Women in African cinema

During the colonial era, cultures and laws such as the 1934 Laval Decree, that governed French colonies, prohibited Africans from making their own films, which has been credited as stunting the growth of film as a means of African expression, political, cultural, and artistic.[12][13][14] As Africa emerged as a postcolonial world region, Africans began creating their own films and women took on more prominent roles, while still being largely limited to acting roles only. Despite the apparent defeat of colonialism, however, certain conservative notions of European civilization lingered, finding an echo in a form of village traditionalism and patriarchal authoritarianism, with Kenneth W. Harrow stating that "Whereas the protests of the 1950s and 1960s were directed against European colonialists as outsiders, or against Europe itself as an outside force, now they were directed internally against African figures of authority, – oppressive, domineering figures, including those who fled the nation and the economy as well as those who governed villages or families." He argued that even if the colonial overlord has been removed, similar mechanisms of conquest are therefore repeated on the body of the African woman in 1960s and 1970s film.[15]

Films made during this era that featured or were created by African women directors featured themes of sexual impression that included polygamy, conflict between modern romance and traditions of arranged marriages, the marginalization of widows and single women, and female genital mutilation. Scholars such as Sheila Petty have argued that they should not only be read as portraying an unshakeable patriarchy, but as expressions of a general loss of identity, with extreme examples of sexual politics functioning as a "process in which cultural roles can be modified through affective partnerships between men and women."[16]

In 1975 Safi Faye released Kaddu Beykat, which is widely considered to be the first feature film to be commercially released that was directed by an African woman.[4]^: 104 She had previously released a short film, "La Passante", about three years prior in 1972.[17] She is also credited as being the first African woman film director to gain international recognition, as Kaddu Beykat won several awards among which is the FIPRESCI Prize.[18][19] Other films that were released during this time period include Maldoror's 1972 film Sambizanga.

Per Harrow, African women filmmakers became prolific during the 1980s and 1990s, "finally providing us with something more significant than Sembene's images of long-oppressed wives or daughters" and that "Perhaps the best way to understand post-engagement cinema is as that of a cinema that has begun to turn in the direction of women as harbingers for Africa's future."[15] Woman centric films were traditionally less essentialist and less about double repression by African patriarchal culture and Western colonising forces.

The representation of women in African cinema is seen as a common theme among women directors, such as Safi Faye and Sarah Maldoror. Historians have noted that women have made the bulk of the theme's research. Some films, such as Karmen Geï and U-Carmen eKhayelitsha feature female protagonists, but have been criticized as "[representing] a departure from the situation of the contemporary woman in Africa" as the films identify women with music and the voice. Riesco has noted that while these films portray the idealization of the feminine, they also "offer a vibrant alternative to the previous wave of cinema, largely characterized by the exaltation of the rural, of traditions and their recuperation, and of a specific kind of narration, slow and measured, based in oral conventions in which silence and speech were equally stressed."[11]

N. Frank Ukadike has noted that African women are often "at best, sexual objects enveloped in a culture of male chauvinism; and, in the words of Ousmane Sembene, they are "still refused the right of speech."[4]^: 107 Some films, such as Ceddo and Sarraounia have been credited as dispelling assumptions that African women are "simply sexual objects or exotic clichés", which Ukadike has credited in part to colonialist and traditionalist assumptions.[4]^: 108

On the theme of eroticism and sexuality, director François Pfaff has argued that African films are less exploitative, because they anticipate spectators to be religious, while Isabelle Boni-Claverie in Pour la Nuit treats sexuality as emblematic of freedom and choice. The film Puk Nini has been cited by Jyoti Mystri and Antje Schuhmann as a movie that reflects on the multiple roles women are expected to perform both professionally and domestically. According to the authors, it motivated many discussions that address how gender relations operate or how "tradition" might be a constructive factor in the relations. They state that in this film a wife seeks the assistance of her husband's sex worker mistress in order to learn varying methods of seduction and that it reflects on the dual roles of homemaker and professional workers that some women are expected to adopt, while men do not generally carry this same social expectation.[22]

Themes of feminism are present in films such as Faces of Women, which Ukadike states "[questions] Africa's cultural patrimony and the strategies of patriarchal subordination of women".[4]^: 108 Feminist films became popular in Kenyan films during the 1990s and continued to be popular as of 2017, resulting in many repeated feminist themes such as a female character escaping an early marriage by running away in films such as Price of a Daughter and Saikati, as well as Saikati's sequel.[24] Kenneth W. Harrow wrote that African feminism includes some differences from Western feminism, in that "One would overturn the club; the other would join it" as African feminism is "more a concern over gender equality and social or economic justice" whereas European or Western feminism focuses on issues such as "the status of the subject, gender identity, gendered language, patriarchy and above all oppositionality predominate".[25]^: 133 He in turn also questions whether European feminism would be at odds with African feminist filmmakers and see them as "inadvertently sustaining a patriarchal order and thus subverting their own goals".[25]^: 139

In the 1960s, African feminism came out of the Third Cinema movement, which regarded film as a medium of social and political activism. Films by Sembene, Safi Faye, Sarah Maldoror and others used linear narratives in order to clearly convey the systematic exploitation of certain groups of women. Employing film to further emancipation, these films took part of a more general effort by film-makers of this period to assert independence and reclaim national identities from colonial rule. This close association with the struggle for independence meant a certain marginalization of the cause of women and the challenges specific to their struggle.

Female health has been a theme in films such as Ousmane Sembene's Moolaade, which focuses on the topic of female genital mutilation, and which has been explained as a coming of age ritual in some parts of Africa. Feminists and practitioners have debated over how the practice is seen, with feminists stating that it is a violent kind of women's oppression, while proponents see it as a cultural perception of purification, and critics have argued whether or not Sembene subverts or upholds the status quo. The term "pornotroping", which describes, how myths surrounding the image of black women are imposed on their bodies via visual modes of representation, such as film, that effectively support the "Othering" of black womanhood, has been brought up in the discussion of Moolaade.[26]

Several women directors have reported experiencing sexual harassment and abuse. According to a report by Deutsche Welle, the South African group 'Sisters Working in Film and Television' "found that just under two-thirds of the South African women they surveyed had been non-consensually coerced or touched at work."[27]