African Cinema and Human Rights

Description

Bringing theory and practice together, African Cinema and Human Rights argues that moving images have a significant role to play in advancing the causes of justice and fairness. The contributors to this volume identify three key ways in which film can achieve these goals: documenting human rights abuses and thereby supporting the claims of victims and goals of truth and reconciliation within larger communities; legitimating, and consequently solidifying, an expanded scope for human rights; and promoting the realization of social and economic rights. Including the voices of African scholars, scholar-filmmakers, African directors Jean-Marie Teno and Gaston Kaboré, and researchers whose work focuses on transnational cinema, this volume explores overall perspectives, and differences of perspective, pertaining to Africa, human rights, and human rights filmmaking alongside specific case studies of individual films and areas of human rights violations. With its interdisciplinary scope, attention to practitioners' self-understandings, broad perspectives, and particular case studies, African Cinema and Human Rights is a foundational text that offers questions, reflections, and evidence that help us to consider film's ideal role within the context of our ever-continuing struggle towards a more just global society.

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Filmmaking on the African Continent: On the Centrality of Human Rights Thinking / Mette Hjort and Eva Jørholt

Part I: Perspectives

1. Human Rights, Africa, and Film: A Cautionary Tale / Mark Gibney

2. African Cinema: Perspective Correction / Rod Stoneman

3. Africa's Gift to the World: An Interview with Gaston Kaboré / Rod Stoneman

4. Toward New African Languages of Protest: African Documentary Films and Human Rights / Alessandro Jedlowski

5. Challenging Perspectives: An Interview with Jean-Marie Teno / Melissa Thackway

6. In Defense of Human Rights Filmmaking: A Response to the Skeptics, Based on Kenyan Examples / Mette Hjort

7. The Zanzibar International Film Festival and Its Children Panorama: Using Films to Socialize Human Rights into the Educational Sector and a Wider Public Sphere / Martin Mhando

Part II: Cases

8. Ousmane Sembène's Moolaadé: Peoples' Rights vs Human Rights / Samba Gadjigo

9. Haile Gerima's Harvest: 3000 Years in the Context of an Evolving Language of Human Rights / Ashish Rajadhyaksha

10. Abducted Twice? Difret (2015) and Schoolgirl Killer (1999) / Tim Bergfelder

11. Timbuktu and "L'homme de haine" / Kenneth Harrow

12. Beats of the Antonov: A Counter-narrative of Endurance and Survival / N. Frank Ukadike

13. Human Rights Issues in the Nigerian Films October 1 and Black November / Osakue Stevenson Omoera

14. The Anti-Ecstasy of Human Rights: A Foray into Queer Cinema on "Homophobic Africa" / John Erni

15. Refugees from Globalization: "Clandestine" African Migration to Europe in a Human (Rights) Perspective / Eva Jørholt

Index

Sujets

• POLITICAL SCIENCE
• Zanzíbar
• Kenia
• Película fotográfica
• África
• African people
• Civil and political rights
• Uganda
• Performing arts
• Human rights
• History of film
• Documentary film
• Cinema
• Cameroon
• Activism
• World
• Gaston Kaboré
• Africa
• Zanzibar
• Migration
• Imagine
• Film
• Nigeria
• Ouganda
• Kenya

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 01 mars 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 8
• EAN13: 9780253039446
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

AFRICAN CINEMA AND HUMAN RIGHTS
STUDIES IN THE CINEMA OF THE BLACK DIASPORA
Michael T. Martin and David C. Wall
AFRICAN CINEMA AND HUMAN RIGHTS

Edited by Mette Hjort and Eva J rholt
Indiana University Press
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press
Office of Scholarly Publishing
Herman B Wells Library 350
1320 East 10th Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
iupress.indiana.edu
2019 by Indiana University Press
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Hjort, Mette, editor. | J rholt, Eva, [date] editor.
Title: African cinema and human rights / edited by Mette Hjort and Eva J rholt.
Description: Bloomington, Indiana : Indiana University Press, 2019. | Series: Studies in the cinema of the black diaspora | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018049708 (print) | LCCN 2018055027 (ebook) | ISBN 9780253039460 (e-book) | ISBN 9780253039422 (cl : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780253039439 (pb : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Human rights in motion pictures. | Africa-In motion pictures. | Motion pictures-Africa-History and criticism. | Documentary films-Africa-History and criticism.
Classification: LCC PN1995.9.H83 (ebook) | LCC PN1995.9.H83 A37 2019 (print) | DDC 791.43/6586-dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018049708
1 2 3 4 5 24 23 22 21 20 19
To Gaston Kabor and Edith Ou draogo,
with gratitude, affection, and admiration
Contents

Acknowledgments

Filmmaking on the African Continent: On the Centrality of Human Rights Thinking / Mette Hjort and Eva J rholt
Part I: Perspectives

1 Human Rights, Africa, and Film: A Cautionary Tale / Mark Gibney

2 African Cinema: Perspective Correction / Rod Stoneman

3 Africa s Gift to the World: An Interview with Gaston Kabor / Rod Stoneman

4 Toward New African Languages of Protest: African Documentary Films and Human Rights / Alessandro Jedlowski

5 Challenging Perspectives: An Interview with Jean-Marie Teno / Melissa Thackway

6 In Defense of Human Rights Filmmaking: A Response to the Skeptics, Based on Kenyan Examples / Mette Hjort

7 The Zanzibar International Film Festival and Its Children Panorama: Using Films to Socialize Human Rights into the Educational Sector and a Wider Public Sphere / Martin Mhando
Part II: Cases

