ABOUT THE BLOGGER

- Beti Ellerson
- Director/Directrice, Centre for the Study and Research of African Women in Cinema | Centre pour l'étude et la recherche des femmes africaines dans le cinéma
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08 March 2025
The African Women in Cinema Blog celebrates International Women's Day | Le Blog sur les femmes africaines dans le cinéma fête la journée internationale des femmes
02 March 2025
FESPACO 2025 : Palmarès | Awards - Les lauréates | Women winners
Fiction Long Metrage - Etalon de Bronze Yennenga
On Becoming A Guinea Fowl de Rungano Nyoni
Documentaire Long Metrage - Etalon d’or de Yennenga
'L'homme -Vertige de Malaury Eloi Paisley
Prix Wumba Film Postproduction pour To Daniel de Marwa El Sharkawy
Shorts Fiction - Mention Speciale - Langue Maternelle de Mariame N'diaye
Shorts Documentaire - Poulain d’or du Film Documentaire
Khamsinette de Assia Khemici (Algérie)
Shorts Documentaire - Poulain d’Argent du Film Documentaire
The Medallion de Ruth Hunduma
Prix President Thomas Sankara Pour La Promotion des Valeurs du Panafricanisme - Premier Prix du President Thomas Sankara Pour La Promotion des Valeurs du Panafricanisme - Our Land, Our Freedom de Meena Nanji, Zippy Kimundu
Prix President Thomas Sankara Pour La Promotion des Valeurs du Panafricanisme - Premier Prix du President Thomas Sankara Pour La Promotion des Valeurs du Panafricanisme - Mother City de Miki Redelinghuys
Section Perspectives - Prix Oumarou Ganda de la Meilleure Premiere ou Deuxieme Œuvre de Film de Fiction Long Métrage - Who Do I Belong To de Meryam Joobeur
Section Perspectives - Mention Speciale - Timpi Tampa - Emprunte de Adama Bineta Sow
Augusta Palenfo a reçu le prix spécial des droits humains d'une valeur de 2 millions de FCFA pour son film Waongo
Prix Félix Houphouët Boigny du Conseil de l’Entente, 10 millions de francs CFA, décerné à « Une si longue nuit » de Delphine Yerbanga du Burkina
Fatoumata Bathily remporte le Prix du Jury Animation pour son film "Les aventures de Kady et Djudju"
Image : fespaco.bf - publications - palmarès
01 March 2025
Commemorating Women's History Month 2025
https://africanwomenincinema.blogspot.com/2020/12/sisters-of-screen-twenty-years-later.html
Researches in African Women in Cinema Studies: Beginnings - a dossier by Beti Ellerson
https://africanwomenincinema.blogspot.com/2025/01/researches-in-african-women-in-cinema-studies-beginnings.html
Building a Historiography of African Women in Cinema
https://africanwomenincinema.blogspot.com/2012/12/building-historiography-of-african.html
African Women in Cinema Dossier by Beti Ellerson: a regular feature of Black Camera, An International Film Journal
https://africanwomenincinema.blogspot.com/2019/01/african-women-in-cinema-dossier-by-beti.html
African Women's filmmaking and film activism as Womanist Work
https://africanwomenincinema.blogspot.com/2022/06/african-womens-filmmaking-womanist-work.html
28 February 2025
FESPACO 2025 : Women at the 29th edition / Les femmes à la 29ème édition
Competition Fiction Long Metrage / Feature Length
Hanami - Denise Fernandes - Cap Vert - 96 Min
Les Invertueuses - Chloé Aïcha Boro - Burkina Faso - 96 min
On Becoming A Guinea Fowl - Rungano Nyoni - Zambia - 99 min
Sanko / Le Rêve De Dieu - Mariam Kamissok - Mali - 117 min
The Bride / La Mariée - Myriam Birara - Rwanda - 73 min
Competition Documentaire Long Metrage / Feature Documentary
Amakki - Celia Boussebaa - Algérie - 104 min
Mambar Pierette - Rosine Mbakam - Cameroun - 93 min
The Mother Of All Lies / La Mère De Tous Les Mensonges - Asmae El Moudir - Maroc - 96 min
Competition FESPACO Shorts
Beutset - Fiction - Alicia Mendy - Senegal - 30 min
Bord à Bord - Fiction - Sahar El Echi - Tunisie - 16 min
Deixa / Laisse-le - Fiction - Mariana Jaspe - Brésil - 15 min
