{"id":1898,"date":"2013-08-07T09:00:21","date_gmt":"2013-08-07T09:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/?p=1898"},"modified":"2025-06-10T10:54:40","modified_gmt":"2025-06-10T10:54:40","slug":"changing-frames-the-evolution-of-cinematic-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/changing-frames-the-evolution-of-cinematic-africa","title":{"rendered":"A Moving Picture: The Evolution of Africa on Screen"},"content":{"rendered":"

The perception of Africa through the lens has certainly changed since\u00a0the films of the 1950s. That change in the way viewers see Africa in twenty-first century film is the topic of Framing Africa: Portrayals of a Continent in Contemporary Mainstream Cinema<\/i><\/a>, published in June 2013. Below, the collection editor\u00a0Nigel Eltringham discusses the changing frame of Africa in mainstream cinema.<\/strong><\/p>\n

_______________________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

In November 2004, I attended the annual meeting of the African Studies Association in New Orleans. A flier inserted into the conference programme invited participants to a private screening of a new film, Hotel Rwanda<\/i>, at a small arts cinema nearby.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

After the showing, Terry George, the director, explained that this was a \u2018low budget\u2019 film ($17.5 million) that may only get a limited release (at that point there was no UK distributor), and that with a minimal publicity budget, \u2018We depend on word-of-mouth to spread the word on this movie.\u2019<\/p>\n

I was surprised, therefore, when three months later the billboard next to my local train station in south London displayed a six-metre-long machete announcing the general release of the film and its three Oscar nominations. The film appeared to have come a long way by word-of-mouth.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Given the research I had conducted in Rwanda, I was invited two years later by Channel 4 News (UK) to be interviewed about the release of another film about the Rwandan Genocide, Shooting Dogs<\/i> (renamed Beyond the Gates <\/i>in North America). This interview and the constant question from friends and colleagues of \u2018What do you think of these films?\u2019 led to a short essay on Shooting Dogs<\/i> published in 2008. But, it occurred to me that other scholars familiar with African contexts in which feature films had been set would be being asked the same question.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

That was where the idea for Framing Africa<\/i> originated: what do those with specialist knowledge of a context think of its portrayal on the big screen?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Framing Africa<\/i> is also propelled by the particular nature of the films set in Africa that have been released since 2000. In the second half of the previous century, one can discern three dominant phases in mainstream, English-speaking, North American portrayals, and European cinematic portrayals of Africa.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

First, Africa provided the context for narratives of heroic ascendancy over self (The African Queen <\/i>1951, The Snows of Kilimanjaro<\/i> 1952), military odds (Zulu <\/i>1964, Khartoum<\/i> 1966) and nature (Mogambo 1953, Hatari! <\/i>1962, Born Free <\/i>1966, The Last Safari<\/i> 1967). Attention then turned to retrospective consideration of colonial life, with an emphasis on decay, decadence and race (Out of Africa <\/i>1985, White Mischief <\/i>1987). Cry Freedom <\/i>(1987) appeared to herald a different engagement with the continent as the amorphous \u2018Africa\u2019 of recurring exotic caricatures (landscape and wildlife) gave way to the brutal specifics of Apartheid South Africa.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

But, since 2000, the cinematic Africa of the 1980s has been reversed. Where Cry Freedom<\/i> was an impassioned attempt to educate the world about Apartheid, South Africa\u2019s story of redemption is now extracted from \u2018Africa\u2019 (Red Dust<\/i> 2004; Invictus<\/i> 2009) while the rest of the continent is no longer a place of romance between Danish Baronesses and British big-game hunters (Out of Africa<\/i> 1985), but is blighted by transnational corruption (The Constant Gardener<\/i> 2005), genocide (Hotel Rwanda<\/i> 2004, Shooting Dogs<\/i> 2006), \u2018failed states\u2019 (Black Hawk Down<\/i> 2001), illicit transnational commerce (Blood Diamond<\/i> 2006) and the unfulfilled promises of decolonization (The Last King of Scotland<\/i> 2006). Whereas once Apartheid South Africa (Cry Freedom<\/i> 1987, A Dry White Season<\/i> 1989) was the foil for the romance of East Africa, a redeemed South Africa has now become the foil for violence in the rest of the continent and it is for this reason that Red Dust<\/i> (2004) and Invictus<\/i> (2009) are included within Framing Africa<\/i>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The same relationship applies to other films that could have been included that promote a redeemed South Africa (Goodbye Bafana<\/i> 2007; In My Country<\/i> 2006) in contrast to rampant violence elsewhere (Tears of the Sun<\/i> 2003; Sometimes in April<\/i> 2005; Lord of War <\/i>2005; Darfur<\/i> 2009). One of the questions that propel Framing Africa <\/i>is whether this post-2000 group of films has been able to move away from the Heart of Darkness<\/i> clich\u00e9 of Africa as a violent canvas against which European heroism is enacted.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

All of the contributors to Framing Africa <\/i>draw on long-term engagement with specific African contexts to explore the relationship between a film, historical or anthropological knowledge of the context and local perspectives. Further, the contributors reflect on the relation of these films to other contemporary forms of \u2018western\u2019 knowledge about Africa (news media, documentary, academic commentary and fiction literature) to consider continuities and discontinuities with other portrayals of Africa. The contributors consider these questions from their particular location as both members of the primary, intended (non-African) audience for these films and<\/i> as scholars with extensive, specialist knowledge of the contexts portrayed.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

As such, Framing Africa <\/i>is a timely reflection on the contemporary place Africa holds in the North American and European imagination.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

________________________________________________<\/p>\n

Nigel Eltringham<\/strong> is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Sussex. He has published extensively on the aftermath of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, conducting research in Rwanda, among the Rwandan diaspora in Europe and at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (Arusha Tanzania).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The perception of Africa through the lens has certainly changed since\u00a0the films of the 1950s. That change in the way viewers see Africa in twenty-first century film is the topic of Framing Africa: Portrayals of a Continent in Contemporary Mainstream Cinema, published in June 2013. Below, the collection editor\u00a0Nigel Eltringham discusses the changing frame of… Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,200,218],"tags":[112,107,1971,177,1763,110,109],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1898"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1898"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1898\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21149,"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1898\/revisions\/21149"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}