Most importantly, have a firm understanding of the shortcomings of any conception of a ‘national’ cinema (particularly when applied to a continent!)

Be aware of first / second / third cinema

Tesholme Gabriel - a ‘cultural curtain’ - ‘..a film is inaccessible because the belief systems, ideologies, cultural refereces or styles of filmic execution are foreign to the viewer...’

Malkmus and Armes (1991) point out that the original film audience in Africa were the colonial settlers, not the indigenous population.

This, perhaps, affected the forms of choice. Ukadike points out that ‘films proved to be a powerful tool for indoctrinating Africans into foreign cultures, including their ideals and aesthetics.’ The original project set up to establish a ‘film industry’ in Africa was the Bantu Educational Cinema Experiment which ran from 1935 to 1937 in East and Central Africa. The main concern of this project was to create a favorable impression of Europeans amongst the African population - it was feared that existing Western movies would offer a negative representation. Both the French and the Belgians followed this British model, aiming to make ‘instructional’ films. Perhaps as a result, the dominant mode of film form in Africa has been documentary.

This preference remains, but the purpose has changed. First cinema is profit-driven; second cinema is aesthetically or artistically motivated. (These, of course, are huge, unforgivable generalisations.) Third cinema has a social function; its purpose is to offer view of society from the point of view of the oppressed (Taylor, 1985.)

Bakari and Cham - ‘African filmmaking is in a way a child of African political independence.’ It is, then, a POLITICISED cinema. The point of this cinema is not, primarily, to entertain, but to educate: to be part of the process of resisting colonialism and its after-effects; and to help create new representations of Africa and Africans.

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