African Women in Cinema Dossier
 


The African Women in Cinema Dossier by Beti Ellerson:

a regular feature of Black Camera, An International Film Journal


  1. Exploring African Women’s Cinematic Practice as Womanist Work (Spring 2023)

  2. La noire de..., La passante and Many Others: Framing Cinematic Representations of Afro-Descendant Women, Identity, and Positionality in France (Fall 2022)

  3. African Women Professionals In Cinema: Manifestos, Communiqués, Declarations, Statements, Resolutions by Beti Ellerson (Spring 2021)

  4. Fifty Years of Women's Engagement at FESPACO. IN Part I: Pan-African Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou (FESPACO): Formation, Evolution, Challenges (Fall 2020)

  5. African Women, Cinema, and Leadership: Empowerment, Mentorship, and Role-Modeling (Spring 2020)

  6. African Women on the Film Festival Landscape: Organizing, Showcasing, Promoting, Networking with Falila Gbadamassi (Fall 2019)

  7. Safi Faye's Mossane: A Song to Women, to Beauty, to Africa (Spring 2019)

  8. African Women of the Screen as Cultural Producers: An Overview by Country  (Fall 2018)

  9. On-screen Narratives, Off-screen Lives: African Women Inscribing the Self (Spring 2018)

  10. Traveling Gazes: Glocal Imaginaries in the Transcontinental, Transnational, Exilic, Migration, and Diasporic Cinematic Experiences of African Women (Spring 2017)

  11. African Women and the Documentary: Storytelling, Visualizing History, from the Personal to the Political (Fall, 2016)

  12. Teaching African Women in Cinema, Part Two (Spring 2016)

  13. Teaching African Women in Cinema, Part One (Fall 2015)


  1. Exploring African Women’s Cinematic Practice as Womanist Work (Spring 2023)

  2. https://africanwomenincinema.blogspot.com/2023/03/exploring-african-womens-cinematic-practice-womanist-work.html

  3. The womanist work in African women’s cinematic practice empowers, supports and promotes women in tandem with upholding the fight for racial, ethnic, social, political, and economic justice in their society and throughout the world. A selection of women’s voices contextualizes the notion of a womanistic standpoint as a conceptual framework that embodies their cinematic vision. Based on excerpts from interviews, critiques, citations, filmmakers’ statements, and intentions presented as leçons du cinéma, in their own voice, women tell their stories about filmmaking, their cinematic vision, their deci- sion-making, lessons learned.

  4. Voices of a selection of African women in cinema doing womanist work.

  5. Anita Afonu, Hachimiya Ahamada, Asmara Beraki, Mahen Bonetti, Isabelle Boni-Claverie, Leyla Bouzid, Tsitsi Dangarembga, Omah Diegu, Assia Djebar, Freida Ekotto, Nadia El Fani, Jihan El Tahri, Françoise Ellong, Taghreed Elsanhouri, Annette Mbaye d’Erneville, Safi Faye, Anne-Laure Folly Reimann, Claude Haffner, Mariama Hima, Jacqueline Kalimunda, Iman Kamel, Marthe Djilo Kamga, Musola Cathrine Kaseketi, Rumbi Katedza, Judy Kibinge, Matamba Kombila, Sarah Maldoror, Annette Kouamba Matondo, Beatrix Mugishagwe, Jacqueline Nsiah, Branwen Okpako, Ngozi Onwurah, Joyce Osei Owusu, Monique Mbeka Phoba, Karima Saïdi, Horria Saïhi, Alimata Salambéré, Zulfah Otto Sallies, Masepeke Sekhukhuni, Neveen Shalaby Khady Sylla, Mariama Sylla, Rama Thiaw, Mame Woury Thioubou, Najwa Tlili, Agatha Ukata, Zara Mahamat Yacoub, Rahel Zegeye


  1. La noire de..., La passante and Many Others: Framing Cinematic Representations of Afro-Descendant Women, Identity, and Positionality in France (Fall 2022)

  2. https://africanwomenincinema.blogspot.com/2022/08/black-camera-afro-women-france-beti-ellerson.html

  3. The influential film La Noire de… by Ousmane Sembene released in 1966, offers a range of themes for a discussion on afro-descendant women and their myriad experiences in relationship to France. The project that this article undertakes encompasses the period around the time of its release to the present. The challenge that it lays for itself is imbedded in a caveat posed as a question: What does the title even mean in the context of a “France” and more particularly a “Paris” that is often viewed as a “fantasy,” but is a real, concrete place—with its contradictions and faults, promise and hope? Who is this discursive cohort of afro-descendant women—negotiating their place in the country/the capital: as student, expatriate, citizen, first-generation diasporan, third-culture “glocal” transplant, traveler, immigrant, migrant? The films selected to problematize these questions set the framework for this discussion.


