The money-order: Centers on an illiterate, middle-aged Senegalese man named Dieng. Dieng has been unemployed for some time, and he has two wives and several children. Dieng receives word that a money-order is waiting for him at the post office. Dieng wants the money, but he faces much difficulty in obtaining it. He doesn't have proper identification, and he even must pay a translator to read him the message with the order. Compounding Dieng's troubles is the fact that Dieng's neighbors are learning of his recent windfall. Enter Mbaye, a so-called "New African". Effective in his business dealings, Mbaye owns a villa on the other side of town. With a flourish of generosity, Mbaye promises to help Dieng cash the money-order. White genesis: A teenager's pregnancy is beginning to show. This causes her mother much grief, as the girl will not name the father. Suspicion in the village rests on a navetanekat, or migrant laborer. He denies any involvement. Nevertheless, one of the brothers of Khar Madaiagua Diob (the expectant mother) tramples the laborer's crops. An angry mob searches for the navetanekat for a few days. Eventually, the girl tells her mother the truth: her own father is also the father of her child.

Sembene is one of the major figures of African literature, and also one of Africa's foremost film directors. This is the first study to give an overview of his work in fiction and on screen. This book examines Sembene Ousmane's radical reinterpretation of African history and culture, focusing on representations of the African city, animism, the role of women, colonialism and neo-colonialism. The author argues that Sembene 'imagines alternatives' to the dominant narratives of both Africa in general, and Senegal in particular. North America: Africa World Press

Challenging established views and assumptions about traditions and practices of filmmaking in the African diaspora, this three-volume set offers readers a researched critique on black film. Volume One of this landmark series on African cinema draws together foundational scholarship on its history and evolution. Beginning with the ideological project of colonial film to legitimize the economic exploitation and cultural hegemony of the African continent during imperial rule to its counter-historical formation and theorization. It comprises essays by film scholars and filmmakers alike, among them Roy Armes, Med Hondo, Fèrid Boughedir, Haile Gerima, Oliver Barlet, Teshome Gabriel, and David Murphy, including three distinct dossiers: a timeline of key dates in the history of African cinema; a comprehensive chronicle and account of the contributions by African women in cinema; and a homage and overview of Ousmane Sembène, the "Father" of African cinema.

Here is a juxtaposition of the personal and inter-communal dynamics focussed on the West African experience during the pivotal decade of the 1960s, when National Independence demanded a reflexion on the definition of the new states, and how external factors have borne heavily upon their past, present and future. The author blends his experience of study and travel in the region, acknowledging his debt to the pioneering spirit of the School of Oriental and African Studies who facilitated the enterprise, with an analysis of the challenges the new entities have faced, and how they have fared, nationally and globally, in the light of Slavery, Colonialism and Black Lives Matter.

Taking in novelists from all over the globe, from the beginning of the century to the present day, this is the most comprehensive survey of the leading lights of twentieth century fiction. Superb breadth of coverage and over 800 entries by an international team of contributors ensures that this fascinating and wide-ranging work of reference will be invaluable to anyone with an interest in modern fiction. Authors included range from Joseph Conrad to Albert Camus and Franz Kafka to Chinua Achebe. Who's Who of Twentieth Century Novelists gives a superb insight into the richness and diversity of the twentieth century novel.

Undoubtedly one of Africa’s most influential first generation of writers and filmmakers, Ousmane Sembene's creative works of fiction as well as his films have been the subject of a considerable number of scholarly articles. The schemas of reading applied to Sembene's oeuvre (novels, short stories and films) have, in the main, focused either on his militant posture against colonialism, his disenchantment with African leadership, or his infatuation with documenting the past in an attempt to present a balanced and nuanced view of African history. While these studies, unquestionably contribute to a better understanding of his works, they collectively ignore Sembene’s relentless preoccupation with culture in his entire career as a writer and filmmaker. The collection of essays in Sembene and the Politics of Culture sets out to fill that gap as the contributors at once foreground Sembene’s fixation on the centrality of culture in the articulation of the discourse of national consciousness and reevaluate his intellectual and artistic legacy within an overarching framework of African liberation. The contributors critically reassess the ideological underpinnings of Sembene’s thoughts, his role as one of the foundational pillars of African cultural production, and his relevance in current discourses of nationhood. They do so through a wide variety of interdisciplinary approaches that draw on linguistics, feminist theory, film theory, historiography, Marxist criticism, psychoanalysis and a host of other approaches that give novel insights in the critical analysis of the works under study. In the part entitled “Testimonies," a collection of conversations with people who worked closely with Sembene, each of the interlocutors provide illuminating insights into the man's life and work. The variety of themes and critical approaches in this critical anthology will certainly be of interest not only to students and scholars of African literature and cinema at various levels of intellectual and cultural sophistication but also anyone interested in the analysis of the nexus between power, culture, and the discourse of liberation.

The most comprehensive reference work on African literature to date, this book covers all the key historical and cultural issues in the field. The Encyclopedia contains over 600 entries covering criticism and theory, African literature's development as a field of scholarship, and studies of established and lesser-known writers and their texts. While the greatest proportion of literary work in Africa has been a product of the twentieth century, the Encyclopedia also covers the literature back to the earliest eras of story-telling and oral transmission, making this a unique and valuable resource for those studying social sciences as well as humanities. This work includes cross-references, suggestions for further reading, and a comprehensive index.

This is the fully comprehensive account of film production in the Third World. Although they are usually ignored or marginalized in histories of "world cinema." Third World countries now produce well over half of the world's films. Armes places this huge output in a wider context, examining the forces of tradition and colonialism that have shaped the Third World. In addition to charting filmic developments too little known in Europe and the United States, the book calls into question many of the assumptions that shape conventional film history. It stresses the role of distribution in defining and limiting production, queries simplistic notions of independent "national cinemas," and points to the need to take social and economic factors into account when considering authorship in cinema. Above all, the book celebrates the achievements of a mass of largely unknown film makes who, in difficult circumstances, have distinctively expanded our definitions of the art of cinema.

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 alike, Black 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.