Researches in African Women in Cinema Studies - Discussion of the Literature - a dossier by Beti Ellerson
While the emergence of African Women in Cinema Studies dates to 2000, literature on or by African women and the moving image may be traced to at least the 1960s. The Italian-language book Cinema e Africa nera, one of the first studies about African cinema by an African, published in Italy in 1968, was based on the academic research of Nigerian Joy Nwosu, who studied at Pro Deo University in Rome. It is worth noting her words of wisdom when undertaking research: “That is important, if you are doing research on [the topic of African cinema], you must look at my work, and if you have not then that means that you have not done your research properly…Not because of the joy of reading it, but to know what has been there, that it has been done and how it all started…that is why it is very relevant for today.”
The Senegal-based French-language women’s magazine Awa, la revue de la femme noire (1964–1973) featured photographs and short profiles on African actresses of the fledgling African cinemas. The emergence of Awa, initially launched by veteran journalist, feminist, cultural activist Annette Mbaye d’Erneville in 1957 under the name Femmes de Soleil is an example of the early engagement of African women at the intersection of gender and culture. Moreover, Annette Mbaye d’Erneville was the director of RECIDAK, Rencontres cinématographiques de Dakar for many years. An annual film festival that she initiated in 1990 and with which she continues to have close ties. The 1996 edition of RECIDAK, Femmes et Cinéma (Women and Cinema) paid homage to African women. She was also a founding member of the Association Sénégalaise des Critiques de Cinéma (ASSECCI) created by filmmaker and critic Paulin Soumanou Vieyra and journalist Djib Diedhiou. Also one of the founders of the women’s movement in Senegal, Annette Mbaye d’Erneville’s pioneering feminist voice reverberates within diverse cultural milieux, notable cinema, where she has been a seminal figure in the development of the Senegalese public as cultural readers.
Amina Magazine created in 1972 continued this tradition of profiles and interviews of women stakeholders in the cinema industry; journalist Assiatou Bah Diallo, who was the longtime editor-in-chief, made an important contribution, ensuring the visibility of African women of the moving image in its pages. While presented in a journalistic format, these remain important sources regarding contemporaneous experiences, relevant events, and information and newly-released films.
Ousmane Sembene was one of the first African filmmakers to put women at the forefront of his films, depicting them as the complex, multi-layered women they are in reality. Both his literary and cinematic oeuvres have from the beginning held an important place in discourse on representations of African women in cinema and literature. The 1969 article “Les femmes dans l’oeuvre littéraire d’Ousmane Sembene” by Jarmila Ortova is one of the first works analyzing the representation of women in his literary works. Similarly, Carrie D. Moore’s 1972 article “The Role of Women in the Works of Sembene Ousmane” was one of the first English-language works.
The 1974 issue of Women and Film, which dedicated an extensive series to Sarah Maldoror, was one of the first comprehensive English-language analyses of the early works of Maldoror, with her reflections and an interview. The second comprehensive English-language study of her work from 1970 to 1986 by Françoise Pfaff is included in her book Twenty-Five Black African Filmmakers, published in 1988. A similar comprehensive study of Safi Faye and her work from 1972–1984 is also included in Françoise Pfaff’s book. In addition, I have expanded the Safi Faye literature to include “Through an African Woman’s Eyes: Safi Faye’s Cinema”, a critical analysis, published in 2004, and after her passing a tribute entitled “I dared to make a film, a tribute to the life and work of Safi Faye,” published in 2023.
Now that Sarah Maldoror (1929-2020) and Safi Faye (1943-2023) have joined the ancestors, there is a growing interest in their legacy, with written and transmedial tributes. The African Women in Cinema Blog has attempted to collect the multiple references for both Sarah Maldoror and Safi Faye.
The arrival of the pioneering African woman filmmaker with a corpus of work to study, marked the advent of African women in cinema literature, mostly in French and English. As the interest in African women in cinema studies expands internationally, literature in German, Dutch, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish are finding a compelling readership. One of the first analyses of women in African cinema, in front of and behind the camera under the title “La femme dans le cinéma africain” was authored in 1977 by African cinema historian and filmmaker Paulin Soumanou Vieyra. Most of the other works during this period add to the previous corpus of work on Safi Faye and the representation of women in the films of Sembene.
