Paper long abstract:

African women are, as in most other public spheres of their societies, hugely underrepresented in the film industry as directors. However, the last decade has seen the gradual emergence of more and more female directors from all over the continent. "No aspect of African cinema is more miraculous that the most unbidden emergence of female filmmakers on the continent," states Mahen Sophia Bonetti, a film festival organiser from Sierra Leone (in Ellerson, 2000:73). This is particularly true in West Africa where Senegalese director Safi Faye became the first sub-Saharan African women to direct a feature-length film (Kaddu Beykat or Letter from My Village) as early as 1975. This paper will trace the emergence of West African female directors - from the work of pioneering female directors such as Safi Faye to young contemporary directors - exploring the aesthetic styles, genres and themes employed in their work. The paper will further look at industry conditions and how these influence access to training, funding, production and distribution.

Selected films from West African female directors will be analysed against an African feminist interpretative framework, while exploring the notion of a female sensibility that could be observed in their work and evaluating the usefulness of the oft-cited dichotomy between the communal nature of African feminism and the bourgeois individualism of Western feminism. Consideration will also be given to the fact that, although African women directors deal with female themes such as sexuality, beauty, female genital mutilation, polygamy and economic emancipation in their films, some female directors resist being labeled as "feminist" and prefer to be known merely as storytellers, without overt reference to their gender. The first feature films of Burkinabe directors Fanta Regina Nacro (La Nuit de la Vérité or The Night of Truth, 2004) and Appoline Traoré (Sous la Clarté de la Lune or Under the Moonlight, 2004) will be discussed, as well as how their initiation into the audio-visual industry through short films, documentaries, television and development work, has led to the production of feature fiction films.

The paper will demonstrate how female directors counter stereotypical Western representations of African women as silent victims, with the overall aim of the paper being to outline the emergence of West African female directors as an important but neglected trend in contemporary African cinema.