Gaze Regimes: Film and Feminisms in Africa

Gaze Regimes: Film and Feminisms in Africa. Eds. Antje Schuhmann, Jyoti Mistry. Johannesburg: University of the Witwatersrand, 2015. 

An outcome of the ARTSWork Platform: Meeting of African Women Filmmakers Johannesburg, 2010 - See proceedings on African Women in Cinema Blog*

Book Description, Wits University Press:

Gaze Regimes is a bricolage of essays and interviews showcasing the experiences of women working in film, either directly as practitioners or in other areas such as curators, festival programme directors or fundraisers. It does not shy away from questioning the relations of power in the practice of filmmaking and the power invested in the gaze itself. Who is looking and who is being looked at, who is telling women’s stories in Africa and what governs the mechanics of making those films on the continent?

The interviews with film practitioners such as Tsitsi Dangarembga, Taghreed Elsanhouri, Jihan El-Tahri, Anita Khanna, Isabel Noronhe, Arya Lalloo and Shannon Walsh demonstrate the contradictory points of departure of women in film – from their understanding of feminisms in relation to lived-experiences and the realpolitik of women working as cultural practitioners.

The disciplines of gender studies, postcolonial theory, and film theory provide the framework for the book’s essays. Beti Ellerson, Jyoti Mistry, Antje Schuhmann, Nobunye Levin, Dorothee Wenner and Christina von Braun are some of the contributors who provide valuable context, analysis and insight into, among other things, the politics of representation, the role of film festivals and the collective and individual experiences of trauma and marginality which contribute to the layered and complex filmic responses of Africa’s film practitioners.

Foreword by Katharina von Ruckteschell, Goethe-Institut sub-Saharan Africa

Introduction: By Way of Context and Content
Jyoti Mistry and Antje Schuhmann

1 African Women in Cinema: An overview
Beti Ellerson

2 ‘I am a feminist only in secret’
Interview with Taghreed Elsanhouri and Christina von Braun by Ines Kappert

3 Staged Authenticity: Femininity in photography and film
Christina von Braun

4 ‘Power is in your own hands’: Why Jihan El-Tahri does not like movements
Interview with Jihan El-Tahri by Jyoti Mistry and Antje Schuhmann

5 Aftermath – A focus on collective trauma
Interview with Djo Tunda wa Munga and Rumbi Katedza by Antje Schuhmann and Jyoti Mistry

6 Shooting Violence and Trauma: Traversing visual and social topographies in Zanele Muholi’s work
Antje Schuhmann

7 Puk Nini – A Filmic Instruction in Seduction: Exploring class and sexuality in gender relations
Antje Schuhmann and Jyoti Mistry

8 I am Saartjie Baartman
Nobunye Levin

9 Filmmaking at the Margins of a Community: On co-producing Elelwani
Jyoti Mistry

10 On Collective Practice and Collected Reflections
Interview with Shannon Walsh and Arya Lalloo by Jyoti Mistry

11 ‘Cinema of resistance’
Interview with Isabel Noronha by Max Annas and Henriette Gunkel

12 Dark and Personal
Anita Khanna

13 ‘Change? This might mean to shove a few men out’
Interview with Anita Khanna by Antje Schuhmann and Jyoti Mistry

14 Barakat! means Enough!
Katarina Hedrén

15 ‘Women, use the gaze to change reality’
Interview with Katarina Hedrén by Antje Schuhmann and Jyoti Mistry

16 Post-colonial Film Collaboration and Festival Politics
Dorothee Wenner

17 Tsitsi Dangarembga: A Manifesto
Interview with Tsitsi Dangarembga by Jyoti Mistry and Antje Schuhmann

Acronyms and Abbreviations

List of Contributors

Filmography

Index

*Names of participants (in alphabetical order) :

Peace Anyiam-Osigwe (Nigeria), Seipati Bulani-Hopa (South Africa), Tsitsi Dangarembga (Zimbabwe), Taghreed Elsanhouri (Sudan), Jihan El-Tahri (France-Egypt), Beti Ellerson (USA), Hawa Essuman (Ghana-Kenya), Maria João Ganga (Angola), June Givanni (UK), Katarina Hedrén (Sweden-South Africa), Marie Ka (Senegal), Musola Catherine Kaseketi (Zambia), Rumbi Katedza (Zimbabwe), Jyoti Mistry (South Africa), M Beatrix Mugishagwe (Tanzania), Jane Murago-Munene (Kenya), Fanta Nacro (Burkina Faso), Maren Niemeyer (Goethe-Institut, Munich), Isabel Noronha (Mozambique), Monique Phoba (DRC-Belgium), Eve Rantseli (South Africa), Yewbdar Anbessie Setegn (Ethiopia), Arice Siapi (Cameroon), Dorothee Wenner (Germany), Debra Zimmerman (Women Make Movies, USA)