The rich oral traditions of storytelling in Black Africa have evolved into cinematic forms, adapting social satire and political humor to the realities of modern life. After a brief history of the region and its early encounters with the medium of motion pictures, this chapter introduces concepts like négritude, the griot storyteller, pan-Africanism, and Afropolitanism to explain how African beliefs and sub-Saharan cinema differ from others in the world and how African filmmakers like Ousmane Sembène and Djibril Diop Mambéty, Jean-Pierre Bekolo and Adama Drabo, Henri Duparc and Benoît Lamy, Flores Gomes and Fanta Régina Nacro have fashioned a cinema that reflects the way Africans see themselves and their place in the world.
Le cinéma des martyrs : corps d’acteurs et jeu de transgression de symboles dans les films de Djibril Diop Mambety