Xala

Xala (1974) by the pioneering Senegalese director Ousmane Sembene, was acclaimed on its release for its scorching critique of postcolonial African society, and it cemented Sembene's status as a wholly new kind of politically engaged, pan-African, auteur film-maker. Centring on the story of businessman El Hadji and the impotence that afflicts him on his marriage to a young third wife, Xala vividly captures the cultural and political upheaval of 1970s Senegal, while suggesting the radical potential of dissent, solidarity and collective action, embodied by El Hadji's student daughter Rama and the group of urban 'undesirables' who act as a kind of raw chorus to the affairs of the neocolonial elite. James S. Williams's lucid study traces Xala's difficult production history and analyses its daring combination of political and domestic drama, oral narrative, social realism, symbolism, satire, documentary, mysticism and Marxist analysis. Yet from its dazzling extended opening sequence of revolution as performance to its suspended climax of redemption through ritualised spitting, Xala presents a series of conceptual and formal challenges that resist a simple reading of the film as allegory. Highlighting often overlooked elements of Sembene's intricate, experimental film-making, including provocative shifts in mood and poetic, even subversively erotic, moments, Williams reveals Xala as a visionary work of both African cinema and Third Cinema that extended the parameters of postcolonial film practice and still resounds today with its searing inventive power.

Xala (1974) by the pioneering Senegalese director Ousmane Sembene, was acclaimed on its release for its scorching critique of postcolonial African society, and it cemented Sembene's status as a wholly new kind of politically engaged, pan-African, auteur film-maker. Centring on the story of businessman El Hadji and the impotence that afflicts him on his marriage to a young third wife, Xala vividly captures the cultural and political upheaval of 1970s Senegal, while suggesting the radical potential of dissent, solidarity and collective action, embodied by El Hadji's student daughter Rama and the group of urban 'undesirables' who act as a kind of raw chorus to the affairs of the neocolonial elite. James S. Williams's lucid study traces Xala's difficult production history and analyses its daring combination of political and domestic drama, oral narrative, social realism, symbolism, satire, documentary, mysticism and Marxist analysis. Yet from its dazzling extended opening sequence of revolution as performance to its suspended climax of redemption through ritualised spitting, Xala presents a series of conceptual and formal challenges that resist a simple reading of the film as allegory. Highlighting often overlooked elements of Sembene's intricate, experimental film-making, including provocative shifts in mood and poetic, even subversively erotic, moments, Williams reveals Xala as a visionary work of both African cinema and Third Cinema that extended the parameters of postcolonial film practice and still resounds today with its searing inventive power.

A biting satire about the downfall of a businessman-polygamist who assumes the role of the colonialist in French-speaking Africa.

'This book is about a story (Ousmane Sembene's Xala), about a time (the aftermath of Senegalese Independence), and about a place (Dakar, the capital of Senegal). It's also about the collaboration between an artist and an anthropologist, who have reacted in their different mediums to the story, time and place, and to what the other made of them ....' So opens a unique account in a genre of its own devising that will engage readers interested in Sembene Ousmane as writer and film director, in Senegal, in African film, in West Africa, or in books designed to be desirable objects in their own right.

Collected interviews with the African filmmaker who directed Black Girl, Mandabi, Xala, Ceddo, Faat Kine, and Moolaade

Cultures of Representation is the first book to explore the cinematic portrayal of disability in films from across the globe. Contributors explore classic and recent works from Belgium, France, Germany, India, Italy, Iran, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Netherlands, Russia, Senegal, and Spain, along with a pair of globally resonant Anglophone films. Anchored by David T. Mitchell and Sharon L. Snyder's coauthored essay on global disability-film festivals, the volume's content spans from 1950 to today, addressing socially disabling forces rendered visible in the representation of physical, developmental, cognitive, and psychiatric disabilities. Essays emphasize well-known global figures, directors, and industries – from Temple Grandin to Pedro Almodóvar, from Akira Kurosawa to Bollywood – while also shining a light on films from less frequently studied cultural locations such as those portrayed in the Iranian and Korean New Waves. Whether covering postwar Italy, postcolonial Senegal, or twenty-first century Russia, the essays in this volume will appeal to scholars, undergraduates, and general readers alike.

