African Film and Literature: Adapting Violence to the Screen

Lindiwe Dovey

Published by Columbia University Press 2009

African Film and Literature

Adapting Violence to the Screen

Lindiwe Dovey

In the series Film and Culture Series

https://doi.org/10.7312/dove14754

Overview
Contents

About this book

Analyzing a range of South African and West African films inspired by African and non-African literature, Lindiwe Dovey identifies a specific trend in contemporary African filmmaking-one in which filmmakers are using the embodied audiovisual medium of film to offer a critique of physical and psychological violence. Against a detailed history of the medium's savage introduction and exploitation by colonial powers in two very different African contexts, Dovey examines the complex ways in which African filmmakers are preserving, mediating, and critiquing their own cultures while seeking a united vision of the future. More than merely representing socio-cultural realities in Africa, these films engage with issues of colonialism and postcolonialism, "updating" both the history and the literature they adapt to address contemporary audiences in Africa and elsewhere. Through this deliberate and radical re-historicization of texts and realities, Dovey argues that African filmmakers have developed a method of filmmaking that is altogether distinct from European and American forms of adaptation.

Author / Editor information

Lindiwe Dovey is lecturer in African film and performance arts at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. She holds a BA Honors degree from Harvard University and a Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge. She is the founding director of the Cambridge African Film Festival and has made both documentary and fiction films.

Reviews

[An] important book... Highly recommended.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
List of Film Stills Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	ix
Preface Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	xi
Acknowledgments Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	xv
Abbreviations Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	xvii
Introduction: “African Cinema”: Problems and Possibilities Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
1. Cinema and Violence in South Africa Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	34
2. Fools and Victims. Adapting Rationalized Rape into Feminist Film Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	63
3. Redeeming Features: Screening HIV/AIDS, Screening Out Rape in Gavin Hood’s Tsotsi Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	90
4. From Black and White to “Coloured”. Racial Identity in 1950s and 1990s South Africa in Two Versions of A Walk in the Night Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	119
5. Audio-visualizing “Invisible” Violence: Remaking and Reinventing Cry, the Beloved Country Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	145
6. Cinema and Violence in Francophone West Africa Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	177
7. Losing the Plot, Restoring the Lost Chapter: Aristotle in Cameroon Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	205
8. African Incar(me)nation. Joseph Gaï Ramaka’s Karmen Geï (2001) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	218
9. Humanizing the Old Testament’s Origins, Historicizing Genocide’s Origins. Cheick Oumar Sissoko’s La Genèse (1999) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	252
Conclusion Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	275
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	279
Filmography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	289
Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	299
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	325

Language: English
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 360
Illustrations
- Other: 174 color images, and 4 more for the cover

eBook

Published: May 20, 2009
ISBN: 9780231519380