African and notably sub-Saharan African film's relative eclipse on the international scene in the 2000s does not lessen the profound mutations at play: a new relationship to the real; new aesthetic strategies; and the emergence of a post-colonial popular cinema.
With reference to the decade's most notable films, Olivier Barlet, who daily follows filmmaking throughout Africa and the Caribbean, here identifies the critical questions that these evolutions pose. In the process, he offers us a personal and passionate vision.
Interrelated through multiple references to the Africultures journal's work in all artistic domains, this book is an indispensable sum of thought that challenges preconceived ideas and enriches an approach to cinema as a critical art.

> Contents

Introduction: For a critique of African film

1. The Stakes of Criticism

1.1 Disarray
1.1.1 The crisis, a new paradigm
1.1.2 Fear of the crossing
1.1.3 Cinema that does not change the world
1.1.4 The paths of reconstruction
1.2 Concern
1.2.1 The sudden arrival of the odd man out
1.2.2 Mankind in danger
1.2.3 A non-existent family
1.2.4 The era of suspicion
1.2.5 The individual versus the group
1.2.6 An exile consciousness
1.2.7 African cinema?
1.3 Critical stakes
1.3.1 In guise of a definition
1.3.2 Criticism in question
1.4 The necessity of film
1.4.1 Against derealization
1.4.2 The ambiguities of a spontaneous generation
1.4.3 Preserving the impulse
1.5 African criticism?
1.5.1 Revolutionizing criticism
1.5.2 The devouring universality of dominant culture
1.5.3 Ending self-destruction
1.5.4 African criticism exists
1.6. Phantom audiences
1.6.1 Audience as an attack
1.6.2 A non-existent audience?
1.7. Defined by the Other?
1.7.1 The ambivalence of French funding
1.7.2 Distorting content

2. Continuities and new directions

2.1 The five decades of African film
2.1.1 The 60s: mandatory commitment
2.1.2 The 70s: a social mirror
2.1.3 The 80s: the novelistic tale of the self
2.1.4 The 90s: the individual versus the world
2.1.5 The 2000s: a journey into mankind
2.2 Filiations?
2.2.1 A breakdown in transmission
2.2.2 Inhabiting the present
2.2.3 Mambetian freedom
2.2.4 A new humanism
2.3 A new relationship to the real
2.3.1 Entertainment and reality
2.3.2 Going beyond the tradition/modernity opposition
2.3.3 The art of metaphor
2.3.4 A poetics of the intuition of the world
2.3.5 A tauromachy of viewpoints
2.3.6 Ending territorial fixation
2.3.7 Self-derision as a weapon
2.3.8 The risks of submersion
2.4 New intuitions
2.4.1 Escaping marginality
2.4.2 The wise fool
2.4.3 From language to style
2.4.4 A moral relationship to the sacred
2.4.5 Times of uncertainty

3. Post-colonial clichés

3.1 A persistent misunderstanding
3.1.1 Colonial revisionism
3.1.2 Decontextualization
3.1.3 Ethnocentrism
3.1.4 Demobilization
3.2 A problematic Western gaze
3.3 African responses
3.4 The burden of Hollywood
3.5 Minority actors' long road
3.5.1 The American non-example
3.5.2 Pale screens and stereotypes
3.5.3 In Africa
3.6 New immigrant representations

4. Memory and reconciliation

4.1 Forgive, not forget
4.1.1 Vitality of the past
4.1.2 Averting oblivion
4.2 Overcoming slavery and the slave trade
4.2.1 History stammers
4.2.2 Exorcising memory
4.2.3 Exist
4.3 The colonial lie
4.2.1 Absence of the colonial subject
4.3.2 The past in the present
4.3.3 Desiring the Other
4.4 Colonial infantrymen, the first migrants
4.5 South African reconciliation
4.6 Representing the Itsembabwoko
4.6.1 Victims and perpetrators
4.6.2 On-screen violence
4.6.3 The power of images
4.6.4 Confronting the terror

5. Styles and strategies

5.1 Innovative films
5.1.1 Love your spectator
5.1.2 Divert, invert, deviate
5.1.3 Banking on orality
5.2 Documentary stakes
5.2.1 The conscience of the camera
5.2.2 Respecting opacity
5.2.3 Mobilizing the spectator
5.2.4 Restoring humanity
5.2.5 A shared proximity
5.2.6 Defying powers
5.2.7 A discordant spectacle
5.3 A consciousness of bodies
5.3.1 Emergence of the intimate
5.3.2 Emancipating the body
5.3.3 The downfall and resistance of the body
5.3.4 Facing homosexuality
5.4 Women's voices
5.4.1 Challenging misogyny
5.4.2 Reestablishing complexity
5.4.3 Underground female resistance
5.4.4 Negofeminism
5.5 Music time
5.5.1 The vitality of memory
5.5.2 The diffracted time of jazz
5.5.3 A cinema of living bodies

6. Economic perspectives

6.1 The new African film market
6.1.1 Independent cinemas
6.1.2 World distribution
6.1.3 Beyond piracy
6.2 Television: a trap, shark or opportunity?
6.2.1 Breaking out of the flow logic
6.2.2 The power of series
6.2.3 An anthropophagous relationship
6.2.4 The festival logic
6.2.5 Conquering television
6.3 The ravages of the Nollywood myth
6.3.1 Market rule
6.3.2 Fascination and imitation
6.4 Cultural and cooperation policies
6.4.1 No distribution frameworks, no salvation!
6.4.2 Defying the censors
6.4.3 Rethinking the sector's backing
6.4.4 The modernity of criticism

Conclusion
Books and articles cited
Index