- published: 13 Jan 2016
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The term African cinema refers to the film production in Africa, following formal independence. Some of the countries in North Africa (such as the cinema of Egypt, for example) developed a national film industry much earlier and are related to West Asian cinema. Often, African Cinema also includes directors from among the African diaspora.
During the colonial era, Africa was represented exclusively by Western filmmakers. The continent was portrayed as an exotic land without history or culture. Examples of this kind of cinema abound and include jungle epics such as Tarzan and The African Queen, and various adaptations of H. Rider Haggard's 1885 novel titled King Solomon's Mines. In the mid-1930s, the Bantu Educational Kinema Experiment was carried out in order to educate the Bantu peoples.
In the French colonies Africans were, by law, not permitted to make films of their own. This ban was known as the "Laval Decree". In 1955, however, Paulin Soumanou Vieyra - originally from Benin, but educated in Senegal - along with his colleagues from Le Group Africain du Cinema, shot a short film in Paris by the name of Afrique Sur Seine (1955). Vieyra was trained in filmmaking at the prestigious Institut des Hautes Etudes Cinematographique (IDHEC) in Paris, and in spite of the ban on filmmaking in Africa, was granted permission to make a film in France.Afrique Sur Seine explores the difficulties of being an African in France during the 1950s and is considered to be the first film directed by a black African.