Logo image
Back
Film and trauma: Africa speaks to itself through truth and reconciliation films
Journal article   Peer reviewed

Film and trauma: Africa speaks to itself through truth and reconciliation films

M. Mhando and K.G. Tomaselli
Black Cinema, Vol.1(1), pp.30-50
2009
DOI: https://doi.org/10.2979/blc.2009.1.1.30
url
Link to Published Version *Subscription may be requiredView

Abstract

Films made by Africans on wars, gender oppression, slavery, and trauma project not only confrontations between individual filmmakers and their subjects, but they also reveal the confrontations between individuals and groups and the collective structures which shape, control, and direct their lives. How these collective structures become a story as foreground is an important aspect of the cinematic signification process. The resulting films place and role in trauma mediation cannot be taken lightly nor can it be generalized. Following Ann Kaplan and Ban Wangâs book Trauma and Cinema: Cross-Cultural Explorations (2004, p. 9), we observe regional films roles as cure, shock treatment, very minimally as voyeurism, and of course as witnessing. These films become facilitating agents for the mobilization of a non-conventional resources such as social awareness, solidarity, dedication, commitment, a to serve a historical sense of duty. This paper will examine the relations between the individual, his/her community, and society in general. A cognate concern is with how African films reveal formal signs conditioned by structures of social organization, cultural affinity, and immediate conditions of interaction. We also consider cinemas relationship to historical referents and memory while figuring out the specific modes of address, all of which contribute to the growing cinematic expressions in Africa.

Details

Metrics

40 Record Views
13 Times Cited - Web of Science
Logo image