Introduction

This special issue engages the historical and contemporary heterogeneity of the Gulf, which was a transcultural space long before the discovery of oil. Over the past two decades, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates have actively begun to harness the media’s power, while at the same time grassroots productions—online, through social media and in regional festivals—reframe assumptions about film and visual media. With resident expatriate population comprising up to 90 percent of the population in Gulf states, film and visual media complicate conventional frameworks derived from area studies, such as ‘Arab media’, ‘Middle Eastern and North African cinema’, or ‘South Asian film’. These articles also unsettle the modernist divisions of media into distinct categories, such as broadcast television and theatrical exhibition, and consider forms that move between professional and nonprofessional media, and between private and semi-public spaces, including the transmedia spaces of theme parks and shooting locations. Articles examine the subjects of early photography in Kuwait, the role of Oman TV as a broadcaster of Indian films into Pakistan, representations of disability and gender in Kuwaiti musalsalat, tribal uses of social media, and videos produced by South Asian and Southeast Asian expatriates, including second-generation expatriates.

Towards a Marxist Biocentric Climate Justice Theory of African Cinema

African cinema after colonialism examined issues on politics, polemics of gender, morality, historical reconstruction, resuscitation of cultural values and so on. All of the above were the pivot on which postcolonial African films were hinged. The rise of environmental consciousness in the 1980s through the 1990s championed by William Rueckert, Cheryll Glotfelty, Harold Fromm and Adrian Ivakhiv’s Bio- centrism created spaces for the African filmmaker’s search for climate justice with the medium of his art. It is pertinent to note that traditional African societies were ecocentric precursory to their encounter with the West. This Biocentric nature of indigenous Africa, the dislocation of the continent by capital- ism and the effect of climate change on the continent made it easy for the African creative artist and filmmaker to venture into the ecological film enterprise. Laden in some of these films are the socio- economic, political and environmental thoughts of Karl Marx, Ali Mazrui, Omafume Onoge and William Ruekert. Despite the above, there abounds a dearth of holistic environmental theories that bridges the economic, political and environmental Humanities. To this end, I propound a Marxist Biocentric Climate Justice theory which encapsulates political, economic and environmental processes. I adopt content analysis method to situate Christoffer Guldbrandsen’s Why Poverty? Stealing Africa (2012) and Orlando Von Einsiedel’s Virunga (2014) in the context of the theory being propounded.

African Films and FESPACO

The Pan-African Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou (FESPACO) was founded in 1969. It began as an intimate week-long gathering of filmmakers and enthusiasts in the capital of what is now Burkina Faso to watch contemporary films made by African filmmakers. At its peak in the 1990s, it attracted hundreds of thousands of spectators, both local and international. Since the 2000s, iterations have been smaller affairs, significantly impacted by both changes of government in Burkina Faso and wider political instability in West Africa, as well as ongoing debates about what films it should be showcasing. Despite such challenges (and with only one exception in the mid-1970s), however, FESPACO has remained a constant on the African continent, faithfully screening films by African and diaspora filmmakers every two years for more than half a century. FESPACO was conceived in the age of decolonization by a group of men and women who are considered to be the pioneers of African cinema, including the Senegalese writer and filmmaker Ousmane Sembène. It was established as the first sub-Saharan showcase of African filmmaking, an emergent and significant field in the era of independence when cinema was prized for its ability to make visible African realities and to (re)constitute national histories eclipsed by colonial rule. The concept of a distinctly “African” cinema was articulated most extensively by filmmaker and scholar Paulin Soumanou Vieyra and referred to films made by Africans, telling African stories, principally for African audiences. For Vieyra, Sembène, and their contemporaries, it was essential to take back control of the art of cinema on the African continent, where it had predominantly been deployed as a colonial tool; FESPACO was conceived as the regular forum for those committed to its development to come together and share their work. Through the course of its development, FESPACO has been confronted with a number of challenges regarding its form and its evolution. Its strong connections with the Burkinabe state have been seen as both a significant factor for its growth and its success, and, particularly in the era of Blaise Compaoré, as a source for concern regarding freedom of expression. Since the turn of the 21st century, questions about where video filmmaking—an industry that has proliferated on the African continent in a manner unprecedented internationally—fits within FESPACO’s definition of cinema have been consistent. The festival has, over the years, been accused of being both outdated and elitist in its commitment to celluloid, but also of straying from its original remit to showcase African stories for African audiences, accusations it has responded to by the creation of new prize categories and requirements for submission. The year 2019 was one of reflection, but many critics felt that after some difficult years the festival was showing signs of rejuvenation. Though it is now one of many film festivals on the continent committed to showcasing African cinema, there remains significant appreciation for the historic status of FESPACO as a preeminent sub-Saharan cultural institution.

Corta! A diáspora da imaginação cinematográfica e a heterogênese entre técnica, estética e política

Rabiger and Hurbis-Cherrier published a chapter whose title is related to other discussions about cinema: Who can invoke the term ‘Cut!’? To deal with a question like that, it is essential to return to the foundations that contextualize filmmaking as a political act, and not only aesthetic or technical, wich is full of colonial relations of power. Considering the colonial forces that have tensioned, and still tension the environment of work and creation in cinema, the filmmaking process can be understood through a diasporic act of imagination, which goes through procedures of work, aesthetic proposals and political contexts in which the movie lies. In this sense, the Cinema Novo in Brazil, the Modern Cinema and African cinema, present themselves as references of an independent and decolonial filmmaking that shares an act of freedom: the heterogenesis that permeates technique, aesthetic and politics. As an example, we take the role of a griot author, realizing a comparison between filmmaking and a popular figure in the caste system of African society, taking notes about the film Impasse, by Issa Saga, a short filmmaker from Burkina Faso. The term author-griot proposes political engagement, not only through thematic treatment, but also in the subversion of production modes. Thus, broadening the scope of the question posed by Rabiger and Hurbis-Cherrier, about film directing and the power of interruption delegated to the role of the director, we seek to redirect the debate, shedding light less on movie directing but more on the direction of the cinema.