Ricci, Daniela, and Melissa Thackway, eds. African Diasporic Cinema: Aesthetics of Reconstruction. East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press, 2020.

African Diasporic Cinema: Aesthetics of Reconstruction analyzes 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 center 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 characterized 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 analyzes the contemporary diaspora through the prism of cultural hybridization and the processes of recomposing fragmented identities, out of which new identities emerge.

[Source: Michigan State University Press].

Prabhu, Anjali. Contemporary Cinema of Africa and the Diaspora. Malden: John Wiley & Sons, Inc, 2014.

Analyzing art house films from the African continent and the African diaspora, this book showcases a new generation of auteurs with African origins from political, aesthetic, and spectatorship perspectives.

[Source: Wiley].

Pfaff, Françoise. Focus on African Films. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2004.

Emphasizing post-independent films released since the 1950s and the burgeoning commercial film production of the last decade, Focus on African Films provides unique and pluralistic perspectives on filmmaking throughout Africa. As a whole, the collection highlights the distinct thematic, stylistic, and socioeconomic circumstances of African filmmaking. Individual essays show how conditions in Africa have generated a broad range of views and techniques, from the stylistically innovative documentaries of Jean-Marie Teno and Abderrahmane Sissako and the "documentary fiction" of Mahamat-Saleh Haroun to the vibrant art films of Jean-Pierre Bekolo and the new films from South Africa. Contributors also outline the direction of increasingly popular, less didactic sub-Saharan filmmaking in films such as Daniel Kamwa’s Pousse-Pousse, Ngangura Mweze’s La vie est belle, and Imungu Ivanga’s Dôlé. Up-to-date and richly informative, Focus on African Films will be essential reading for students and scholars of African film.

[Source: Amazon].

Orlando, Valérie. New African Cinema. New Brunswick, N.J: Rutgers University Press, 2017.

This book examines the pressing social, cultural, economic, and historical issues explored by African filmmakers from the early post-colonial years into the new millennium. Offering an overview of the development of postcolonial African cinema since the 1960s, Valérie K. Orlando highlights the variations in content and themes that reflect the socio-cultural and political environments of filmmakers and the cultures they depict in their films. Orlando illuminates the diverse themes evident in the works of filmmakers such as Ousmane Sembène’s Ceddo (Senegal, 1977), Sarah Maldoror’s Sambizanga (Angola,1972), Assia Djebar’s La Nouba des femmes de Mont Chenoua (The Circle of women of Mount Chenoua, Algeria, 1978), Zézé Gamboa’s The Hero (Angola, 2004) and Abderrahmane Sissako’s Timbuktu (Mauritania, 2014), among others. Orlando also considers the influence of major African film schools and their traditions, as well as European and American influences on the marketing and distribution of African film. For those familiar with the polemics of African film, or new to them, Orlando offers a cogent analytical approach that is engaging.

[Source: Google Books].

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Niang, Sada. Nationalist African Cinema: Legacy and Transformations. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2014.

In the last decade, a certain discomfort, at times even impatience emerged among critics of African cinema. The onset of such uneasiness can be traced back to the demise of the liberationist discourse, to the questioning of the monolithic expression "African cinema", and finally to the critical exploration of various forms of visual narratives developing at a fast speed on the continent. Nationalist African Cinema: Legacy and Transformations re-examines African cinema of the nationalist era within the context of contemporary major Euro-American film trends. It argues that the aesthetic diversification of African cinema can be traced as far back as the nationalist era.

[Source: Indigo].

Naudillon, Françoise, Sathya Rao, and Janusz Przychodzeń, eds. L’Afriquefait son cinéma: regards et perspectives sur le cinéma africain francophone. [Africa Puts on a Great Act: Viewpoints and Perspectives on French-speaking African Cinema] Montréal, QC: Mémoire d’encrier, 2006.

Once ostracized from history, Africa now finds itself at the heart of all the debates. While colonial cinema freezes the African in a number of stereo types, the media make him look like a famished individual whose agony has become commonplace. African cinema rejects the Epinal print or morbid clichés and opens the way to new questions about the relationship between picture and memory.

[Source: Mémoires d’encrier, adapted and translated from French].