Cinema and Development in West Africa Film as a Vehicle for Liberation [Hardcover]

Cinema and Development in West Africa shows how the film industry in Francophone West African countries played an important role in executing strategies of nation building during the transition from French rule to the early postcolonial period. James E. Genova sees the construction of African identities and economic development as the major themes in the political literature and cultural production of the time. Focusing on film both as industry and aesthetic genre, he demonstrates its unique place in economic development and provides a comprehensive history of filmmaking in the region during the transition from colonies to sovereign states.

Cinema and Development in West Africa achieves the important task of reminding readers that theeconomic structures of neocolonialism possessed deep tendrils that broadly impacted postcolonial life and politics. Moreover, it clarifies what the political stakes of African cinema were for colonists, nationalists and intellectuals. The descriptions of the hopes, aspirations and political agendas of the pioneering cohort of French West African cin?astes cogently presented by Genova will be of interestto specialists, with prose appropriate for advanced undergraduate classrooms.Overall, Cinema and Development in West Africa is a welcome addition to cinema scholarship. . . . [Genova's] historical approach illuminates the enduring importance of political and economic dynamics not yet fully explored in the study of African cinema. Genovas book is a useful contribution to the vast and growing field of African cinema.6.3 Sept. 2014

Acknowledgments
Introduction: Cinema as Art and Industry
1. The Cinema Industrial Complex in French West Africa to the 1950s
2. The Colonialist Regime of Representation, 1945-1960
3. West African Anti-Colonial Film Politics, 1950s-1960s
4. The Post-Colonial African Regime of Representation
5. The West African Cinema Industrial Complex, 1960s-1975
Postscript: Francophone West AfricanlÃ)