Khamsinette - Documentaire - Assia Khemici - Algérie - 25 min
L'audition - Fiction - Kayaba Anaïs Irma Kere - Burkina Faso - 13 min
Langue Maternelle - Fiction - Mariame N'diaye - Sénégal - 24 min
Sita Bella, La Premiere - Documentaire - Eugenie Metala - Cameroun - 31 min
Sous le voile de nos silences - Fiction - Yasmine Ila Ido - Burkina Faso - 16 min
The Medallion - Documentaire - Ruth Hunduma - Ethiopie - 19 min
Under The Palm Tree / Sous le ronier - Fiction - Orokiatou Baro - Burkina Faso - 19 min
Zanatany - Fiction - Hachimiya Ahamada - Comores - 27 min
Competition Burkina Films (Shorts et Long Métrage Fictions et Documentaires)
L'inconditionnel - Documentaire - Isabelle Christiane Kouraogo - 15 Min
Verite Des Coeurs - Fiction - Delphine Yerbanga - 12 min
Ça Suffit ! - Fiction - Alimata Ouedraogo - 87 min
Waongo / Bienvenue - Fiction - Augusta Palenfo - 90 min
Competition Semaine de la Critique
Héritage : L'histoire décolonisée de l'Afrique du Sud - Documentaire - Tara Moore - South Africa - 109 Min
Mikoko - Fiction - Angela Aquereburu Rabatel - Togo - 114 Min
Quem É Essa Mulher? / Qui Est-Elle? - Documentaire - Mariana Jaspe - Brésil - 70 Min
Compétition Fespaco Series
Ankara, l'Héritage des Nanas Benz - Sitou Ayite - Togo - 26 min X 3
Bienvenue à Kikidéni - Aminata Glez Diallo - Burkina Faso - 26 min X 3
Le Cavaleur et Les Siffleurs - Nadine Otsobogo - Gabon - 26 min X 3
Manmzel New York - Mariette Monpierre - Guadeloupe - 26 min X 3
Or Blanc - Johanna Boyer-Dilolo - Côte d’Ivoire - 52 min X 2
Competition Animations
Ban'a Mayi - Maud-Salomé Ekila Bofunda - Rd Congo - 8 Min
Hadu - Damilola Solesi - Nigéria - 7 Min
Kondekiè - Kadidiatou Konaké - Mali - 7 Min
Les Aventures de Kady et Djudju (L'empire du Ghana) - Fatoumata Bathily - Sénégal - 12 Min
Compétition Films des Ecoles de Cinéma
Ton Mari C’est Ton Dieu N’kony Sylla Sabou Ciné Talents / Guinée 18 min
19 Victime Silencieuse Kate Djiwan Isma / Benin 13 min
Competition Perspectives
1964: Simityè Kamoken / 1964: Le Cimetière des Kamoken- Rachèle Magloire - Haiti - Documentaire - 97 min
Les Miennes - Samira El Mouzghibat - Morocco - Fiction - 96 min
Pirinha - Natasha Craveiro - Cap-Vert - Documentary - 60 min
Timpi Tampa / Empreinte - Adama Bineta Sow - Senegal - Fiction
Une si long lettre - Angele Diabang - Senegal - Fiction - 105 min
Une si long nuit - Delphine Yerbanga - Burkina Faso - Fiction - 85 min
Who Do I Belong To? - Meryam Joobeur - Tunisia - Fiction - 120 min
25 February 2025
Cinéastes non alignées : Parlez-vous cinéma ? Avec Pascale Obolo & Rahma Benhamou El Madani
Parlez-vous Cinema ?
Pascale Obolo & Rahma Benhamou El Madani évoquent le collectif des cinéastes non-alignées lors du 44ème FIFAM Festival International du Film d'Amiens
The collective is an association whose mission is to support diversity, parity and better representation and a greater percentage of women's involvement in the international film industry.
22 February 2025
Remembering Safi Faye (1943-2023) - Safi Faye’s cinematic practice as womanist work
Remembering Safi Faye (1943-2023)
Safi Faye’s cinematic practice as womanist work*
Je ne suis pas du tout féministe. Je suis féminisante. Je defends le cas des femmes… I am not at all feminist. I am womanistic, I defend the condition of women…
Fad signifies ‘arrive’ and Jal means ‘work,’ ‘work’ because when you arrive at this farming village called Fad’jal, you must work. When you work, you’re happy, and if you don’t work, people will mock you.
I interpret Safi Faye’s “feminisant”—from the French word “femme”, feminist, female”—as doing womanist work. Womanist, itself an expression coined by afro-descendant women in order to reconceptualize western feminism as defined by white women, which often does not reflect the realities of women of color.
