Filmic Ruptures and Black World-Making: Cinema as Epistemology in African and Afro-Diasporic Contexts
It was a few years after the eve of Senegal’s independence that the first film made by an African was produced, as a way of offering an African account of Black struggles and living conditions. Ousmane Sembène viewed cinema as a more powerful medium for conveying African realities because it does not require literacy to grasp its message, making it a more effective tool for explaining the lived realities of Africa. A similar approach can be observed in the work of Alain Kassanda, especially in his documentary Colette and Justin, which not only revisits the historical context surrounding Patrice Lumumba and his death, but also dismantles claims often associated with Africans that are in fact inherited from colonialism, such as the non-schooling of girls.