From Hollywood to Ouagadougou
By Norm Dixon
For decades, Hollywood has busily churned out images of Africa that are both ludicrous and racist. Africa is usually portrayed as "wild and untamed", its majestic wildlife taking centre stage. African people, if they appear at all, are extras playing pliant porters balancing huge crates on their heads (who inevitably run away in panic, leaving brave "bwana" high and dry), or rampaging hoards of grass-skirted meanies intent on massacre. "Cinema Africa", part of the 45th Sydney Film Festival in June, provided an antidote to such stereotypes and a welcome glimpse of the complexities of the real Africa.
Cinema Africa featured nine films selected by Cameron Bailey, a former programmer of the Toronto International Film Festival's Planet Africa section.
While the SFF's guide claimed Cinema Africa "covers the continent from north to south, from the historical to the post-modern", in reality the films were all made in Francophone countries and, apart from one each from Madagascar, former Zaire and Tunisia, from west Africa.
This focus reflects the fact that west Africa is the centre of film production in Africa (due to local government support and generous funding from a French government desperate to maintain cultural links with the region). However, a series that ignores films from other parts of the continent cannot accurately claim to represent the diversity of African cinema any more than a European series that includes only Scandinavian films.
It is disappointing that some examples of the small but active South African film industry were not included. Zimbabwe too has produced films of interest in the last few years.
Though not part of the Cinema Africa stream, a documentary, Investigating Tarzan (from Canada, directed by Alain d'Aix), provided a fascinating, sometimes hilarious, look at how Hollywood has packaged Africa for western eyes.
From 1912, when former cop, former pencil sharpener salesman Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote the first Tarzan story, Africa became known as the place where a yodelling, white muscle man — with a penchant for wrestling rubber creatures — rightfully ruled over animals and Africans alike.
His sole activity seemed to be biding his time until the arrival of a white woman so that the nuclear family could blossom in the jungle (the necessary child appeared, not via sex, but from a plane crash — Tarzan and Jane weren't married, you see). The only indigenous African star was Cheetah the chimp, who stole the show by making a monkey of the personality-challenged vine swinger.
Cinema Africa challenged such silly stereotypes and showed Africa with all its glorious complexities and controversies — and not a lion or giraffe to be seen.
Touki Bouki (The Hyena's Journey) revealed that groundbreaking African cinema is not just a recent development. Director Djibril Diop Mambéty's first feature film was made way back in 1973.
It's a sometimes surreal, always rebellious road movie set in Dakar, Senegal. It combines 1960s avant-garde influences with a sort of Africanised Easy Rider/Bonnie and Clyde story line. Mory and Anta want to escape Third World Dakar for the mirage on the horizon, Paris. The film follows the unconventional ways the two lovers attempt in order to find the money to get out.
The film contains some mesmerising dream sequences that are every bit as obscure as any European and US experimental film — enough to keep you dissecting their meaning for hours over your lattes. There's a racy sex scene that makes great fun of the cliché from From Here to Eternity. But goat lovers be warned, there is a scene that you might not appreciate.
Twenty-five years later, the theme of survival and escape from poverty remains in Drissa Touré's Haramuya, set in the streets of Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.
But 25 years later, Africa is poorer, its debt is greater, and the value of the French-backed African franc has plummeted after Paris imposed a devaluation. The quaint, light-hearted tone of Touki Bouki has been replaced by a grittier, more matter-of-fact struggle to survive.
In a style similar to compatriot Idrissa Ouedragogo's films, Yaaba and Tila, Touré allows us to accompany his characters as their lives languidly unfold amongst the unkempt streets of the capital. To survive means everybody, rich or poor, must scam, steal and turn their backs to some extent on the values that they hold dear. The only difference is, the rich get away with it when they are caught.
Touré also weaves into the plot, commentary on corruption, police brutality, racial tension and sexism.
Dakan (Destiny), Guinea's Mohamed Camara's debut feature, is a controversial film. African homophobes like Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela and the Pan Africanist Congress leader !Khoisan X (formerly known as Benny Alexander), who claim that homosexuality does not exist in Africa and is an invention of white colonialism, should be tied up and forced to watch this one.
Working-class Sori and Manga, son of a respectable businessman, fall in love — to the horror of their parents. Sori's mum sends him off to a traditional de-programmer, while Manga's dad buries him with responsibility running the family business.
Sori and Manga convince themselves that they are over their infatuation. "It was only a phase", everybody agrees. But, as in all great melodramas, Sori and Manga cannot live a lie, and true love overcomes all odds.
Dakan was definitely the pick of the series — great acting, beautiful scenes of the seaside capital, Conakry, and a welcome message. The passionate scenes will make Robert, !Khoisan and Winnie's hair stand on end.
The other films featured in Cinema Africa were:
- Honey and Ashes (from Tunisia, directed by Nadia Fares), a film with a strong feminist message;
- Life on Earth (Mali, directed by Abderrahmane Sissako), a village love story;
- Macadam Tribu (Zaire, directed by José Laplaine), a comic drama about the quest for money, status and sex (with great music from Papa Wemba);
- Taafé Fanga (Mali, directed by Adama Drabo), a sharp but humorous dig at sexism masquerading as tradition;
- The Tyrant (Mali/Burkina Faso, directed by Cheick Oumar Sissoko), a lavish historical epic set in the pre-colonial Mali empire;
- When the Stars Meet the Sea (Madagascar, directed by Raymond Rajaonarivelo), a mystical tale by the Indian Ocean island's "one man movie industry".
Move over, Tarzan: African cinema has arrived.