8 Ousmane Semb ne s Moolaad : Peoples Rights vs. Human Rights / Samba Gadjigo

9 Haile Gerima s Harvest: 3000 Years in the Context of an Evolving Language of Human Rights / Ashish Rajadhyaksha

10 Abducted Twice? Difret (2015) and Schoolgirl Killer (1999) / Tim Bergfelder

11 Timbuktu and L homme de haine / Kenneth W. Harrow

12 Beats of the Antonov : A Counternarrative of Endurance and Survival / N. Frank Ukadike

13 Human Rights Issues in the Nigerian Films October 1 and Black November / Osakue Stevenson Omoera

14 The Antiecstasy of Human Rights: A Foray into Queer Cinema on Homophobic Africa / John Nguyet Erni

15 Refugees from Globalization: Clandestine African Migration to Europe in a Human (Rights) Perspective / Eva J rholt

Index
Acknowledgments
M ICHAEL T. M ARTIN and David C. Wall, editors of Black Camera: An International Journal , saw a book in what we initially had thought of as a special issue. We are grateful to them both for including African Cinema and Human Rights in the Studies in the Cinema of the Black Diaspora series. Three anonymous reviewers, one of them a human rights specialist, read the book with a generous eye. Their insightful and constructive comments helped us improve the book. We are most grateful to our authors for their unfailing support for the project, and to the many practitioners who were generous with their thoughts and time.
African Cinema and Human Rights finds a starting point in personal histories of transnational friendship and collaboration that deserve to be acknowledged in detail. More broadly, the book explores film s justice- and fairness-oriented world-making capacities in the context of African realities, practices, strategies, policy-making, and institution-building. This goal can be traced to a very specific site of training and capacity building-the alternative film school, IMAGINE, in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso-and to the vision and networks of the two people who created it: the internationally prominent Burkinab filmmaker Gaston Kabor and his wife, Edith Ou draogo, a pharmacist and businesswoman.
A unique institution, IMAGINE not only offers short courses in various aspects of filmmaking, but also provides a precious and unusually vital space for musical performances, exhibitions, and colloquia. During the biannual FESPACO festival, long-term friends of IMAGINE from near and far-scholars, festival organizers, film producers, trainers, filmmakers, and film funders-gather around meals and in connection with talks and performances to discuss issues that Kabor sees as especially important: African visual arts traditions and their global influence, human rights filmmaking in the African context, and the challenges of building sustainable filmmaking communities in the absence of well-established film industries. Included in the group of regularly returning friends is Michael T. Martin. A leading scholar of African cinema who has also embraced the practice of filmmaking (as director of the documentary In the Absence of Peace , 1988), Martin s staunch support for the current project has been all-important. Exchanges between Hjort and Martin at IMAGINE, and shared experiences of various events at this unique institution, are without a doubt part of the background here.
IMAGINE is a site of extraordinary solidarity and friendship. The long-term collaboration between Kabor and Rod Stoneman provides an especially clear example of strong transnational ties based on a shared vision of film s most valuable contributions, both actual and potential. Stoneman, who has contributed both a chapter and an interview with Kabor to the present volume, was until recently the director of the Huston School of Film Digital Media at the National University of Ireland in Galway. He previously served as the chief executive of the Irish Film Board. Of even greater significance in the present context is Stoneman s earlier role as a deputy commissioning editor in the Independent Film and Video Department at Channel 4 Television. During his years with Channel 4, Stoneman was involved in commissioning, buying, or funding more than fifty African feature films. In his Channel 4 capacity, Stoneman consistently emphasized what he calls direct speech. His insistence on experimentation, artistic values, independence, and the possibility of an authentic voice reflecting cultural specificity was widely supported by African filmmakers. A source of trust and respect, Stoneman s ethos arguably provided the basis for collaboration with Kabor at a much later stage, within the context of IMAGINE.
Together, Kabor and Stoneman have launched a number of short courses at IMAGINE, including a Newsreel project that saw student filmmakers from across Africa making documentary shorts about FESPACO. As a means of highlighting the capacity-building efforts of IMAGINE and the talents of its young filmmakers, the films were shown on TV during the festival, as well as in the cinemas, ahead of some of the main features. In 2011 and 2013, Hjort joined Stoneman in Ouagadougou to assist with the subtitling of the Newsreel productions. In 2011, Hjort, Kabor , and Stoneman organized a one-day colloquium at IMAGINE entitled Film Training and Education in Africa: Challenges and Opportunities. In 2013, these same three collaborators organized an event that offered an opportunity to discuss human rights filmmaking within the safe space of IMAGINE. Announcements for the occasion were carefully worded so as to avoid undue attention from the authorities in Burkina Faso. A key participant in the human rights event was Jean-Marie Teno, a Cameroonian filmmaker whose efforts to use the camera to expose the long-term effects of human rights violations, many of them perpetrated by colonial powers, have been tireless. Teno is also part of the present volume; his interview, like Kabor s, highlights some of the failings of a politics- and power-driven international human rights regime.
Hjort s presence at IMAGINE in both 2011 and 2013 was supported by a grant from the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China (RGC Ref. No. 340612/CB1384, Lingnan University, 2013-16).
AFRICAN CINEMA AND HUMAN RIGHTS
Filmmaking on the African Continent

On the Centrality of Human Rights Thinking

Mette Hjort and Eva J rholt
S INCE 1950, D ECEMBER 10 has been Human Rights Day, commemorating the United Nations General Assembly s adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. 1 In December 2016, the Centre for the Study of Human Rights at the London School of Economics featured an especially probing talk, entitled The Populist Challenge to Human Rights. The speaker, Philip Alston, John Norton Pomeroy Professor of Law at New York University, delivered a number of clear messages and calls to action. He said that the project of defen