Alternative Perspectives in Sub-Saharan Francophone African Film

Melissa Thackway, Africa Shoots Back : Alternative Perspectives in Sub-Saharan Francophone African Film, 240 pages, 50 illustrations. Paper $ 27.95, cloth $ 65.
Indiana University Press, 601 N. Morton Street, Bloomington, IN 47404-3797.

[Melissa Thackway] shows how directors working in a postcolonial context that has inevitably influenced film agendas and styles have produced a range of alternative, challenging representations. This well-illustrated book focuses on the ways in which memory and history have become central themes and how local cultural forms have been integrated into the film medium to depict African identities, realities and concerns. By highlighting questions of representation and cultural identity, filmmakers are seen to have forged new cinematic codes and given voice to hitherto silenced groups such as women and African immigrant populations in Europe.