Rerouting the Imperialistic Parodies of African Cinemas

Literary and cultural racism alongside the question of authenticity have been at the heart of much critical thinking about African Cinema. Prior and clearly during the colonial era, motion picture works about Africa effectively served to reinforce visions of the western world to the African aborigines. These imperialistic viewpoints pictured Africa as a wild and savage place existing outside the boarders of history. As filmmakers began to emerge in the 1960s and 1970s from nations of the continent, with a rising consciousness about the ideological damages facing Africa, the need to quickly merge ranks became apparent, as a wide spread opinion agreeing to the reality that imperialist representations of Africa were stereotypical and inauthentic crowned it all. This paper is focused on examining this ideological counter from the early African filmmakers, not only to know how they amount to decolonization of the African motion picture industry but also to bring to bear their efforts in the struggle. The question whether the African Cinemas have been indeed decolonized decades after the colonials left is also in the spirit of this paper. The research adopts a qualitative methodology of textual evaluation to arrive at its conclusion. Amongst its findings is the fact that African Cinema was stereotyped by colonial forces to strengthen their dominance on the African landscape. The study contributes to knowledge by exposing the defaming western ideologies on the African cinema, while encouraging a Pan-African and counteractive cinematic themes and techniques for the deconstruction of western stereotypes and parody.

Keywords: Decolonization, Colonization, African Filmmakers, African Cinema.