Editor’s Notes

With this issue begins the sixth edition of Black Camera. At its center is a feature that is now becoming a regular part of the journal: the Close-Up, an in-depth look at a particular filmmaker, film, or cinematic formation. This issue’s Close-Up is edited by Delphine Letort, a member of our Advisory Editorial Board and prominent media scholar at the University of Le Mans, France. In its far-ranging analysis of postcolonial filmmaking in francophone countries, this Close-Up, Letort asserts, engages with “the interstices of transnational filmmaking as illustrated by the feature films of directors with a double culture, working either as second-generation filmmakers in France or as postcolonial subjects in or having emigrated from (North) African countries.” Consider Benjamin Stora’s take on representations of the Algerian War of Independence by Algerian and French filmmakers as a meditation on collective memory and a troubled “path of reconciliation.” Also exploring the matter of “double culture,” Tsitsi Jaji illumines Mauritanian filmmaker Abderrahmane Sissako’s redeployment of the western genre—coining the term “Cassava Westerns” to describe his cinematic aesthetics—as a critique of Western politics in African states. You would also do well to read Florence Martin’s essay on cultural stasis and women’s subjectivities in Tangier in The Wretched Life of Juanita Narboni (2005), by the Moroccan filmmaker and writer Farida Benlyazid.

A number of the essays in this issue’s Close-Up address the impact of diaspora on cultural identity, marginalization, and filmmaking practice. Isabelle Vanderschelden examines the ways that Tony Gatlif’s films about Romani diasporas in Europe destabilize normative conceptions of “homeland.” Jeanne Garane’s revealing piece on the “European delusion” in Moussa Touré’s La Pirogue (2012) outlines the film’s harrowing account of the Atlantic crossing of Senegalese migrants to Spain’s Canary Islands in hopeful pursuit of the supposed good life. Guest Editor Letort’s interrogation of Rachid Bouchareb’s Bouchareb Little Senegal (2001) delimits the organizing utility of diaspora for French-speaking Africans and their African American counterparts. Concluding the Close-Up, Letort and Emmanuelle Cherel curate a pleasurable and meaningful gallery of images from the work of three Algerian women artists who unmask and disrupt the colonial past in an Algerian present distinguished by architectural remnants in the urban landscape.

Foregrounding the Close-Up is not to minimize the importance of the two essays that precede it: Marilyn Yaquinto’s compelling account of the contemporary relevance of the late Sam Greenlee’s The Spook Who Sat by the Door (1973), and Amy Corbin’s reconsideration of Charles Burnett’s My Brother’s Wedding (1983) in conversation with Killer of Sheep (1979) and To Sleep with Anger (1990). Along with these essays, note the Special Feature: Black Camera’s extended conversation with Ava DuVernay, founder of the distribution company African-American Film Festival Releasing Movement and director of I Will Follow (2010) and Middle of Nowhere (2012)—the latter making her the first African American woman to win the Best Director Award at the Sundance Film Festival. In addition, we include an interview with Erez Pery, Art Director of Israel’s Cinema South Festival, and three film reviews by Olivier Barlet in the Africultures Dossier, along with book reviews and archival news.

A staffing update in our editorial office: Natasha Vaubel, formerly Assistant Editor, has left to pursue other interests, and we wish her well. To our good fortune, her replacement is the young film scholar Mark Hain, who has stepped in to constitute this issue and continue the good work of Vaubel. I’ve asked Hain to introduce himself to our readers and contributors:

As someone intrigued by all aspects of film criticism, aesthetics, and history, I am excited and honored to be part of Black Camera. I recently earned my PhD from Indiana University, with a combined degree in film and media studies and American studies. Much of my scholarly activity is devoted to exploring the ways various audiences find meaning and use in film and other media. In particular, analyzing the recurrence and revision of historical media artifacts in various new media contexts is central to my...