From the proselytizing lantern slides of early Christian missionaries to contemporary films that look at Africa through an African lens, N. Frank Ukadike explores the development of black African cinema. He examines the impact of culture and history, and of technology and co-production, on filmmaking throughout Africa.

Every aspect of African contact with and contribution to cinematic practices receives attention: British colonial cinema; the thematic and stylistic diversity of the pioneering "francophone" films; the effects of television on the motion picture industry; and patterns of television documentary filmmaking in "anglophone" regions. Ukadike gives special attention to the growth of independent production in Ghana and Nigeria, the unique Yoruba theater-film tradition, and the militant liberationist tendencies of "lusophone" filmmakers. He offers a lucid discussion of oral tradition as a creative matrix and the relationship between cinema and other forms of popular culture. And, by contrasting "new" African films with those based on the traditional paradigm, he explores the trends emerging from the eighties and nineties.

Clearly written and accessible to specialist and general reader alikeBlack African Cinema's analysis of key films and issues—the most comprehensive in English—is unique. The book's pan-Africanist vision heralds important new strategies for appraising a cinema that increasingly attracts the attention of film students and Africanists.

From the proselytizing lantern slides of early Christian missionaries to contemporary films that look at Africa through an African lens, N. Frank Ukadike explores the development of black African cinema. He examines the impact of culture and history, and of technology and co-production, on filmmaking throughout Africa.

Every aspect of African contact with and contribution to cinematic practices receives attention: British colonial cinema; the thematic and stylistic diversity of the pioneering "francophone" films; the effects of television on the motion picture industry; and patterns of television documentary filmmaking in "anglophone" regions. Ukadike gives special attention to the growth of independent production in Ghana and Nigeria, the unique Yoruba theater-film tradition, and the militant liberationist tendencies of "lusophone" filmmakers. He offers a lucid discussion of oral tradition as a creative matrix and the relationship between cinema and other forms of popular culture. And, by contrasting "new" African films with those based on the traditional paradigm, he explores the trends emerging from the eighties and nineties.

Clearly written and accessible to specialist and general reader alikeBlack African Cinema's analysis of key films and issues—the most comprehensive in English—is unique. The book's pan-Africanist vision heralds important new strategies for appraising a cinema that increasingly attracts the attention of film students and Africanists.

   Acknowledgments       
   Introduction     

1 Africa and the Cinema      
   Information and Entertainment Media in Black
    Africa before the Arrival of Cinema  
   Some Early Contacts with the Cinema    
   Western Images of Africa: Genealogy of an
    Ideological Formulation   
   Banishing the Exotic: Toward a Positive
    Image?     

2 Francophone Origins       
   General Trends and the Problems of Development:
    An Overview      
   The Indigenous African Film Production   
   Med Hondo and Ousmane Sembene: The Schism
    between Theory and Practice    

3 Developments in Anglophone Film
   Production     
   Working for the Decolonization of the
    Picture   
   The Battle of the Frames: Film, Television, and
    Bureaucracy    
   The Formation of Independent Cinema in Ghana and
    Nigeria    
   Ghana: Contrasts in Ideology and Practice  
   Nigeria: Paradox of Mediocrity?   

4 The Cultural Context of Black African
  Cinema      
  Post-1970 and the Introspective Phase  
  Oral Tradition and the Aesthetics of Black African
    Cinema     
  Film and the Politics of Liberation

5 New Developments in Black African
  Cinema      
  Contours of an Emerging Trend: Toward a New
   Cinema?     
  Narration, Transgression, and the Centrality of
   Culture    
  Toward the Tradition and the Centrality of the
   Paradigm    
              
6 Conclusion: Whither African Cinema?       
  The Present Situation   
  The Question of Aesthetics    

  Notes     
  Selected Bibliography      
  Index