Results by title

New African Cinema examines the pressing social, cultural, economic, and historical issues explored by African filmmakers from the early post-colonial years into the new millennium. Offering an overview of the development of postcolonial African cinema since the 1960s, Valérie K. Orlando highlights the variations in content and themes that reflect the socio-cultural and political environments of filmmakers and the cultures they depict in their films.  
 
Orlando illuminates the diverse themes evident in the works of filmmakers such as Ousmane Sembène’s Ceddo (Senegal, 1977), Sarah Maldoror’s Sambizanga (Angola, 1972), Assia Djebar’s La Nouba des femmes de Mont Chenoua (The Circle of women of Mount Chenoua, Algeria, 1978), Zézé Gamboa’s The Hero (Angola, 2004) and Abderrahmane Sissako’s Timbuktu (Mauritania, 2014), among others. Orlando also considers the influence of major African film schools and their traditions, as well as European and American influences on the marketing and distribution of African film. For those familiar with the polemics of African film, or new to them, Orlando offers a cogent analytical approach that is engaging.
 

Since 1999 and the death of King Hassan II, Morocco has experienced adramatic social transformation. Encouraged by the more openly democraticclimate fostered by young King Mohammed VI, filmmakers have begunto explore the sociocultural and political debates of their country whilealso seeking to document the untold stories of a dark past.Screening Morocco: Contemporary Film in a ChangingSociety focuses on Moroccan films produced and distributedfrom 1999 to the present. Moroccan cinema serves as an all-inclusive medium that providesa sounding board for a society that is remaking itself.Male and female directors present the face of an engaged,multiethnic and multilingual society. Their cinematographypromotes a country that is dynamic and connected to theglobal sociocultural economy of the twenty-first century. Atthe same time, they seek to represent the closed, obscurepast of a nation’s history that has rarely been told, drawingon themes such as human rights abuse, the former incarcerationof thousands during the Lead Years, women’semancipation, poverty, and claims for social justice. Screening Morocco will introduce American readers to therichness in theme and scope of the cinematic production ofMorocco.