Bisschoff, Lizelle, and Stefanie Van de Peer, eds. Women in African Cinema: Beyond the Body Politic. Milton: Routledge, 2020. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315227962.

This book showcases the very prolific but often marginalized presence of women in African cinema, both on the screen and behind the camera. This book provides the first in-depth and sustained examination of women in African cinema. Films by women from different geographical regions are discussed incase studies that are framed by feminist theoretical and historical themes, and seen through an anti-colonial, philosophical, political and socio-cultural cinematic lens. A historical and theoretical introduction provides the context for thematic chapters exploring topics ranging from female identities, female friendships, women in revolutionary cinema, motherhood and daughterhood, women’s bodies, sexuality, and spirituality. Each chapter serves up a theoretical-historical discussion of the chosen theme, followed by two in-depth case studies that provide contextual and transnational readings of the films as well as outlining production, distribution and exhibition contexts. This book contributes to the feminist anti-racist revision of the canon by placing African women filmmakers squarely at the centre of African film culture. Demonstrating the depth and diversity of the feminine or female aesthetic in African cinema, this book will be of great interest to students and scholars of African cinema, media studies and African studies.

[Source: Routledge].

Bisschoff, Lizelle. “From Nollywood to New Nollywood: The Story of Nigeria’s Runaway Success.” The Conversation, September 28,

2015. https://theconversation.com/from-nollywood-to-new-nollywood-the-story-of-nigerias-runaway-success-47959

“The video-film industry of Nigeria has been described as one of the greatest explosions of popular culture that Africa has ever seen. It is the first economically self-sustainable film industry in Africa. Initially through the use of video technology, and now affordable digital technology, Nigeria produces more than 2000 films per year. The industry, popularly called Nollywood, is currently ranked as the second largest in the world in terms of output after India’s Bollywood. Nollywood’s popularity has spread across the African continent, to the African diaspora in Europe, North America and Australia. It has even gone as far as the Caribbean and Pacific Islands.”

[Source: Excerpt from the article].

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Black Camera

Academic journal

Bloomington, IN, USA

blackcam.sitehost.iu.edu

Description:

An international scholarly film journal, Black Camera constitutes a  new platform for the study and documentation of the black cinematic experience in the world.

Black Fashion Week Paris

Event

Paris, France

blackfashionweekparis.com

Description:

Black Fashion Week promotes designers and models from Africa.

Visonà Monica Blackmun

Professor of African Art, University of Kentucky

202 Fine Arts Building

465 Rose Street

Lexington, KY 40506-0022

M.B.Visona@uky.edu

859-257-1398

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Blair, Dorothy S. African Literature in French: A History of Creative Writing in French from West and Equatorial Africa. Cambridge University Press, 1976.

This 1976 book provides both a historical survey and acritical analysis of the literature in French from West and Equatorial Africa. Professor Blair begins by discussing the social, educational and political influences which led to the formation of the Negritude movement and to a flowering of French-African creative writing. This historical approach is then complemented by a study of the different literary genres. She traces the evolution of the first manifestations of literary activity in French by African writers, the written folktale, fable and short story, from the oral tradition of the indigenous culture, and the eventual appearance of the novel with a legendary or historical theme. The origins of French-African drama are considered for the first time, and the work of the minor poets analyzed. Finally, Professor Blair attempts a definition of the French-African novel, and studies examples from three major periods from the 1930s onwards.

[Source: Cambridge University Press].

Suzanne Preston Blier

Professor, Fine Arts and African and African American Studies, Harvard University

Sackler Museum, Harvard  University, 485 Broadway Cambridge, MA 02138, Phone: 617 497-1464 , email: blier@fas.harvard.edu

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Blier, Suzanne Preston.  African Vodun: Art, Psychology, and Power. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995.

In this first major study of its kind, Suzanne Preston Blier examines the artworks of the contemporary vodun cultures of southern Benin and Togo in West Africa as well as the related voudou traditions of Haiti, New Orleans, and historic Salem, Massachusetts. Blier employs a variety of theoretically sophisticated psychological, anthropological, and art historical approaches to explore the contrasts inherent in the vodun arts—commoners versus royalty, popular versus elite, "low" art versus "high." She examines the relation between art and the slave trade, the psychological dynamics of artistic expression, the significance of the body in sculptural expression, and indigenous perceptions of the psyche. Throughout, Blier pushes African art history to a new height of cultural awareness that recognizes the complexity of traditional African societies as it acknowledges the role of social power in shaping aesthetics and meaning generally. This book will be of critical importance not only to those concerned with African, African American, and Caribbean art, but also to anthropologists, African diaspora scholars, students of comparative religion and comparative psychology, and anyone fascinated by the traditions of voudou and vodun.

[Source: Harvard.edu]