The journal Jump Cut: A Review of Contemporary Media, which analyses visual media at the intersection of race, gender, and class, featured several articles on women and African cinema beginning in the 1980s. In the February 1984 issue, Claudia Springer’s article “Black Women Filmmakers” highlighted three African women, Nigerians Ruby Bell-Gam and Ijeoma Iloputaife as well as Anne Ngu from Cameroon. It is one of the first analyses of African women film practitioners studying and working in the United States.
The 1980s also witnessed the emergence of graduate studies on African women in cinema, generally focusing on representations in film. One may note the presence of African women undertaking academic studies on African women in cinema; for example, Rosette Léonie Yangba-Zowe’s 1987 research, “Divers aspects d marriage and the role des femmes dans l’oeuvre cinématographique d’Oumarou Ganda,” on the diverse aspects of marriage and the role of women in the films of Oumarou Ganda, a pioneering filmmaker of Niger. The trend continues with Chido Matewa’s master’s dissertation, “The Role of the Media in the Subordination of Women in Africa,” and the section “Case Study of Africa Women Filmmakers Trust,” in her doctoral dissertation, “Media and the Empowerment of Communities for Social Change”; Wanjiku Beatrice Mukora’s master’s dissertation, “Disrupting Binary Divisions: Representation of Identity in Saikati and Battle of the Sacred Tree”; Dominica Dipio’s doctoral dissertation published as the book Gender Terrains in African Cinema; Joyce Osei Owusu’s master’s and doctoral dissertations, “Women and the Screen: A Study of Shirley Frimpong-Manso’s Life and Living It and Scorned” and “Ghanaian Women and Film: An Examination of Female Representation and Audience Reception,” and Carolyn Khamete Mango’s dissertation thesis, “The presence of women in the Kenyan film industry: applying postcolonial African feminist theory.”
From 1990 to 1998, Ecrans d’Afrique/African Screens, the pan-African review published by the pan-African Federation of African Cineastes, provided a wealth of cinema-related information such as profiles, interviews, newly released films, films in production, in-focus presentations, analyses, and relevant announcements, with women prominently featured in the pages and on the covers. Though it is no longer active, it is an important archive for research and study. Françoise Pfaff’s 1991 article “Eroticism and Sub-Saharan African Films,” one of the first studies on sexuality and the body in African films, is a forerunner to the abundance of works on the theme appearing in the 1990s and 2000s, for instance, Gender and Sexuality in African Literature and Film edited by Ada Uzoamaka Azodo and Maureen Ngozi Eke in 2007; the doctoral dissertation of Ousmane Ouedraogo, “Gender and Sexuality in West African Francophone Cinema” in 2008; and the doctoral dissertation of Naminata Diabate, “Genital Power: Female Sexuality in West African Literature and Film,” in 2011.
Chinyere Stella Okunna’s 1996 study “Portrayal of Women in Nigerian Home Video Films: Empowerment or Subjugation?” is a precursor to the plethora of subsequent research on representations of women that proliferated in the 2000s, especially on what would be known as “Nollywood.” Agatha Ukata’s 2010 doctoral dissertation “The Image(s) of Women in Nigerian (Nollywood) Videos” is an example of the heightened attention paid to this phenomenon and the representations of women in the images. And to further emphasize, they are both African women researching about African women.
As more films by and about women became accessible in the 1990s, there was a growing interest in studying, teaching, and discussing women-directed films and films in general with realistic and empowering women characters—in the classroom as well as in cultural venues and film festivals. The emergence of an “African women in cinema movement” gave impetus to a body of work in the form of manifestos, declarations, proceedings, and repertories. Najwa Tlili’s Femmes d’Images de l’Afrique Francophone, published in 1994, was a direct result of one of the objectives of the colloquium “Images de femmes,” the African women’s meeting held at the Vues d’Afrique festival in Montreal in 1989, to create an index bringing together the biography and filmography of francophone African women. The directory also includes short dialogues of varying lengths, of forty women in response to the question “why do you make films?” as well as an interview with artist/filmmaker/activist Werewere Liking. The historic meeting at FESPACO (Pan-African Festival of Film and Television of Ouagadougou) in 1991, which in many ways became the genesis of a continent-wide “women of the image” movement, set out its objectives through a pointed declaration, outlining the exasperations, hopes, frustrations, and interest of the participants, and by inference, African women professionals of the image in general. Similar manifestos were presented at the meeting of the African Women Filmmakers Conference in 2010 in Johannesburg, South Africa and in 2013 at the African Women Film Forum in Accra, Ghana. Hence, these statements serve as a record of the intentions, ideas, and experiences of the period and also as a means to assess the decision-making process at a certain time and the manner in which issues were later resolved.
