Is the African Cinema Definition ‘Real’ or ‘Idealistic’

Abstract

To a large extent, the world seems to have seen more films from the West than from anywhere else. In sub-Saharan Africa for example, it was not until the early 1960s that the Africans had the opportunity to stand behind the lens to tell their own story. Unlike the cinema of the West, ‘African cinema’ was borne more out of the resistance to its representation by the West. From Ousmane Sembene’s time till now, other filmmakers from Anglophone as well as Lusophone countries have made different films on different subjects about nation and culture. But in many scholarly writings, for several years, these national cinemas are not seen as such but are bundled up under the rubric of African cinema. Who defines African cinema, can we look at its constituents as national cinemas? Is the definition known before evolving? Are the films made in contemporary times in cosmopolitan settings losing their ‘Africanness’? Does the term African cinema possess colonial undertones? This article seeks to trace the beginnings of African cinema and its evolution and find out how the cinemas in sub-Saharan Africa especially kowtowing to the pigeonhole of the idealism of how the West defines it, or whether gradually the emerging stories from different nations are making the world rethink films from Africa in a different or ‘real’ way. The paper further considers the progress of filmmaking in Anglophone Africa, with a particular reference to Ghana and how this art wrapped in culture and ideology has defined itself over the years. The study adopts analytical and historicocritical methods.