Cinema of Africa

African cinema is film production in Africa. It dates back to the early 20th century, when film reels were the primary cinematic technology in use. The Nigerian film industry is the largest in Africa in terms of value, number of annual films, revenue and popularity. It is also the second and third largest national film industry in the world, based on the number of annual films and revenue respectively.

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 based on the Tarzan character created by Edgar Rice Burroughs and the adventure film The African Queen (1951), and various adaptations of H. Rider Haggard's novel King Solomon's Mines (1885). In the mid-1930s, the Bantu Educational Kinema Experiment was conducted in order to educate the Bantu.

In the French colonies Africans were legally prohibited ("Laval Decree") from making films of their own. The ban stunted the growth of film as a means for Africans to express themselves politically, culturally, and artistically. 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 Institut des hautes études cinématographiques (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.

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