I few months ago, the writer Akin Adesokan, who was editing an issue of Farafina, the Lagos lit magazine, approached me to interview the pioneering Mahen Bonetti, the director of New York’s African Film Festival, an annual fixture at The Film Society of Lincoln Center (Mahen introduced New York audiences to filmmakers like Abderramane Sissako, for example).
This week, that issue containing my interview, arrived in the post. Nice.
To read the full interview and the rest of the issue (including work by Molara Wood, Eniniem Etomi, Afam Akeh, James McConkey, and Isidore Okpewho) order it here.
But here is an excerpt: At one point during the interview I asked what she makes of the recent and renewed appetite for Africa, in general, even as a backdrop, in Hollywood films such as Constant Gardener, Blood Diamonds, The Last King of Scotland, In My Country, Red Dust and Catch a Fire. This was her response:
In some ways, it is exciting to see Africa get some recognition on the Hollywood landscape. In other ways, it is important to be critical of the ways in which Africa is depicted and the stories that are told. We must ask, from whose perspectives are these stories being told, and what exactly are these stories themselves saying about the state of Africa today, and her relationship within the international arena? I’m wary of films that do exactly what you mention – use Africa as a “backdrop,” as if the continent were simply a place where western stories happen. In films such as The Last King of Scotland, while the stories remain very specific to the history of the African countries, they are usually contextualized through the viewpoint of a westerner. While I understand the need to structure a story to make it accessible to its intended (western) audience, I am very much looking forward to the day when Hollywood will be brave enough to depict an African story from the viewpoint of an African. This, of course, is a simplification of the issue, and perhaps not one to be expected from the apparatus such as that of Hollywood. In any case, I can always dream.
Not the best of films,but a cooking soundtrack though.