  1. African Women Professionals In Cinema: Manifestos, Communiqués, Declarations, Statements, Resolutions by Beti Ellerson (Spring 2021)

  2. https://africanwomenincinema.blogspot.com/2021/06/black-camera-african-women-manifestos.html

  3. Compiled here is a selection of documents that span several decades. The desire is to represent as many regions of the continent as possible, as well as to outline the evolution of African women’s discourse as image-makers. At the same time, it emphasizes the critical need to historicize documents through preservation and archival practice, by all means. Created collectively or pronounced individually, these women-focused manifestos reveal the importance of addressing gender parity and women's concerns through institutionalized structures that empower their voices and recognize their strengths. In addition, these documents show the prevalence of organized meeting venues as a means for African women to network, voice their concerns and negotiate their place, in the same context as written manifestos and declarations with resolutions that follow. Hence, included are several reports and proceedings of conferences whose purpose is to plan, strategize and implement goals. In addition, film festival practices encompass broader engagements of cinema, and are perhaps some of the most important spaces in which to showcase the goals and objectives of film organizations and individual filmmakers, as well as implement them, and, at the same time present films—along with debates about them—that would not be seen otherwise. And with the ubiquity of social media, visual documents, in the form of video clips and slide presentations, continue the call to action, by visualizing ideas, concerns, and strategies for change. Hence, the selection attempts to incorporate these media as well, which together reflect past, present and future visions and voices of African women.


  1. Fifty Years of Women's Engagement at FESPACO. IN Part I: Pan-African Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou (FESPACO): Formation, Evolution, Challenges (Fall 2020)

  2. https://africanwomenincinema.blogspot.com/2021/05/black-camera-fespaco-fifty-years-of-womens-engagement.html.html FESPACO has long served as a point of reference both in Africa and internationally. It has been the meeting point beyond the physicality of its bi-annual location, and holds a dominant place in the African cinematic imagination. What has happened, what is happening at the moment during its weeklong activities, and what will happen in its future are of significant import. Its legendary history continues to loom large in the annals of African cinema, and, the role that women have performed within it. Likewise, on the continent, in step with the global appeal for women's increased visibility on the cinematic landscape, a clarion call has been sounded: for parity in leadership indicative of women's capacity as decision-makers; and their place: as half of humanity. Employing a wide lens to explore trends, tendencies, and developments, this article will consider women's engagement at FESPACO, examining concomitantly, past accomplishments, present realities and future possibilities.


  1. African Women, Cinema, and Leadership: Empowerment, Mentorship, and Role-Modeling

  2. https://africanwomenincinema.blogspot.com/2020/06/black-camera-african-women-cinema-and.html

  3. Leadership entails listening, sharing, mentoring, and understanding that we may learn from each other through diverse exchanges: intergenerational, intercultural, and inter-regional. These features are incorporated in many of the workshops and forums organized by African women, designed for leadership awareness and development. Moreover, African women film professionals have initiated mechanisms to foster effective leadership in the diverse areas of the profession. These initiatives aim to create an African women's cinema culture that encourages and empowers women film professionals as well as those who seek to work in cinema...


  1. African Women on the Film Festival Landscape: Organizing, Showcasing, Promoting, Networking with Falila Gbadamassi 

  2. https://africanwomenincinema.blogspot.com/2020/01/black-camera-african-women-on-film.html

  3. An important function of the film festival is its capacity to showcase on a local, continental, and international level the works of African women, and to serve as a networking space to professionalize their experiences as stakeholders on the global film festival landscape. As these entities proliferate on the continent and internationally, African women are leading the way, often at the helm of these institutions...


