By positioning the multiple discourses alongside one another, we suggest that the assumed different paradigms of practice and theory and the circuits of exhibition and reception are in the service of one another. Listening to the stories of filmmakers, alongside watching their films and recognising the multiple theoretical possibilities of films made, and seen, is a way of enriching our understanding of the layered facets that inform how women make sense of their experiences, tell their stories and generate theoretical and practical possibilities that enable an increased and more nuanced understanding of the conditions for women film practitioners working in and on Africa.
As we collected and began to sift through all the material we were gathering it became clear that there were important resonances in the experiences of women, but there were also important dissonances and productive disagreements that revealed complex and interesting differences. One that began to emerge during the inaugural event at the Goethe-Institut, for example, was in the socio-political climates of Germany and Africa. We felt that these needed to be heard not just in the confines of a single event, but also in a wider context where reception would be greater and the issues would receive the necessary political attention when the collection was published and circulated. If change is to take place for persons who are identified or who self-identify as women, it is necessary that the multiplicity of their voices be disseminated in as many forums as possible.
The structure of the book should not be viewed as a linear progression, although attempts at this ‘linearity’ are evident in terms of certain organising principles that provide thematic coherence. However, in keeping with bricolage, the contributions serve to inform one another more as a lattice and we encourage readers to see the relational or referential connections between texts even when they do not sit alongside one another.
Broadly speaking, the material is organised to evoke themes. The first theme is a historical and theoretical contextualisation which is then informed by dialogue (in the form of interviews) which in some way addresses the continuities or discontinuities between the theoretical or conceptual frameworks offered and the lived experiences of the participants.
The second theme gives cognisance to the layers in the construction of gender in historical-political terms and considers how this is reflected in artistic expression and cultural production. It therefore draws on strategies of reading or audience/viewer responses to texts (films) as a way of reflecting on the intentions of filmmakers and artists dealing with gender and trauma, history and memory, and nation and state.
The third thematic component of the book considers conditions of production as a way of informing content creation. Informed by the broader theoretical framework of the previous theme, the production contributions offer a way of revealing how ideas of gender relations, issues of gendered power relations in the state and in the production process are ‘soft’ factors, tacit but highly significant in influencing production processes and content generation.
The final thematic area brings together a series of invaluable impressions and experiences in the value chain of meaning-making and production processes. The influence and role of curators and exhibition platforms (in the form of festivals and distribution) is assessed to reveal the challenges for African women to have their films approached outside of historical, aesthetic and content prejudices that presuppose a creative essentialism which further disenfranchises them on a global platform.
In many ways this approach is an evolution from the seminal works of Manthia Diawara (1992) and Frank Ukadike (1994) and is in keeping with the contemporary contributions of Stephanie Newell and Onokoome Okome (2013) and Carmela Garritano (2013). As such, it speaks to the work of authors such as Beti Ellerson, Jane Bryce (2010, 2011) and Audrey McCluskey (2009) and is part of a newly emerging scholarly trend exemplified by publications such as Feminist Africa.
As bricoleurs we may not always have agreed with the different voices we assembled. For instance, in our understanding of gender as a social construct we problematise hegemonic gaze regimes seeing sex, seeing bodies, as organised along the ‘natural’ binary of being either male or female. We prefer exploring the intersections along which we are all situated in one or another way: gender-race-class-sexuality-age and so forth; intersections that position us simultaneously as discriminated against and privileged in different aspects of our being in the world.
We prioritise gender as an analytic category in addition to exploring notions of an anti-imperial gaze, as promoted by Third Cinema and various film festivals founded at the peak of anti-colonial struggles (see contributions by Beti Ellerson and Max Annas and Henriette Gunkel), of a post-colonial gaze invested in nation-building (see Nobunye Levin) or of the more or less successful practices of decolonisation (Dorothee Wenner, Katarina Hedrén, Jyoti Mistry). Our intention is to provide an interruption, to rupture classic and too often andro-centric or supposedly gender-neutral approaches to academic knowledge production and publication politics. Knowledge is also produced from the lived experiences of storytellers, as well as from their stories.
‘The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house,’ argued Audre Lorde (2007:110). Changing dominant power relations and systems of privilege, which are not limited to unequal gender relations, also needs the (re)framing of the North-South divide, too often seen as either only disabling or mainly enabling, in order to develop a constructive deliberation of contemporary practices in full recognition of historic legacies. New tools, a fresh gaze and different stories are required in order to dismantle the master’s house and this collection of writing allows for certain sets of possibilities to emerge as a way of proposing praxis and paradigm shifts.
Examining the relationship between gender politics and film practice also opened up the dialogue on strained issues such as funding resources and their relationship to content production and, in a much broader sense, led to questioning conceptions of knowledge production between the North and South and within and outside of academia.
The essays and interviews are informed by a set of different inquiries unified not by an essentialising retreat to a universal womanhood, but by an interrogation of what it means for people who self-identify as women to work with and in film in various contemporary contexts on the African continent.
The stories are nomadic. They transgress the shores of Africa as a geographical location, inviting reflections from the post-colonial West, including perspectives from the African diaspora in the USA and Europe, and sympathetic positions of anti-imperial self-reflections on North-South collaboration. Whereas the initial conversations at the Goethe-Institut also included practitioners from countries formerly colonised by Portugal and France, one could argue that due to the prevalence of Anglophone academic structures and the linguistic hegemony of English, not only in Africa, the British Empire has succeeded posthumously one more time. Therefore this compilation is, with some exceptions, located in an Anglo-Saxon-inspired framework.
After the Goethe-Institut’s ARTSWork: Meeting of African Women Filmmakers in 2010, we took three years to search for more stories, experiences, insights and analyses to enable the evolution of the project. Our ‘field research’ resulted in a heterotopian set of contributions, interviews, manifestos, keynote addresses, reflections and discussion statements which form an assemblage – coming together here as bricolage.
As mentioned earlier, this approach also implied a grappling with the expectations and restrictions of academic publishing,