Ethics and Aesthetics in Contemporary African Cinema. The Politics of Beauty

Since the beginnings of West African cinema, the use of beauty on screen has been treated with suspicion by regional filmmakers. For reasons that include, but go beyond, the troubling nature of colonialist tendencies to exoticise Africa, accepting beauty within film has depended on it appearing within the context of ideological critique and postcolonial allegory.
Yet, an exciting new generation of filmmakers has emerged and begun to reassess and expand the concept of African cinematic beauty, whilst not necessarily neglecting its political potential. Innovative and pioneering directors such as Abderrahmane Sissako, Mahamat-Saleh Haroun, Fanta Régina Nacro, Alain Gomis, Jean-Pierre Bekolo, Katy Lena Ndiaye and Mati-Diop are discovering fresh and rebellious forms of imagery. The result, the author of this book argues, is new subjectivities and aesthetics that amount to radical resistance and help to redefine the cosmopolitan and the transnational in ways no longer tied to the old ideals of pan-Africanism.
This book locates representations of the sublime within conflict zones, the ‘Afropolis’, migration and the masculine body, as well as film sound and voice within close readings of key films. In doing so, it provides a broad study of beauty that will appeal both to specialists of and interested readers in postcolonial art film and world cinema.