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

Paperback / softback

Main Details

Title Ethics and Aesthetics in Contemporary African Cinema: The Politics of Beauty
Authors and Contributors      By (author) James S. Williams
SeriesWorld Cinema
Physical Properties
Format:Paperback / softback
Pages:376
Dimensions(mm): Height 234,Width 156
Category/GenreFilm theory and criticism
Philosophy - aesthetics
ISBN/Barcode 9781350194403
ClassificationsDewey:791.43096
Audience
Tertiary Education (US: College)
Illustrations 36 b&w

Publishing Details

Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Imprint Bloomsbury Academic
Publication Date 17 September 2020
Publication Country United Kingdom

Description

Since the beginnings of African cinema, the realm of beauty on screen has been treated with suspicion by directors and critics alike. James S. Williams explores an exciting new generation of African directors, including Abderrahmane Sissako, Mahamat-Saleh Haroun, Fanta Regina Nacro, Alain Gomis, Newton I. Aduaka, Jean-Pierre Bekolo and Mati Diop, who have begun to reassess and embrace the concept of cinematic beauty by not reducing it to ideological critique or the old ideals of pan-Africanism. Locating the aesthetic within a range of critical fields - the rupturing of narrative spectacle and violence by montage, the archives of the everyday in the 'afropolis', the plurivocal mysteries of sound and language, male intimacy and desire, the borderzones of migration and transcultural drift - this study reveals the possibility for new, non-conceptual kinds of beauty in African cinema: abstract, material, migrant, erotic, convulsive, queer. Through close readings of key works such as Life on Earth (1998), The Night of Truth (2004), Bamako (2006), Daratt (Dry Season) (2006), A Screaming Man (2010), Tey (Today) (2012), The Pirogue (2012), Mille soleils (2013) and Timbuktu (2014), Williams argues that contemporary African filmmakers are proposing propitious, ethical forms of relationality and intersubjectivity. These stimulate new modes of cultural resistance and transformation that serve to redefine the transnational and the cosmopolitan as well as the very notion of the political in postcolonial art cinema.

Author Biography

James S. Williams is Professor of Modern French Literature and Film at Royal Holloway, University of London, UK. He is the author of Encounters with Godard: Ethics, Aesthetics, Politics (2016), Space and Being in Contemporary French Cinema (2013) and Jean Cocteau (2008). He is also co-editor of May 68: Rethinking France's Last Revolution (2011, with Anna-Louise Milne and Julian T. Jackson), For Ever Godard (2004, with Michael Temple and Michael Witt) and Gender and French Cinema (2001, with Alex Hughes).