Safi Faye’s words invoke the often vexed relationship that Afro-descendant women and women of the
South have with Western feminism, fraught with a contentious past, spurned by those who reject its historical practices of exclusion, ethnocentrism and elitism by white women.
Hence by rejecting the feminist label but affirming “womanistic” as the practice of defending the cause of women, Safi Faye is exercising her agency by naming her own experience rather than accepting one based on another reality.
As a further matter, describing the actions of doing “womanist work” renegotiates the terms of this feminism—outlining the tenets of a conceptual framework toward an intersectional, interdisciplinary, and transnational methodology. In so doing, I use the second citation by Safi Faye to place emphasis on the praxis-based approach to her cinematic practice, as she states:
I investigate, inquire, and then I write, and I try to remain faithful to the rural world that I come from, as well as to Africa and the villagers. I admire people who live off the land. In Serer country, the coastal people to which I belong . . . are renowned for the energy they put into their work. The people live within a matriarchal society in which women have more importance than men. Men and women are free thanks to the fruits of their labor. The rural world, the theme that I chose and which corresponds to my cinematic vision, is timeless. It concerns all rural farmers, whether they are Japanese, Senegalese or Singaporean, since we’ve all been rural farmers at one time; the entire world comes from the countryside. I glorify the hard work rural farmers do to achieve food self-sufficiency.
Therefore, Safi Faye’s womanistic act of defending the cause of women is concomitant with her desire to contribute to the knowledge production of Africa and the safeguarding of its culture: "I do what I can for my Africa, to tell how beautiful Africa is."
21 February 2025
FESPACO 2025 : Cinémas d'Afrique et Identités Culturelles - African Cinema and Cultural Identities
22 Fev - 01 Mar 2025
Cinémas d'Afrique et Identités Culturelles
African Cinema and Cultural Identities
10 February 2025
Researches in African Women in Cinema Studies: Discussion of the Literature - a dossier by Beti Ellerson
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.
Women in Films Awards Kenya
Women in Films Awards Kenya
Now in its 6th year the aim of Women in Films Awards Kenya is to celebrate the drive; spirit and diversity of the woman filmmaker
Women Films Awards director Dr. Susan Gitimu describes its purpose: “There’s a need for a festival that affords women of any background the chance to be showcased in a truly empowering light.”
Description from website: https://beyondthefilm.org/wifawardskenya/
“Beyond the Film” is an organization dedicated to recognizing and celebrating the outstanding contributions of women in the film industry. Through our annual Women in Film Awards, we strive to illuminate the remarkable talent, creativity, and resilience of women who have made significant strides in various aspects of filmmaking.
Awards Objectives : https://beyondthefilm.org/wifawardskenya/
1. To celebrate women perspectives through film
2. To encourage women filmmakers in Kenya present the world as they experience it through filming the world.
3. To empower women in Kenya to embrace filmmaking.
4. To create a market linkage for women filmmakers in Kenya to the larger market for film i.e. distributors (online, mobile, TV, and local retail market) and consumers/viewers.
02 February 2025
Africain de film & recherche féministes : Appel à candidature / Call for applications sur le thème: Féminisme, Démocratie et Écologie
Notre appel à candidatures pour notre résidence d’écriture et de recherche-action Intersections: Selebeyoon 2025 sur #Féminisme , Démocratie et l’Ecologie est ouvert jusqu’au 28 février 2024! Soumettez votre candidature maintenant en envoyant votre dossier à residency@njegemaar.com & cinefemfest@cinefemfest.com
Our call for applications for our Intersections: Selebeyoon action-research and creative writing residency on #Feminism , #Democracy and #Ecology is open until 28 février 2024! Do submit application materials to residency@njegemaar.com & cinefemfest@cinefemfest.com
01 February 2025
The African Women in Cinema Blog celebrates Black History Month
Closeup: The Africas/Diasporas of Women in the Evolution of a TransAfrican Film Practice and Critical Inquiry curated by Beti Ellerson - Black Camera: An International Film Journal 15. 2 (Spring 2024)
https://africanwomenincinema.blogspot.com/2024/06/closeup-africas-diasporas-of-women-black-camera.html
Sarah Maldoror Lives (1929-2020) and Beyond
https://africanwomenincinema.blogspot.com/2024/04/sarah-maldoror-lives-1929-2020-and-beyond.html
“I dared to make a film”: A Tribute to the Life and Work of Safi Faye by Beti Ellerson - Black Camera: An International Film Journal 15.1 (Fall 2023) - African Women in Cinema Dossier
https://africanwomenincinema.blogspot.com/2023/12/safi-faye-i-dared-to-make-a-film-tribute-to-her-life-and-work.html
Remembering Thérèse Sita-Bella : Tam-Tam à Paris - Il y a 60 ans | Sixty years ago
https://africanwomenincinema.blogspot.com/2023/11/sita-bella-tam-tam-paris-il-y-60-ans-sixty-years.html
20 January 2025
Martin Luther King Day : Commemorating his life and legacy
"So even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created.
