1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910462474903321

Autore

Dovey Lindiwe

Titolo

African film and literature : adapting violence to the screen / / Lindiwe Dovey

Pubbl/distr/stampa

New York : , : Columbia University Press, , [2009]

©2009

ISBN

0-231-51938-9

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (550 p.)

Collana

Film and culture

Disciplina

791.43096

Soggetti

Motion pictures - Africa

Violence in motion pictures

Electronic books.

Africa In motion pictures

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references (pages [299]-324) and index.

Includes filmography: pages [289]-298.

Nota di contenuto

Cinema and violence in South Africa -- Fools and victims : adapting rationalized rape into feminist film -- Redeeming features : screening HIV/AIDS, screening out rape in Gavin Hood's Tsotsi -- From black and white to "coloured" : racial identity in 1950s and 1990s South Africa in two versions of A walk in the night -- Audio-visualizing "invisible" violence : remaking and reinventing Cry, the beloved country -- Cinema and violence in francophone West Africa -- Losing the plot, restoring the lost chapter : Aristotle in Cameroon -- African incar(me)nation : Joseph Gaï Ramaka's Karmen geï (2001) -- Humanizing the Old Testament's origins, historicizing genocide's origins : Cheick Oumar Sissoko's La genèse (1999).

Sommario/riassunto

Analyzing a range of South African and West African films inspired by African and non-African literature, Lindiwe Dovey identifies a specific trend in contemporary African filmmaking-one in which filmmakers are using the embodied audiovisual medium of film to offer a critique of physical and psychological violence. Against a detailed history of the medium's savage introduction and exploitation by colonial powers in two very different African contexts, Dovey examines the complex ways



in which African filmmakers are preserving, mediating, and critiquing their own cultures while seeking a united vision of the future. More than merely representing socio-cultural realities in Africa, these films engage with issues of colonialism and postcolonialism, "updating" both the history and the literature they adapt to address contemporary audiences in Africa and elsewhere. Through this deliberate and radical re-historicization of texts and realities, Dovey argues that African filmmakers have developed a method of filmmaking that is altogether distinct from European and American forms of adaptation.