Resistant representations? Genre and gender in Francophone African film

Langford, Rachael ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9333-8673 2018. Resistant representations? Genre and gender in Francophone African film. Transnational Cinemas 9 (2) , pp. 181-196. 10.1080/20403526.2017.1419551

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Abstract

This article analyses the ways in which contemporary Francophone African film interrogates concepts of identity and representation through its inflections of elements of film genre, particularly genre-linked presentations of gender. The article examines in detail Jean-Pierre Bekolo’s Les Saignantes (2005) and Abderrahmane Sissako’s Bamako (2006) as case studies, focusing on how the films’ reformulations of gender and genre reflects on the nature of representation in postcolonial cultural contexts. To explore how these inflections of genre and their reflection on representation may be politically resistant, the argument brings into dialogue theories of film genre as a relational concept (Stam, Neale, Bordwell and Thompson) and gender identity theory, drawn from the work of Spivak and Irigaray. In combination with detailed readings of the two films, this approach leads to two broader conclusion:firstly, that the strategic deployment of gender constructions within re-articulations of genre coordinates can constitute a form of aesthetic resistance; and secondly that insights from postcolonial theory and gender theory can inform the analysis of film genre in non-Western contexts and elucidate the signification of film genre in contexts defined by networks of cultural appropriation, adaptation and exchange.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Modern Languages
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
ISSN:	2040-3526
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	6 November 2017
Date of Acceptance:	6 November 2017
Last Modified:	07 Nov 2023 00:49
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/106208

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