by Sara Hanaburgh
The History of Sub-Saharan African Literatures on Film
Cinematic adaptations of sub-Saharan African literatures draw from a wide range of genres from West African folktales to Zulu legends, from Hausa popular literature to graphic novels, war narratives or Afro Bubblegum art. Departing from the notion that, like literature and cinema, cinematic adaptations are influenced by historical moments and political, social and economic transitions, The History of Sub-Saharan African Literatures on Film seeks chapter proposals that examine adaptations of African literatures–in their multilingual and multicultural contexts–in order to provide a comprehensive volume that spans linguistic regions and will serve as a resource to specialists and non-specialists alike. The volume aims to be a sort of adaptation archive and thus strongly urges chapter proposals that focus on Afrophone and Europhone countries throughout the sub-Saharan region. Moreover, if we consider adaptation as “réécriture” (re-writing) (Tcheuyap 2005), our study of multiple rewritings across time and space seeks to contribute to a rewriting or a rethinking of history, a reformulation of theories and even a rethinking or new direction for adaptation studies.
In individual chapters, the historical, political, social and/or economic contexts should frame discussions about, for instance, aesthetic choices in adaptation, what adaptation might bring to the discussion, or the choice itself of what to adapt to the screen and which screen, who chooses to adapt and why. Authors might focus on the aspect of storytelling through montage, framing, setting or on filmmaking as language, other language choices in films, music in adaptations, readership and viewership, and whether or how adaptation approaches have changed in response to or as a result of a particular historical moment or event. Contributors may choose to take up additional questions, such as: How have authorial approaches, storytelling techniques and media changed throughout the region’s cinematic history? How do storytellers deploy narrative techniques, approach narrative units and structures, and how do narrative styles merge or differ with regard to the choice of medium? What do filmmakers’ narrative choices bring to adaptation and what do those choices tell us about adaptation? Further, if African filmmaking has relied on the discourses and theoretical positioning in African literatures, how has the medium of film articulated those discourses and theories and expanded upon them? Altered them? How much has adaptation played a role in this process? Interdisciplinary approaches are encouraged, including from the fields of postcolonial theory, cultural studies, literary theory, translation theory, queer theory.
Chapters should situate adaptation within a particular historical, political, social or economic moment or time period, such as:
– First generation African filmmaking and adaptation, the Algiers Charter (1969) and political and aesthetic aims of African cinema, including the adaptation of myths, folktales, legends, plays, short stories and novels
– Adaptation, revolutions and revolutionary aesthetics and techniques; national identity and politics
– Popular media – popular theatre, market literature, video production; adaptation and Nollywood, Kannywood, Ghallywood, and in video production in Côte d’Ivoire, Burkina Faso, Gabon, Cameroon, Tanzania
– Adaptations of war narratives, child soldier narratives
-Adaptations and African screen media in the 21st century, modes of production, distribution, or of viewing
– Film languages, local and international actors, professional and non-professional actors, co-productions, global collaborations
Please submit a 250-300 word abstract with your name, title and affiliation to the editor, Dr. Sara Hanaburgh hanaburs@stjohns.edu by September 1, 2019. Include “Call for Book Chapters” in email subject. Accepted abstracts will be notified by September 20. Submission of full chapters (5,000-8,000 words) by February 20, 2020.
This book is under contract with Bloomsbury as part of the growing series, The History of World Literatures on Film, eds. Greg Semenza and Robert Hasenfratz.
Sara Hanaburgh, Ph. D
Assistant Professor of French
Department of Languages and Literatures
Faculty Mentor, International House
St. John’s University (Queens, NY)
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by Natasha Himmelman
Maple Tree Literary Supplement, MTLS
Call for Submission: Special Issue on Harry Garuba (1958-2020)
Deadline extended to 30 September 2020
After the generation of Wole Soyinka, Chinua Achebe and John Bekederemo-Clark, Harry Garuba, as a world-renowned scholar and poet in Ibadan where he also led the Thursday group of poets, was at the bridgehead of a new wave of Nigerian Literary culture and scholarship since the 1980s till his passing in February 2020. For over 30 years, he sponsored, mentored, taught, supported and befriended that new generation. Always self-effacing, he never took or sought credit for his intellectual and moral generosity, a palpable example of which was the 1987 poetry anthology, Voices from the Fringe, which he organized and edited. This work is a formal introduction of the third generation of Nigerian writers to the literary world. In the area of scholarship Garuba’s quiet but powerful intelligence and erudite influence is widespread. His academic essays are landmarks of rigorous postcolonial enquiry within a global school culture. Garuba inspired and straddled the scholarly, writerly and social worlds of a visionary generation of intellectuals. The Maple Tree Literary Supplement (MTLS), calls for submissions from Garuba’s colleagues, friends and acquaintances in the scholarly and creative world – especially the ‘Thursday Group of poets’ – about his life and work in the form of poetry, essays – scholarly and otherwise – anecdotes or even prose fiction. These submissions will be published in MTLS and later collected into an anthology in the future.