My 1996–1997 postdoctoral work on African women in the visual media culminated in seminal works on African women in cinema studies, including the book Sisters of the Screen: Women of Africa on Film, Video and Television, released in 2000; and the companion film, Sisters of the Screen: African Women in the Cinema, in 2002. The book introduces the concept of “African women cinema studies,” (which has been renamed as ‘African Women in Cinema Studies’) presenting a methodology, historiography, theoretical framework, filmography, and bibliography. And also of importance, there is a collection of interviews of pioneering women and those who had recently entered the profession. This is significant in that those voices informed the methodology and provide the framework for future research as primary sources: as women’s stories, expressing their needs, interests, and problems. The film, based on excerpts of the filmed interviews transcribed for the book, has been a valuable source in women’s studies, African studies, and international studies. The Internet-based Centre for the Study and Research of African Women in Cinema and the African Women in Cinema Blog are extensions of this project, with the continuation of interviews, analyses of films, and the dissemination of related content. The plethora of scholarly works—including articles, books, conferences, forums, and colloquia that have bourgeoned in the new millennium—ensure the development of the sub-field of African women in cinema studies and its continued growth.
With the emergence of the Internet, digital journalism and transmedial environments have provided an important space for the visibility of African women journalists and content creators. Throughout the continent this cohort of women are actively engaged in film journalism and storytelling in association with digital portals such as Africine.org, the African press in general, in affiliation with Western news outlets or as creators of their own media production enterprise. Angela Aquereburu, with her partner, founded Yobo Studios, whose objective is to provide original and exportable programs and bring a different perspective regarding Africa. Hortense Assaga created the magazine Cité Black Paris, hosts several cultural programs and regularly reports on cultural events for Africa 24 and Canal+ Afrique. Togolese film critic Sitou Ayité wears multiple hats as producer, scriptwriter and director. Amina Barakat from Morocco, navigates the local film culture scene as well as throughout the continent. Franco-Burkinabé Claire Diao traverses an array of transmedia networks: podcasts, audio-visual programming, itinerant film curation, and diverse print media. Cameroonian journalist Stéphanie Dongmo, blogger, president of the Cameroon chapter of CNA, Cinema Numerique Ambulant, the extensive network of mobile cinema in Africa and Europe, is also a novelist. Falila Gbadamassi, journalist, film critic and social media editor, informs and wants to be informed about Africa in particular. From Nollywood to Bollywood via Hollywood, she is both a film enthusiast and critic. She writes for Africiné Magazine (Dakar), among other media. France-based independent journalist Amanda Kabuiku collaborates with several publications. Belgo-Congolese Djia Mambu keeps a visible presence at the important network of African film festivals, Cannes and beyond. Similarly, Belgium-based filmmaker and journalist Wendy Bashi is a host of the programme Reflets Sud on TV5 Monde. Cameroonian journalist and film critic Pélagie Ng'onana is an editor at the Dakar-based Africiné Magazine and collaborates with the Yaoundé-based cultural revue Mosaïques. Originally working as journalist, Nadège Batou wanted to expand her audience beyond the community-based media, hence, acquiring the necessary training as director and producer. She is founder and director of the Festival des 7 Quartiers in Brazzaville. Similarly journalist-filmmaker Annette Kouamba Matondo of Congo-Brazzaville, is also an avid blogger, using social media to showcase local social activities and women’s initiatives. Domoina Ratsara from Madagascar is president of the Association des Critiques Cinématographiques de Madagascar (ACCM) which she co-founded in December 2018. Mame Woury Thioubou, journalist and filmmaker, is just as much at ease with the pen as with a camera. Tools that allow her to observe and describe her world, to share feelings. An exercise that has earned her honors worldwide. Senegalese Fatou Kiné Sene is general secretary of the Senegalese Film Critics Association. The goal of Senegalese Fatou Warkha, creator of the online television channel Warkha TV is to change attitudes and laws, giving a face and voice to everyone who has been forgotten by the authorities.
The boundaries between research, filmmaking/storytelling, criticism, activism, networking are blurred, intermingled within transmedial environments where African women makers themselves control the production, dissemination and validation of knowledge.
Some parts of the text are drawn from my article, "African Women in Film, the Moving Image, and Screen Culture." Oxford Research Encyclopedias, African History, 2019, and the Blog article, "African Women Journalists: Critical Engagements in African Cinemas", 2021.