“We need leaders not in love with money but in love with justice.not in love with publicity but in love with humanity."
“… the world is all messed up. The nation is sick. Trouble is in the land; confusion all around…. But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough, can you see the stars.”
“We must come to see that the end we seek is a society at peace with itself, a society that can live with its conscience.”
"The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges."
"We cannot walk alone. And as we walk we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back."
"In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends."
"True peace is not merely the absence of tension; it is the presence of justice."
04 January 2025
L'impact de l'adaptation des œuvres littéraires sur le marché du cinéma et de l'audiovisuel en Afrique - Salon du livre féminin de Dakar #3 Panel - Littérature et Cinéma
Intervenantes : Fama Rey Ane Sow, Sokhna Benga, Rokhaya Niang et Angèle Assie Diabang.
Fatou Kiné Sène modératrice
01 January 2025
Researches in African Women in Cinema Studies: Beginnings - a dossier by Beti Ellerson
Researches in African Women in Cinema Studies: Beginnings - a dossier by Beti Ellerson
The year 2025 inaugurates a new heading to be featured on the African Women in Cinema Blog, which coincides with the 25th anniversary of the release of the book Sisters of the Screen, Women of Africa on Film, Video and Television in 2000, followed by the film Sisters of the Screen, African Women in the Cinema, in 2002. The genesis of African Women in Cinema Studies (AFWCS) is the outgrowth of the Sisters of the Screen Project, drawing directly from the voices of the women whose interviews are included in the book and the film. The tenets of AFWCS is informed by my experiences with three entities:
(1) The direct impact of the Black Women’s Studies movement in the 1970s in the United States on my social, academic and intellectual development.
(2) My engagement with the Association of African Women for Research and Development (AAWORD/AFARD) founded in 1977.
(3) The emergence of an African Women in Cinema movement spearhead by the Pan-African Union of Women in the Image Industry/l'Union panafricaine des femmes de l'image created in 1991.
Black Women’s Studies movement in the United States
I recalled the provocative title All the Women Are White all the Blacks Are Men, But Some of Us Are Brave: Black Women’s Studies, the year was 1982. The objective of the book was to address the intersectionality of Black women’s experiences—rendered invisible in the interstices of the Civil Rights-Black Power and white dominated feminist movements.
Association of African Women for Research and Development
Similarly, AAWORD/AFARD’s aim was to provide the framework for interrogating the Euro-centric orientation of research in general, and to affirm gender as a variable, which would counterbalance concepts and scientific methodology hitherto largely influenced by the dominant patriarchal culture. The AAWORD/AFARD Constitution of 1983, outlined the objective as follows:
(1) To undertake research which calls for crucial and conscious participation of women in the decision-making process and the formulation, realization and evaluation of development priorities and projects;
(2) To reveal, reinstate and emphasize the presence of women throughout history and in all cultural, social, economic and political processes of change;
(3) To create and develop lines of communication among African women on the one hand and between women researchers and others concerned [with] problems of development in Africa on the other;
(4) To evaluate and re-examine the methodology and research priorities, the applications of which should be in the service of the African people.
Hence, it is the voices of African women as primary sources that will produce, disseminate and validate African knowledge.
The emergence of an African Women in Cinema movement
Anne Mungai recalls the masculinist dominance of FEPACI and the significance of the 1991 FESPACO platform organized under the title "Women, Cinema, Television and Video in Africa.” The inaugural meeting of what would be called the Pan-African Union of Women in the Image Industry/l'Union panafricaine des femmes de l'image outlined its purpose in this way:
(1) to provide a forum for women to exchange and share their experiences;
(2) to adopt propositions that will help ensure women their rightful place, particularly in the areas of training and production;
(3) to devise a follow-up structure for dialogue and common action;
(4) to identify the frustrations of women professionals and produce images that consciously reflect women's realities, social contexts, cultures, and histories; and
(5) to disseminate that perspective.
The Sisters of the Screen Project set out in search of these women in cinema, who through the power of their voices collectively shared the knowledge that would frame the tenets of an African Women in Cinema Studies.
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