African Film and Literature: Adapting Violence to the Screen (Film and Culture Series) - Hardcover

Dovey, Lindiwe

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0231147546 ISBN 13: 9780231147545

Publisher: Columbia University Press, 2009

Synopsis

Analyzing a range of South African and West African films inspired by African and non-African literature, Lindiwe Dovey identifies a specific trend in contemporary African filmmaking-one in which filmmakers are using the embodied audiovisual medium of film to offer a critique of physical and psychological violence. Against a detailed history of the medium's savage introduction and exploitation by colonial powers in two very different African contexts, Dovey examines the complex ways in which African filmmakers are preserving, mediating, and critiquing their own cultures while seeking a united vision of the future. More than merely representing socio-cultural realities in Africa, these films engage with issues of colonialism and postcolonialism, "updating" both the history and the literature they adapt to address contemporary audiences in Africa and elsewhere. Through this deliberate and radical re-historicization of texts and realities, Dovey argues that African filmmakers have developed a method of filmmaking that is altogether distinct from European and American forms of adaptation.

About this title

Book Description:

The commonalities of a continent identified through its films.

Book Description:

CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title, 2009

About this edition

• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0231147546
• ISBN 13: 9780231147545
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 360