  1. Safi Faye's Mossane: A Song to Women, to Beauty, to Africa (Spring 2019)

  2. https://africanwomenincinema.blogspot.com/2019/05/black-camera-safi-fayes-mossane-song-to.html

  3. Mossane (dir. Safi Faye), completed in 1990 and released in 1996, is a timeless piece. That is the nature of legends, of myths, of allegories. Destiny has been inscribed, fate already determined. Having created a narrative imbued in Serer mythology, structured around the fate of a fourteen-year-old girl, who because of her stunning beauty, is returned to the Pangool spirits through the waters of the Mamangueth, Safi Faye’s cinematic endeavor was to decide in what way to tell the story and how to visualize it. This article frames the film Mossane within the context of Faye’s corpus of works, especially as it relates to prevailing themes that foreground women’s experiences within the rural sector and countryside, socio-economic matters, education, issues at the intersection of tradition and modernity, rituals and ceremonies and the importance of oral tradition as a foundation for visual storytelling...


  1. African Women of the Screen as Cultural Producers: An Overview by Country (Fall 2018)

  2. https://africanwomenincinema.blogspot.com/2018/11/black-camera-african-women-of-screen-as.html

  3. African women as cultural producers in the realm of the moving image, screen culture, audiovisual media—what are their experiences? These women who work actively in the behind-the-scenes roles; in front of the screen as journalist, critic, cultural reader; in the corridors as organizer, activist, advocate, promoter in the vast cinematic enterprise, many wearing multiple hats as filmmaker, actor, presenter, producer, scholar. Whether working on the local, regional, continental, international, or transnational level, their role is vital, their work essential. This survey by country provides an indication of the span of activities of these cultural workers: most striving for the cause, or out of a sense of duty, or of purpose—some in perilous situations, so that African images are seen and stories told—produced, disseminated, distributed, exhibited, discussed, critiqued, documented, archived, preserved.


  1. On-screen Narratives, Off-screen Lives: African Women Inscribing the Self (Spring 2018)

  2. https://africanwomenincinema.blogspot.com/2018/05/black-camera-on-screen-narratives-off.html

  3. The journeys of on-screen characters, while most do not reflect the off-screen trajectories of the real-life women, some do provide glimpses that parallel the paths that these women have voyaged in their own lives, perhaps influenced by their characters, or more brutally, because of them. Their travels, imaginary and real, had some relationship to their roles as actor and/or the choices they later made as a result of their encounter with/within the world of cinema. It is their on-screen legacy, especially in the case of iconic films, that has been the most enduring; as these women, far removed from their fame in these early films, live quiet off-screen lives a long way from the experiences of their cinematic characters...


  1. Traveling Gazes: Glocal Imaginaries in the Transcontinental, Transnational, Exilic, Migration, and Diasporic Cinematic Experiences of African Women (Spring 2017)

  2. https://africanwomenincinema.blogspot.com/2017/05/black-camera-spring-2017-beti-ellerson.html

  3. The exilic and diasporic filmmaking experiences of African women of the screen have been evident from the start of African cinematic practices. Women have traveled and relocated outside of their homeland to study, edit, shoot, work, live, and network. Informed by Hamid Naficy's formulation of “accented cinema,” this article traces these peripatetic migrations framed within selected topics that are representative of the histories, trends, and tendencies throughout the evolution of African women in cinema...


  1. African Women and the Documentary: Storytelling, Visualizing History, from the Personal to the Political (Fall, 2016)

  2. https://africanwomenincinema.blogspot.com/2016/10/african-women-and-documentary.html

  3. The practice of storytelling, of relating actuality, the real, of recounting history, the personal, the social, the political, are all features of the screen culture in which African women have evolved in myriad ways as stakeholders in the cultural production of their society and the world. Telling stories through documentary in particular has been a dominant mode of expression among African women, perhaps out of a genuine interest in addressing the pressing issues in their societies and relating stories that would otherwise not be told...


  1. Teaching African Women in Cinema, Part Two (Spring 2016)

  2. https://africanwomenincinema.blogspot.com/2016/06/teaching-african-women-in-cinema-part.html

  3. The second part of this essay offers a primer on African women in cinema studies, which is based on actual courses, seminars, and lectures and draws directly from articles posted on the African Women in Cinema Blog since its inception in 2009.


  1. Teaching African Women in Cinema, Part One (Fall 2015)

  2. https://africanwomenincinema.blogspot.com/2016/02/teaching-african-women-in-cinema-part.html

  3. Women in front of the screen, as cultural readers, scholars, critics and theorists of African women in cinema studies also have a vital function in the study and analysis of cultural production as it relates to women's role in creating, shaping and determining the course of their cinematic history, the intellectual and cultural capital that it produces, and the intangible cultural heritage to which it contributes...