African Canadian Cinema

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African Canadian Cinema Projections of
Cultural Identity

• By Greg Tourino, PhD Candidate, SFU School of
  Communication

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Introduction

• The emergence over the past 35 years of a
  distinctly African Canadian cinema
• Aspects of cultural identity specifically an
  African Canadian cultural identity within a cross
  section of films
• Cultural Studies
• Comparative examples in African diaspora cinema

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Stuart Hall, Cultural Identity and Diaspora

• We have been trying to theorise identity as
  constituted, not outside but within
  representation and hence of cinema, not as a
  second-order mirror held up to reflect what
  already exists, but as that form of
  representation which is able to constitute us as
  new kinds of subjects, and thereby enable us to
  discover places from which to speak

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African Canadian Cultural Identity?

• Black Canadian?
• African Canadian?
• Afro Canadian?
• Africadian?

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African Canadian Cultural Identity?

• To be black in Canada, then, is an existential
  experience. A constant interrogation of our
  belonging is inculcated within us. It is not just
  the double consciousness that the great
  African-American intellectual W.E.B. Du Bois
  posited for Black Americans, but a
  poly-consciousness. For as our blackness ranges
  from ivory to indigo hues, our heritages, ethnic
  allegiances, religions, and languages are also
  varied. In fact, African Canada, in its gorgeous,
  explicit diversity, is a microcosm of Canada.
  (Clarke, 1997)

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African Canadian Cultural Identity?

• Yet the vagueness of black identity in Canada
  does not merely reflect the relative paucity of
  souls. Rather, it is emblematic of a larger
  crisis of Canadian identity. It is difficult
  enough to figure out what it means to be
  Canadian, let alone African Canadian. (Clarke,
  1997)

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African Canadian Cultural Identity?

• How do we understand who the black Canadian is
  ... and what constitutes black Canadian
  expressive culture? Addressing these questions
  would go a long way in helping us to make sense
  of what would be required of a cinema that speaks
  the past, present and future of black Canadian
  identities. (Walcott, 2003)

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African Canadian Cultural Identity?

• my strategy for writing blackness has been to
  pay attention to diaspora networks and
  connectedness as opposed to an explicit national
  address. In spite of a desire to belong to a
  particular or specific nation, I have been
  interested in a deterritorialized strategy that
  is consciously aware of the ground of the nation
  from which it speaks. (Walcott, 2003)

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Factors that may shape identity formation among
African Canadians

• Relative population distribution throughout
  Canada
• Erasure from Canadian history
• A constant interrogation of belonging

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Canadian Cinema

• Canadas close proximity and economic integration
  with the United States has effectively
  marginalized the Canadian film industry
• Over last 3 decades Canadian feature films have
  averaged less than 4 of the domestic box office
  in English Canada and less than 20 in French
  Canada

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Canadian Cinema

• Publicly funded by governmental agencies such as
  the National Film Board (NFB), Telefilm Canada
  and through a variety of tax shelters and credits
• It is within this context that African Canadian
  cinema has existed and will continue to exist for
  the foreseeable future

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African Canadian Cinema Cultural Identity

• funding in turn determines what the resulting
  film will look and sound like, and, to some
  degree, what it will say. It is this management
  of dissent, this ability to channel black voices
  of protest or affirmation through its corridors,
  that has been the real race-relations success of
  the National Film Board. (Bailey, 1999)

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African Canadian Cinema Cultural Identity
Jennifer Hodge de Silvas Home feeling A
Struggle for a Community
Francis Anne Solomons A Winter Tale
Stephen Williams Soul Survivor
Clement Virgos Rude
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Images Themes of Resistance
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African Canadian Cinema Timeline

• 1919 Within Our Gates Oscar Micheaux
• 1950s William Greaves NFB Documentaries
• 1970s 1980s NFB Studio D Documentaries
• 1995 Rude Clement Virgo Soul Survivor Stephen
  Williams
• 2004 Hardwood Hubert Davis
• 2007 Poor Boys Game Clement Virgo Winter Tale
  Francis Anne Solomon

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Poor Boys GameClement Virgo
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HardwoodHubert Davis
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Comparative Examples of Diaspora Cinema
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Afro-Caribbean Cinema
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Black British Cinema
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African American Cinema Timeline

• 1919 Within Our Gates Oscar Micheaux
• 1971 Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song Melvin
  Van Peebles
• 1971 Shaft Gordon Parks
• 1977 Killer of Sheep Charles Burnett
• 1986 Shes Gotta Have It Spike Lee
• 1991 Daughters of the Dust Julie Dash

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Los Angeles School Cinema
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Research GuideAfrican Canadian Cinema
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