panel 14

AFRICAN CINEMA AND CINEMA ON AFRICA: RESTLESS MOVEMENT

CONVENOR:

• ELENA DI GIOVANNI, UNIVERSITY OF MACERATA (elena.digiovanni@unimc.it)

Cinema is one of the most prolific and successful media of mass communication worldwide: together with the Internet, and often in association with it, cinema has become the epitome of dynamism and freedom of expression, within and across national and cultural boundaries. Cinema’s dynamic essence has, over the past decades, found perfect embodiment in African films and films on Africa as is proven, for instance, by the increasing number of festivals which are dedicated to them worldwide. Exploiting all possible formats for production and distribution, as well as experimenting with and challenging genres, African cinema has come to stand out worldwide for itsvibrant and powerful repertoire. Besides African cinema, in itself increasingly diverse, Africa has become the protagonist of more and more films, borne out of diasporas and migrant communities but also out of the interest of non-African filmmakers. This panel wishes to offer as varied and comprehensive a view as possible on contemporary African cinema and cinema on Africa. We, therefore, welcome contributions from different disciplinary perspectives: from linguistics to film studies, from semiotics to sociology, from literature to history. The issues which we hope will be addressed by the papers in this panel include, but are not limited to, the following:

Migrant and diasporic cinemas: how much do they tell about Africa?

African cinematographies and their mutual influence

Exploring audiences in and out of Africa

The distribution of African films and their translations

The language(s) of African cinema and its evolution(s)

The economic impact of African film industries

New media, new distribution, new genres

Diasporic literature and diasporic cinema.

PAPERS: