Introduction

This study is largely concerned with post-independence filmmaking in four adjoining areas astride the Sahara, all of which were colonised by the French up to the end of the 1950s or the beginning of the 1960s. Three of these – Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia – are independent states, and there is no critical problem in making general claims about them as unified contexts for filmmaking (though this is not to assume, a priori, that film production there constitutes a ‘national cinema’). To see the fourth area as a single unit is perhaps more controversial, since it comprises fourteen independent states in francophone West Africa south of the Sahara, all of which were either former French protectorates (Cameroon and Togo) or previously formed part of the two French supercolonies, French West Africa and French Equatorial Africa (the remaining twelve). The unifying factor here is that most of the impetus and finance for filmmaking here has come from France, as part of the French government's policy of maintaining close cultural and economic links with its former African colonies. A further argument, which I hope will be shown to be correct by what follows, is that there is a unity linking filmmakers north and south of the Sahara, though these are generally regarded as quite separate worlds by Western, particularly US, critics.