African Diasporic Cinema analyses the aesthetic strategies adopted by contemporary African diasporic filmmakers to express the reconstruction of identity. Having left the continent, these filmmakers see Africa as a site of representation and cultural circulation. The diasporic experience displaces the centre and forges new syncretic identities. Through migratory movement, people become foreigners, Others - and in this instance, black.

The African diasporic condition in the Western world is characterised by the intersection of various factors: being African and bearing the historical memory of the continent; belonging to a black minority in majority-white societies; and finally, having historically been the object of negative, stereotyped representation. As a result, quests for the self and self-reconstruction are frequent themes in the films of the African diaspora, and yet the filmmakers refuse to remain trapped in the confines of an assigned, rigid identity.

Reflecting these complex circumstances, this book analyses the contemporary diaspora through the prism of cultural hybridization and the processes of recomposing fragmented identities, out of which new identities emerge.

About the Author
Daniela Ricci teaches film studies at of Paris Nanterre University and the University of Paris 8 in France. She is part of the research laboratory Histoire des Arts et des ReprEsentations and is a member of the African Federation of Film Critics, the African Studies Association, and the African Literature Association.

Melissa Thackway is an independent researcher and translator. She lectures in African cinema at Sciences Po and the Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales in Paris.


Book Information
ISBN 9781611863642
Author Daniela Ricci
Format Paperback
Page Count 326
Imprint Michigan State University Press
Publisher Michigan State University Press
Weight(grams) 438g