Recovering Lost African Film Classics: Towards a more complex history of African cinema

在20世纪60 - 70年代，一些杰出的和不应被忽视的非洲电影人制作的早期职业电影已经变得默默无闻，现在很少在非洲或西方的电影院或电影节上放映。由于难以接近，这些作品在非洲电影史上经常被忽略或忽略。在某些情况下，这导致了对这些电影制作人的职业发展的相当有限的描述，忽略了他们创作演变的重要方面；例如，著名的塞内加尔电影制作人奥斯曼·塞姆贝内（1970年）和吉布里勒·迪奥普·曼贝提（1969年）的一些关键电影《魂魄之城》；《八斗男孩》（1970年）的作品现在很少出现，在评论界也很少出现。在其他情况下，遗漏对非洲电影制作的批判性理解更为有害，因为它实际上导致了特定导演和电影风格在整个非洲电影中处于边缘地位；例如，尼日利亚电影制作人穆斯塔法·阿拉萨内（1966年的《冒险的回归》）和科特迪瓦电影制作人德雷·埃卡雷（1968年的《逃亡协奏曲》）非常重要，但现在被忽视的电影提供了美学和通用范围的证据——模仿、喜剧、诗意现实主义——在20世纪70年代和80年代的大部分时间里，这些都被排除在有关非洲电影的主要批评范式之外。这些影片将作为2006年6月在爱丁堡举行的非洲电影节“运动中的非洲”（AiM）的一部分放映。实际上，该项目包括确定四个“丢失的非洲经典”，电影版画的位置，安排版画和观看副本的运输到爱丁堡。在某些情况下，只有一种电影印刷品幸存下来，要么没有英语字幕，要么质量很差。该项目将安排英语字幕的制作，要么监督将现有的法语字幕翻译成英语，要么将电影中的原始对话翻译成英语。作为AiM的一部分，这些电影将带着新制作的英文字幕放映。详细的影片简介和制作资料目录将会编撰，并连同英文字幕一同发布在网路上，让其他以英语为母语的非洲电影学者可以研究这些影片，也可以纳入其他以英语为母语的非洲电影节。因此，这些电影将面向广大观众，包括学生、理论家、评论家和普通大众。在电影节期间，一些著名的非洲电影学者将受邀参加关于这些“失落的经典”的圆桌讨论，以评估这些被忽视作品的重要性。圆桌会议的参与者将被邀请将他们的干预写成文章，然后项目协调员将寻求将其作为该领域领先期刊的特刊发表。该出版物将对该领域产生重大影响，汇集了一群重要学者的工作，以辩论非洲电影的演变，并重新评估从这一电影制作主体的被截断的历史中出现的理论和批评范式。AiM显然具有重要的艺术和公众意识维度，将这些丢失的非洲经典作为电影节的一部分也将证实其作为一个重要研究事件的意义，对非洲电影史的写作和对非洲电影批评中关键假设的质疑都具有重要意义。结合由此产生的研究成果，该项目将为非洲国家电影制作的早期发展提供关键和揭示性的见解，从而提供新的批评视角并为研究开辟新的途径。

A number of early career films made in the 1960's-1970's by both prominent and undeservedly neglected African filmmakers have fallen into obscurity and are now rarely screened either in cinemas or in festivals in Africa or the West. Due to their inaccessibility, these works are often omitted or brushed over in African film histories. In certain cases, this has led to a rather truncated account of the development of these filmmakers, careers, omitting significant aspects of their creative evolution; for example, certain key films by the well-known Senegalese filmmakers Ousmane Sembene (Taaw, 1970) ad Djibril Diop Mambety 'Contras' City, 1969; Badou Boy, 1970) are now rarely shown and are largely absent from critical works. In other cases, the omission is much more harmful to the critical understanding of African filmmaking, as it has in effect led to the relegation of particular directors and film styles to a marginal position within African cinema as a whole; e.g. hugely important but now overlooked films by Nigerian filmmaker Mustapha Alassane ( Le Retour de l'Aventurier, 1966) and Ivorian filmmaker Desire Ecare (Concerto pour un exil, 1968) provide evidence of an aesthetic and generic range - pastiche, comedy, poetic realism - that were excluded from the dominant critical paradigms concerning African cinema for much of the 1970's and 1980's.These films will be screened as part of Africa in Motion (AiM), an African Film Festival to be held in Edinburgh in June 2006. In practical terms, the project involves identifying four 'lost African classics', the location of the film prints and arranging transport of the prints and viewing copies to Edinburgh. In some cases only one film print survives and, either no English subtitles are in existence, or they are of very poor quality. The project will arrange the production of English subtitles, either by overseeing the translation of existing French subtitles into English or the translation of the original dialogue in the films. These films will be screened with their newly created English subtitles as part of AiM. A catalogue of detailed synoposes and production information will be complied and published on the web along with the English subtitles, making these films available for study by other Anglophone African film scholars, as well as for inclusion in other Anglophone African film festivals the world over.These films will thus become available to a wide audience, including students, theorists, critics and the general public. A number of leading African film scholars will be invited to take part in a roundtable discussion on these 'lost classics' during the Festival in ordet o gauge the importance of these negloected works. The participants in the roundtable will be invited to write up their interventions as articles, which the project co-ordinators will then seek to publish as a special issue of a leading journal in the field. This publication would constitute a hugely significant intervention in the field, bringing together the work of an important group of scholars in order to debate the evolution of African cinema, and to reassess the theoratical and critical paradigms that have emerged from the truncated history of this body of film production.AiM clearly has an important artistic and public awareness dimension, and the inclusion of these lost African classics as part of the festival will also confirm its significance as a major research event with important implications both for the writing of African film history, and for the questioning of key assumptions in African film criticism. Taken together with the resulting research outputs, the project will allow crucial and revealing insights into the early development of cinema production in African countries, thu offering new critical perspectives and opening new avenues for research.