Recommended for Cinema Studies
When Newsreel launched this collection, it was the first and largest collection of African cinema in the United States — and it remains an unmatched resource today. African cinema offers what mainstream Western media rarely does: Africa rendered in its own complexity, beauty, and contradiction, by filmmakers who know it from the inside. Spanning documentary and fiction, master filmmakers and emerging voices, from Francophone and Lusophone countries to Nigeria's Nollywood to post-apartheid South Africa, these films explore women's rights and gender, the legacies of colonialism, political corruption and civil war, cultural identity, sexuality, and the tensions between tradition and modernity. Many titles come with discussion guides and articles by African filmmakers and scholars, making this an essential resource for African Studies, Cinema Studies, and anyone seeking a deeper understanding of the continent and its people.
Articles to help you view and teach African cinema written by African filmmakers and scholars are also available.
The Recommended for Cinema Studies collection includes the following titles:
Afro@DigitalAfro@Digital looks at the impact of various digital technologies across a broad swath of present-day African life and asks how the technology is affecting African culture and how it can best serve the interests of Africa and the global South.
Ainsi Meurent Les AngesMoussa Sene Absa's work pushes the formal boundaries of African cinema.
EzraAward-winning complex psychological study of a child soldier.
Faat KineIn Dakar, Senegal Faat Kine, an independent, single mother and successful business owner looks back over twenty years of triumphs and hardships - including the betrayals by men in her life. A dramatic tribute to the strength and resilience of African women by Ousmane Sembene, the father of African cinema.
The HeroThe Hero (O Herói) tells the story of Angola, a nation attempting to reconstruct itself after 40 continual years of anti-colonial and civil warfare, through the story of a veteran who has lost his leg, a prostitute who has lost a child and an orphaned boy.
Karmen GeiLike every Carmen, Karmen Geï is about the conflict between infinite desire for freedom and the laws, conventions, languages, the human limitations which constrain that desire. Since this is an African Carmen, freedom necessarily has a political dimension.
Quand les étoiles rencontrent la merA poetic exploration of traditional and modern concepts of freedom is set in the landscape of Madagascar.
These HandsWithout plot or narration, this mesmerizing documentary records the dehumanizing monotony of a day in the life of women chipping rocks by hand in a Tanzanian quarry while discovering the communal warmth and joy that defies this spirit-breaking labor.
This is NollywoodThe story of Nigeria's home grown film industry, which is gaining recognition as a cultural and cinematic phenomenon.
ThunderboltA story from the burgeoning video industry of Nigeria combines melodrama and issues of ethnicity, gender, culture and identity in post-colonial Africa.
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