In the Name of the Mother: Reflections on Writers and Empire by wa Thiong'o Ngugi

Author:wa Thiong'o, Ngugi
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer Group Ltd
Published: 2013-09-19T00:00:00+00:00

The film, like so many other revivals, glosses over the brutality of colonialism and also over the facts of African people’s resistance to sell a more acceptable face of colonialism. This is quite consonant with the neocolonial mood. Colonialism was not that bad after all. Glossy Europe and glamourised West; geographic magazine Africa; colonial themes dressed up a little and imported back into Africa as contemporary cinema.

But how has the emergent African cinema been dealing with this historical moment? There are two broad patterns that one can discern. There is the trend represented by Sembene Ousmane and Haile Gerima. This takes the neocolonial conditions seriously and examines the African being under conditions of struggle and resistance. Their Africa, distorted by years of imperialist loot and plunder from the days of slavery to the present, has managed to survive and to overcome the many odds against it. This is the spirit of Africa that they celebrate. Sembene Ousmane’s stand for instance is uncompromisingly that of the working majority. From The Black Girl to Gelwaar he has been very consistent in examining the contradictions between Africa as a whole and the West; and also within African societies. In the case of Haile Gerima every frame is full of the tension of struggle. Sankofa, his film on slavery is worth more than all the history books which have been written on the subject. Out of that brutality, out of that unspeakable inhumanity, emerges an unbowed Africa, splendid in its defiant beauty. In this tradition are others like Med Hondo. His film Sarraounia celebrates African resistance with women at the centre. Every single film by these giants of the African cinema is worth viewing and studying over and over again. They are defining an African aesthetic of resistance and remarkable courage. And yet within Africa one is not likely to find their films in the major commercial houses or on the television screens at prime or other times.

The other trend is one of accommodation and compromise. Sometimes this trend is not even aware of its own politics. By this I mean that the viewer can see the good intentions; the writer-directors are sincere, but quite often they don’t seem to be aware of the political implications of the image. The excitement of being behind the camera; of vividly capturing movement and voices and landscape on the frame; of the expectation of the big screen – these seem to be overwhelming. Nothing illustrates the two trends better than The Heritage directed by the Ghanaian director, Kwaw Ansah, and Saikati by the first major director from Kenya, Anne Mungai.

Ansah’s first major release, Love Brewed in an African Pot, had made headlines wherever in Africa it was shown. In Nairobi Kenya there were queues and queues of Africans waiting patiently to buy their tickets. Some saw it several times. That was in the seventies. And then in the eighties he made another film, The Heritage, and released it to high acclaim. The film examines the anti-colonial resistance

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.