Submissions should be sent online through MTLS submissions form at https://www.mtls.ca/issue24/submissions/ or emailed to managingeditor@mtls.ca>. The submission deadline has been extended to 30 September 2020.
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by Roselly Torres
“The film works through the following question: what can we learn from our connected differences? It thus implores spectators to complicate difference and challenge the ways in which neoliberal multiculturalism has flattened, and often sought to tame, Lorde’s radical teachings.”
Naimah Petigny, Films for the Feminist Classroom
SYNOPSIS: AUDRE LORDE – THE BERLIN YEARS 1984 TO 1992 explores a little-known chapter of the writer’s prolific life, a period in which she helped ignite the Afro-German Movement and made lasting contributions to the German political and cultural scene before and after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the German reunification.
Lorde mentored and encouraged Black German women to write and publish as a way of asserting their identities, rights and culture in a society that isolated and silenced them, while challenging white German women to acknowledge their white privilege. As Lorde wrote in her book Our Dead Behind Us: Poems, “It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences.”
Special features include footage of Audre Lorde in Berlin, Audre reading her poems, Audre on her work, deleted scenes, trailer, interview with filmmaker Dagmar Schultz and English, Spanish, German and French subtitles.
AUDRE LORDE – THE BERLIN YEARS 1984 TO 1992, winner of the Audience Award for Best Documentary at the Barcelona G&L Film Festival, contains previously unreleased audiovisual material from director Dagmar Schultz’s personal archive, showing Lorde on and off stage. With testimony from Lorde’s colleagues, students and friends, this film documents Lorde’s lasting legacy in Germany.
How to Order
DVD: https://twn.org/catalog/pages/cpage.aspx?rec=1323&card=price
Rental: https://goo.gl/forms/QOtoJrxSrNU6ImS42
Telephone: 1 (212) 947-9277 x10 (credit card)
Email: twn@twn.org (purchase order)
Fax: 1 (212) 594-6417 (purchase order)
Mail: Third World Newsreel, 545 8th Avenue, 10th Floor, New York, NY 10018
Roselly Torres
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by Roselly Torres
“Resisting a chronological representation of testosterone’s effect on the body, this film allows students to think through the disjunctures between medical and spiritual/affective approaches to transition. This film sets up a number of questions related to the medicalization of trans experience, the relationships between women and transmen in political organizing, and the differing perspectives on trans embodiment across different cultures/epistemes/cosmologies.”
C. Riley Snorton, Films for the Feminist Classroom
To break the mold of past documentaries about gender transformation, AGAINST THE GRAIN goes beyond the usual gender binary and linear racial focus. This short documentary follows the story of OluSeyi, a cultural organizer, artist, healer, and Queer Nigerian whose spirit is transcending gender. OluSeyi’s journey includes hormone replacement therapy (testosterone) and an understanding of identity as gender non-conforming.
Seyi Adebanjo & Betty Yu
2011, 6 minutes, English
View clip: https://vimeo.com/143194631
Higher Education Institutions
DVD w/Digital File (3-year license)
K-12, Public Libraries & Select Groups
DVD
How to Order
Online: https://twn.org/catalog/pages/cpage.aspx?rec=1494&card=price (credit card)
Telephone: 1 (212) 947-9277 x10 (credit card)
Email: twn@twn.org (purchase order)
Fax: 1 (212) 594-6417 (purchase order)
Roselly Torres
Mail: Third World Newsreel, 545 8th Avenue, 10th Floor, New York, NY 10018
