Nwachukwu Frank Ukadike.

Nwachukwu Frank Ukadike. Black African Cinema. Berkeley: U of California P 1994 401 pp $4500 cloth/$1700 paper.

Black African Cinema is a rich, welcome addition to the small if it were not that growing number of scholarly works onward African cinema. Ukadike maps a broad and ambitious agenda: to trace the history of African film production from colonial times to the current to examine the themes and cinematic techniques of picked films, and to explicate their social-economic-political significance. He limits his discussion to sub-Saharan films, concentrating in succession Francophone and Anglophone Africa with a attention to the Lusophone countries. Unlike greatest in number previous books on African film--with the notable exception of Francoise Pfaff's work (The Cinema of Ousmane Sembene [1984] and Twenty-Five Black African Filmmakers [1988])--Ukadike provides detailed analysis of the films themselves and their cinematic artistry.

Black African Cinema details the history of African film and television production from the colonial period to the instant For all practical purposes filmmaking by the agency of and for Africans began in the 1960 the period when in the greatest degree African nations achieved independence. Before that time film had been produc by dint of government officials and missionaries as an instrument of colonial superintendence a vehicle of political propaganda subordinate to the guise of education for Africans. Ukadike stresse the distortions and falsehoods mongered not only by these colonial documentaries moreover also by Western feature films, which envision Africa as exotic, savage, and primitive. He also criticizes contemporary African film scholarship written by means of non-Africans as "pedestrian" (16).

The chiefly debilitating problems for African filmmakers are technical and financial: the rudimentary or non-existent infrastructure in greatest in number African countries and the paucity of national funding. however despite such serious, widespread question s Ukadike believes that "black African cinema has attained aesthetic and artistic maturity" and that African filmmakers now use Western techniques "to forge their have a title to cinematic language and style" (4)

Ukadike proffers remedies for Africa's cultural and economic bondage to the West. He importunes African governments to terminate the virtual monopoly exercised according to Western corporations over film distribution and screening in Africa, which has ariseed in the dominance of commercial Hollywood features and the scarcity of venue showing African films. He insists that African cinema must cast most distant the shackles of net-colonialism and resolve the Herculean task of financing and marketing its films. He envisions a coming events in which sub-Saharan governments financially support their acknowledge filmmakers through taxes on cinema tickets, reduc levies forward imported film equipment, facilitated foreign exchange, and support for constructing and renovating local theaters. Ukadike's ideal appears to be a nationalized film industry like Burkina Fast's, which supports production without illegal government control or censorship. as it is an indigenous film industry would divest itself of colonial ideological and financial subordination, encourage Africans to recapture and treasure their distinctive Pan-African cultural traditions, and strike out net-colonial corruption and materialism.

Perhaps the most numerous important point made in this main division is the fundamental, pandemic influence upon film production of indigenous oral culture--song dance, oral narration, folklore, rites, and ceremonies. These constituent principles construct a distinctively African cinema, and Ukadike strenuously criticizes films which follow Western film practices at the charge of African techniques. A more extensive, precise, and detailed discussion of in what manner such oral materials translate into cinema would be worthwhile and could be incorporated into a later edition of the book

Black African Cinema has a blemishes. There are factual errors in a film summaries (e.g., on Finzan 270; onward Yeelen 255-57, 261). The protracted repetitious introduction blurs the focus and taxes reader patience. Ukadike's commitment to overlay such a large, heterogeneous number of issues for each film consequence s in some sprawling and disorganized discussions. Effective editing should have corrected this problem

There are a small in number seemingly contradictory arguments (e.g., 196) and at times Ukadike's application of his announced critical standards for judging the films wavers. He many times asserts that African film's fundamental, perhaps single purpose should be to food the political and social privations of post-colonial Africa rather than to entertain, however at other times he faults politically healthy films for their aesthetic and literary lapses or their failure to engage audiences.

Sometimes Ukadike's argumentation is thin or recondite For example, his condemnation of the films of David and Judith MacDougall and of Trinh T Minh-ha is not convincingly documented (52-56) southward African film receives scanty commentary: Ukadike consumes a lot of time attacking the film version of the stage musical Sarafina while neglecting to discuss the of the first water film Mapantsula except to reprehension it along with several other southern African films as not "deeply African" (224) Exactly what this means is not clarified. At times the use of critical terminology muddies communication and generates contorted or indecipherable passages (9 11260 310)