers, it turns out, were trained in France, while most Malian filmmakers attended the Vse-soyuznyi Gosudarstvennyi Institut Kinematografii (VGIK; All Union State Cinema Institute) in Moscow. The dictionary also reasserts in no uncertain way the dominance of Egyptian cinema in terms of longevity or sheer number of films produced. Finally, Armes establishes once and for all that for many filmmakers the line between directing and acting is frequently crossed.

This is an invaluable resource for students, scholars, film historians, and film producers. [End Page 212]

Sada Niang
University of Victoria
Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
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