Fiction and Documentary African Films: Narrative and Stylistic Affinities

Abstract

Nationalist African cinema significantly detached itself from the ideological underpinnings of reductive colonial images. It was, in the eyes of the members of the Fepaci (Federation panafricaine des cineastes), a matter of political and cultural survival. This article argues that the films of this and subsequent generations were able to do so only by fusing generic features of the documentary genre in the crafting of fictional narratives.

Notes

1 Lizbeth Malkmus and Roy Armes, Arab and African Filmmaking. London: Zed Books, 1991, p. 4.

2 In this indicative list, the first date refers to the production of a documentary and the second one to the completion of a long feature film: Djibril Diop Mambéty, 1989, 1992; Moussa Yoro Bathily 1978, 1981; Tidiane Aw 1969, 1971; Roger Mbala Gnoan 1970, 1971; Dikongué Pipa 1980, 1983; Timité Bassori 1966, 1969; Henri Duparc 1968, 1972; Sebastien Kamba, 1965, 1973.

3 Mariano Mestman, From Algiers to Buenos Aires: The Third Cinema Committee (1973/1974 New Cinemas: Journal of Contemporary Film 1 (2003) 40–53. Sada Niang, Nationalist African Cinema: Legacy and Transformations. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2014, 5–7.

4 “Neorealism in Nationalist African Cinema,” Sergio Giovacchini & Robert Skalr (Eds.), Global Neorealism: The Transnational History of a Film Style. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 2012, 194–208.

5 See Henry François Imbert, Samba Félix Ndiaye: cinéaste, documentariste, Africain, Paris: L'Harmattan, 2007, 49.

6 See Niang, Sada “Neorealism in Nationalist African Cinema,” Sergio Giovacchini & Robert Skalr (Eds.), Global Neorealism: The Transnational history of a Film Style. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 2012, 194–208.

7 Tejumola Olaniyan, “Of Rations and Rationalities: The World Bank, African Hunger, and Abderrahmane Sissako's Bamako,” Global South, 2 (2008), 130–138.

8 See Tejumola Olaniyan, “Of Rations and Rationalities: The World Bank, African Hunger, and Abderrahmane Sissako's Bamako,” Global South, 2 (2008), 130–138.

9 Bill Nichols, “The Question of Evidence, the Power of Rhetoric and Documentary,” B. Winston (Ed.), The Documentary Film Book. London: BFI, 2013, 33.

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Notes on contributors

Sada Niang

Sada Niang ([email protected]) graduated from the Universities of Paris X-Nanterre (France), York University (Canada), and the University of Toronto (Canada). He is the co-author of a three-volume textbook introducing African literature in English to African ESL students (Elsewhere in Africa, 1978), co-editor of African Continuities (1990), editor of Littérature et cinéma en Afrique francophone (1996), author of Djibril Diop Mambety: un cinéaste à contre-courant (2002), and author of Nationalist African Cinema: Legacy and Transformations (2014). With Alexie Tcheuyap (2001) and Samba Gadjigo (2009), he edited two issues of Présence Francophone. His other publications have appeared in numerous collections of essays, in Research in African Literatures, The Dalhousie Review, Notre Libraire, and Etudes Francophones. Sada Niang teaches and researches on African/Caribbean literatures and cinemas. Niang is Professor of French at the University of Victoria in Canada.