Introduction

One way of examining the issues raised by the development of African cinema in the course of the three ‘generations’ defined in the previous chapter would be to deal with them in terms of a simple realist/modernist dichotomy. There is much to be said for such an approach, but there are difficulties in applying terms with such distinct Western connotations to African culture, and the approach perhaps overemphasises differences, where continuities are also equally important. The approach adopted here is to consider African filmmakers in terms of the subject which concerns them all, that of their African cultural identity. As Raphaël Millet points out, because of the heritage of colonisation and the present reality of dependence ‘the cinemas of the South inevitably have to discourse about identity as much as about independence’.

Stuart Hall's definitions in his article on ‘Cultural Identity and Cinematic Representation’ offer an extremely useful way of approaching this question of identity. As Hall rightly observes, ‘identity is not as transparent or unproblematic as we think’. Instead of thinking of identity ‘as an already accomplished historical fact, which the new cinematic discourses then represent, we should think, instead, of identity as a “production”, which is never complete, always in process, and always constituted within, not outside representation’. Hall goes on to contrast two ways of thinking about cultural identity, distinguishing between those who see it as a matter of ‘being’ and those for whom it is a matter of ‘becoming’.