The role of film genre in African films from the 1960s to the present day is an important aspect of this cinema. Rachael Langford explores the ways in which African filmmakers use and renew the conventions of familiar film genres. She discusses what working with film genre means for African directors, and why work with genre is such a significant facet of their creative endeavour. She focuses, in turn, on the Western, the combat movie, the epic, documentary films, the road movie and the musical film. She also examines the work of a wide range of African directors, including familiar names such as Ousmane Sembene (Senegal) and Souleymane Cisse (Mali), as well as less well-known directors such as Mahamat Saleh Haroun (Chad), Safia Mohamed Iddi (Tanzania) and Lovinsa Kavuma (South Africa). Positioned at the intersection of film, postcolonial and cultural studies, this book fills a significant gap in the literature on African cinemas and on film genre.

Author Biography

Rachael Langford is Reader in French at Cardiff University. Her research expertise is in Francophone colonial and postcolonial cultures.