ABOUT THIS BOOK

Black and White in Colour: African History on Screen considers how the African past has been represented in a wide range of historical films. Written by a team of eminent international scholars, the volume provides extensive coverage of both place and time and deals with major issues in the written history of Africa. Themes include the slave trade, imperialism and colonialism, racism, and anticolonial resistance. Many of the films will be familiar to readers: they include Out of Africa, Hotel Rwanda, Breaker Morant, Cry Freedom, The Battle of Algiers, and Chocolat.

This collection of essays is a highly original and useful contribution to African historiography, as well as a significant addition to the growing body of work within the emerging subdiscipline of “film and history.” It will appeal to those interested in African history and the ways in which films use the past to raise questions about the present.

Contributors: Mahir Saul, Ralph A. Austen, Robert Baum, Robert Harms, Nigel Worden, Carolyn Hamilton and Litheko Modisane, Richard Mendelsohn, Shamil Jeppie, Bill Nasson, Nigel Penn, Ruth Watson, Patrick Harries, David Moore, Teresa Barnes, Vivian Bickford-Smith, Mohamed Adhikari, and David Philips.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Vivian Bickford-Smith is a professor in the Department of Historical Studies at the University of Cape Town. He is the author of Ethnic Pride and Racial Prejudice in Victorian Cape Town.

Richard Mendelsohn is the head of the Department of Historical Studies at the University of Cape Town. He has published extensively on South African Jewish history, and together with Vivian Bickford-Smith, has pioneered teaching and research in film and history.

REVIEWS

“Invaluable for teachers of African history courses who want to make use of film.... There is something here to make everybody think and see more clearly.”—Terence Ranger, International History Review

“For those who wish to use film in their classes on the continent, Black and White in Colour is close to required reading. Some of the topics that are touched upon as the contributors cover the continent from Algeria to South Africa includ

“A most informative study, covering a wide spectrum of filmmakers and histories, and poised to remain the most comprehensive work on the subject for a long time. The book is extremely valuable for graduate interdisciplinary courses and those teachi

TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Contributors                                                   vii
Introduction Vivian Bickford-Smith and Richard Mendelsohn               1
1  History as cultural redemption in Gaston Kabore's                 11
precolonial-era films
Mahir Saul
2   Beyond 'history': two films of the deep Mande past               28
Ralph A. Austen
3  Tradition and resistance in Ousmane Sembene's films               41
Emitai and Ceddo
Robert Baum
4   The transatlantic slave trade in cinema                          59
Robert Harms
5   'What are we?': Proteus and the problematising of history        82
Nigel Worden
6  The public lives of historical films: the case of                 97
Zulu and Zulu Dawn
Carolyn Hamilton and Litheko Modisane
7  Breaker Morant. an African war through                           120
an Australian lens
Richard Mendelsohn
8  From Khartoum to Kufrah: filmic narratives of                    136
conquest and resistance
Shamil Jeppie
9   Cheap if not always cheerful: French West Africa in the         148
world wars in Black and White in Colour and Le Camp
de Thiaroye
Bill Nasson
10   Whites in Africa: Kenya's colonists in the films                 167
Out of Africa, Nowhere in Africa and White Mischief
Nigel Penn
11   Beholding the colonial past in Claire Denis's Chocolat       185
Ruth Watson
12   The Battle of Algiers: between fiction, memory and history   203
Patrick Harries
13   Raoul Peck's Lumumba: history or hagiography?                223
David Moore
14   Flame and the historiography of armed struggle               240
in Zimbabwe
Teresa Barnes
15   Picturing apartheid: with a particular focus on              256
'Hollywood' histories of the 1970s
Vivian Bickford-Smith
"16  Hotel Rwanda: too much heroism, too little                   279
history - or horror?
Mohamed Adhikari
17   Looking the beast in the (fictional) eye:                    300
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission on film
David Philips
Endnotes                                                          323