Questioning African Cinema: Conversations with Filmmakers

By Nwachukwu Frank Ukadike and Ukadike

The most comprehensive account available of filmmaking in Africa today

Diverse in their art, paradoxically more celebrated abroad than they are at home, African filmmakers eke out their visions against a backdrop of complex historical, social, economic, and political practices. The richness of their accomplishments emerges with compelling clarity in this book, in which African filmmakers speak candidly about their work.

Featuring interviews with key personalities from twelve nations, Questioning African Cinema provides the most extensive, comprehensive account ever given of the origins, practice, and implications of filmmaking in Africa. Speaking with pioneers Med Hondo, Souleymane Ciss , and Kwaw Ansah; renowned feature filmmakers Djibril Mamb ty, Haile Gerima, and Safi Faye; and award-winning younger filmmakers Idrissa Ouedraogo, Cheick Oumar Sissoko, and Jean-Pierre Bekolo, N. Frank Ukadike identifies trends and individual practices even as he surveys the evolution of African cinema and addresses the politics and problems of seeing Africa through an African lens. Situating the unique achievement of each filmmaker within the geographic, historical, social, and political context of African cinema, he also explores questions about acting, distribution and exhibition, history, theory and criticism, video-based television production, and television's relationship to independent film.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 081664005X
• ISBN13: 9780816640058
• Release Date: May 2002
• Publisher: University of Minnesota Press
• Length: 344 Pages
• Weight: 1.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 7.0" x 10.1"