My research interests revolve around issues of (re-)presentation in media, cinema and the arts, emerging from, yet not limited to, and problematized by, aspects relating to one or more of the following areas: race relations, ethnicity, diaspora, displacement, and exile. Broad in scope, my research responds to fields of study both diverse and complementary, such as Black culture and politics in America (Todd Boyd, Michael Eric Dyson, among others) and cultural studies in England (Paul Gilroy, Stuart Hall, among others). And I also address historical silences coming from countries (such as Brazil), which, in the last few decades, are being replaced by forceful voices in transnational theoretical frameworks.
Previous research:
My doctoral project translates well the transnational extend of my research as I strove to make evident the interconnectedness between cinemas from Africa, Europe, and the Americas (mainly Brazil and the United States) via an articulation of shared experiences of diaspora and sites of memory. My approach centred first on the diasporic connections between Lusophone African and (African-)Brazilian cinemas. However, working intentionally on a South-to-South axis on the ‘Black Atlantic’ I focused on suggesting a viable alternative to the long-known and well-established North Atlantic outlook on this field of study. As the investigation evolved, I was able to enlarge the scope of my research project and include Black British and African-American cinemas, therefore encompassing further aspects of the legacy of Third World Cinemas in the Atlantic region.
This investigation covered a long timeline, from the early 1960s up to the end of the last decade. Its trajectory included from the revolutionary ideals that mar...
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...ial African Cinema: From Political Engagement to Postmodernism, Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press; Chesham: Combined Academic.
Kasfir, S. L. (2007) African Art and the Colonial Encounter: Inventing a Global Commodity, Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Murphy, D. and P. Williams (2007) Postcolonial African Cinema: Ten Directors, Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Ogbechie, S. O. (2010) The Curator as Culture Broker: A Critique of the Curatorial Regime of Okwui Enwezor in the Discourse of Contemporary African Art. [Internet]. Available at: http://www.africancolours.com/african-art-news/550/international/the_curator_as_culture_broker_a_critique_of_the_curatorial_regime_of_okwui_enwezor_in_the_discourse_of_contemporary_african_art.htm [Accessed 24 October 2011]
Pfaff, F. (Ed.) (2004) Focus on African Films, Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Braudy, Leo and Marshall Cohen, eds. Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings, Fifth Edition. New York: Oxford UP, 1999.
Initially there was a great deal of debate about Benin art and its display, as it did not equate with the perceptions then held about Africa. Until the British conquest of Benin in 1897, little was known about Benin and its culture apart from brief interaction with other Europeans in the sixteenth century. The perception of Africa was of a primitive, savage and uncivilised land, full of ‘abuses and fetishes and idolatries’, (Hodgkin, 1975, p33). Therefore, when the British invaded Benin they treated any artefacts they found as ‘war booty’ (Woods, 2008, p30) and sold anything of any value to pay for the expedition. They removed artefacts and artwork without recording any contextual evidence of form or function. These ideas are evident in the photographs in figures 1.10 on page 31, 2.2 on page 50 in Cultural Encounters (AA100, Book 3) and Plate 3.1.14 in the Illustration Book: Plates for Book 3 and 4 where artefacts are bundled into piles with centralised white figures suggesting only British triumph (Loftus, 2008). The ‘clever workmanship’ (Gallewey, 1893b, p37) and ‘delicacy of detail’ (Bacon, 1897, p39) attest to the quality of the artwork and the subsequent bidding by rival museums and galleries for the pieces did not prevent the perception that Africa, and thus Benin, as being barbaric and primitive.
Western attitudes to African people and culture have always affected how their art was appreciated and this has also coloured the response to the art from Benin. Over time, concepts of ‘Race’, defined as a distinct group with a common lineage, and ‘Primitive’ which pertains to the beginning or origin,, have been inextricably linked with the perception of Africa. The confusion of the two in the minds of people at the end of the 19th century, and some of the 20th, caused a sense of superiority amongst the ‘White Races’ that affected every aspect of their interaction with ‘the Black’. The ‘Civilisation’ of Africa by conquest and force is justified by these views.
Schepelern, Peter. "Film according to Dogma: Ground Rules, Obstacles, and Liberations." Transnational Cinema in a Global North. Eds. Andrew Nestingen and Trevor G. Elkington. Detroit: Wayne State Press, 2005: 73-107
Over the course of approximately one-hundred years there has been a discernible metamorphosis within the realm of African-American cinema. African-Americans have overcome the heavy weight of oppression in forms such as of politics, citizenship and most importantly equal human rights. One of the most evident forms that were withheld from African-Americans came in the structure of the performing arts; specifically film. The common population did not allow blacks to drink from the same water fountain let alone share the same television waves or stage. But over time the strength of the expectant black actors and actresses overwhelmed the majority force to stop blacks from appearing on film. For the longest time the performing arts were the only way for African-Americans to express the deep pain that the white population placed in front of them. Singing, dancing and acting took many African-Americans to a place that no oppressor could reach; considering the exploitation of their character during the 1930's-1960's acting' was an essential technique to African American survival.
The Harlem Renaissance had a lot of influence on modern day art because many artist white and black drew inspiration from traditional African sculptures. In the 1900s, “the aesthetics of traditional African sculpture became a powerful influence among European artists who formed an avant-garde in the development of modern art.”(“African
(7) Anthony Kwame Appiah, In My Father's House: Africa in the Philosphy of Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992)
There is no art, music, and literature like here in sub-Saharan Africa. What is important to Westerners, such as the artist, label, and static-like wall hanging, means nothing to us. African art is living, spiritual, and meant to go back to the Earth once the soul of the item has run out. As the Bamana of Mali say, the art are “things that can be looked at without limit”. Our artwork has changed, emerged, and survived eras of turmoil and inversely, hope. I have found passing through the global gateway into Africa has made me appreciate this culture more, and appealed to me on a level that made me choose being a part of it.
Stewart, Jacqueline Najuma. Migrating to the Movies: Cinema and Black Urban Modernity. Berkeley: U of California, 2005. Print.
Angeles, Los. (2009). African arts. Volume 28. Published by African Studies Center, University of California.
Gabriel, Deborah. Layers of Blackness: Colourism in the African Diaspora. London: Imani Media, 2007. Print.
In the French film entitled Lumumba, director Raoul Peck recreates the revolutionary struggle of Patrice Lumumba, the newly elected Prime Minister of The Congolese Republic. In the movie, we do not see much of the independence struggle against the Belgian government, but we begin to see the reconstruction of the African state in African hands. While no one ever claimed that decolonization was easy, maybe this particular example can best be explained by Fanon’s simplified little quip “decolonization is always a violent phenomenon. ” In this paper, I will seek to locate where this post-colonial violence is located in discourses regarding race, class and gender. Particularly, I will look at the representations of race and class, and the lack of the representation of gender, in order to draw conclusions about the nature of representation and the effects this has on anti-colonial film.
Fregoso, Rosa Linda. "Chicana Film Practices: Confronting the 'Many-Headed Demon of Oppression.'" New York, NY: University of Minnesota Press.
Bohannan, Paul, and Philip Curtin. Africa & Africans . Long Grove: Waveland Press, Inc. , 1995.
Schipper, Mineke. "Mother Africa on a Pedestal: The Male Heritage in African Literature and Criticism." Women in African Literature Today. Ed. Eldred Durosimi Jones. Trenton, N.J.: Africa World Press, 1987. 35-53.