Writer and film-maker Laura Mulvey is widely regarded as one of the most challenging and incisive contemporary cultural theorists, credited for incorporating film theory, psychoanalysis and feminism. Part of the pathbeating 1970s generation of British film theorists and independent film-makers, she came to prominence with her classic essay on the pleasures – and displeasures – of narrative cinema, 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema'. She went on to make her own avant-garde films, co-directed with Peter Wollen, and to write further, greatly influential works – including this one. Fetishism and Curiosity contains writings which range from analyses of Xala, Citizen Kane and Blue Velvet, to an extended engagement with the creations of Native American artist Jimmie Durham and the feminist photographer Cindy Sherman. Essays explore the concept of fetishism as developed by Marx and Freud, and how it relates to the ways in which artistic texts work. Mulvey returns to some of the knottier issues in contemporary cultural theory, especially the links between looking, fantasy and theorisation on the one hand, and the processes of historical change on the other. What are the modes of address that characterise 'societies of the spectacle'? How might 'curiosity' be directed towards deciphering the politics of popular culture? These are just some of the questions raised in this brilliant and subtle collection. Published as part of the BFI Silver series, this new edition of Mulvey's classic work of feminist theory features a new, specially commissioned introduction and stills from the films discussed.

"Problems and solutions by Cecilia Garcâia-Peänalosa in collaboration with Jan Boone, Chol-Won Li, and Lucy White." Includes bibliographical references (p. [665]-687) and index.

High oil prices are bound to undermine the U.S. economic recovery, unless global supplies increase significantly. Latin America holds the world's biggest oil reserves after the Middle East, but politics are hindering its potential, especially in Venezuela. Global U.S. security would benefit from a revamping of outdated and misguided idealism-driven policies toward Latin America, which, in fact, strengthen anti-American forces led by President Hugo Chávez. This is a blind spot in American politics, one that threatens U.S. geopolitical and economic interests. At stake, ultimately, is the U.S.'s ability to navigate a shifting world and protect its way of life. Washington needs a new regional policy not only to neutralize Chávez, but also to secure long term access to Latin America's oil, improve global security, and counter the rising influence of regional players. America's Blind Spot offers a fascinating and thorough analysis of key geopolitical and economic threats to the U.S., highlighting the need for a new Latin American policy doctrine based on military and strategic priorities.

A history and in-depth analysis of the film career of the iconic Black star, activist, and French military intelligence agent. Josephine Baker, the first Black woman to star in a major motion picture, was both liberated and delightfully undignified, playfully vacillating between allure and colonialist stereotyping. Nicknamed the “Black Venus,” “Black Pearl,” and “Creole Goddess,” Baker blended the sensual and the comedic when taking 1920s Europe by storm. Back home in the United States, Baker’s film career brought hope to the Black press that a new cinema centered on Black glamour would come to fruition. In Josephine Baker’s Cinematic Prism, Terri Simone Francis examines how Baker fashioned her celebrity through cinematic reflexivity, an authorial strategy in which she placed herself, her persona, and her character into visual dialogue. Francis contends that though Baker was an African American actress who lived and worked in France exclusively with a white film company, white costars, white writers, and white directors, she holds monumental significance for African American cinema as the first truly global Black woman film star. Francis also examines the double-talk between Baker and her characters in Le Pompier de Folies Bergère, La Sirène des Tropiques, Zou Zou, Princesse Tam Tam, and The French Way, whose narratives seem to undermine the very stardom they offered. In doing so, Francis illuminates the most resonant links between emergent African American cinephilia, the diverse opinions of Baker in the popular press, and African Americans’ broader aspirations for progress toward racial equality. Examining an unexplored aspect of Baker’s career, Josephine Baker’s Cinematic Prism deepens the ongoing conversation about race, gender, and performance in the African diaspora.