The cinema of liberation
The classic film, "Come Back, Africa" by Lionel Rogosin, first released in 1959, broke with how ‘white liberal’ politics imagined black people or tried to shape their struggles.
Articles by
Basia Cummings
Basia Cummings is a writer and film critic based in London.
The value of a people and their social structure
Djibril Diop Mambéty's film "Touki Bouki" is an excellent example of how the contemporary can be read through the (re)construction of myths and narratives from a collective memory.
Shell brought me here
A BBC reporter visits the old fields of southeast Nigeria, the site of massive exploitation by Shell Oil--in a helicopter provided by Shell.
Soviet cinema and African filmmaking
Abderrahmane Sissako’s oblique suggestion of what a ‘socialist friendship’ might be in his first film, "October" (1993) set in a then-declining Soviet Union.
The impotence of the political bourgeoisie
Ousmane Sembene's "Xala" (1974) is a powerful political narrative. At times edging toward the surreal, at others an acute depiction of the complexity of the freshly independent Senegal.
The talented Tajdin sisters
They're making a film about "a love story set in Cape Town South Africa that chronicles the life of Leila, a young Cape Malay girl who falls in love with an American boy, Derek, who happens to be black."
The Price of Leadership
A new series of documentaries explore the politics of leadership via an imaginative, malleable, deeply personal treatment of history.
Fabrice Muamba and English football
It's a shame that a player had to suffer from a heart attack to provoke feelings of belonging about him as a refugee and immigrant. It says something about Britain.
A visual history of African LGBTQ
A quick review of films showing at two festivals with a focus on gay people: The Out in Africa Festival and the London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival.
Out in Africa
Writing gays and lesbians into the political and social history of South Africa – a history from which LGBT people are so often obscured and ignored.
Witchcraft and the British Media
Can a belief be condemned as immoral? Or must we accept cultural difference, and merely condemn the acts that follow as a consequence?
Dabbling in the sublime
The 2012 edition of the Berlinale includes a number of films from Africa or with African themes.