Part I–Introduction: Journeys into the Cinematic Imaginary of the Africas/Diasporas of Women

Part I–Introduction: Journeys into the Cinematic Imaginary of the Africas/Diasporas of Women Beti Ellerson (bio) In the long and fraught history of representation, FESPACO's defining mission is to unapologetically recover, chronicle, affirm, and reconstitute the representation of the African continent and its global diaspora of peoples, thereby enunciating in the cinematic, all manner of Pan-African identity, experience, and, in the project of world making, the futurity of the Black world.1 These words aptly frame the objectives of this Close-Up: to recover, to chronicle, to affirm, to reimagine even, African/Diasporan women's cinematic world-making, indeed self-making—envisioning the manners in which they devise, create, make, a space, a universe, a domain, a world; within which they may tell/relate their stories—storytelling as a project of world-making through cinema. In her "Welcome" introducing the Film Viewing Guide program of the Birth of Black Cinema Symposium held in November 1988 in Albany, New York, Toni Morrison, who cosponsored the event, professed: Because the black presence on screens is surfacing in unexpected and unexplored ways, we have chosen a title (The Birth of Black Cinema) that begs several questions that could not legitimately be asked before the 1960's. What is black cinema? When did it begin? What forces compelled, facilitated and informed its origins? How should it be judged? What information is needed to articulate those judgments? What are its critical, cultural and aesthetic premises?2 End Page 183 This passage from Morrison's text expresses fully the intentions of this Close-Up, which asks similar questions regarding the tenets of an African/Diasporan cinematic practice/tradition shaped by women: its beginnings, the forces that compelled, facilitated, and informed it, the requisite approaches needed to formulate it, and the propositions on which to explore its cultural, political, and social manifestations. She continues: By addressing these questions, this symposium expects to clear away some of the emotional and intellectual debris surrounding the black presence in film. In this way, one can develop the cinematic literacy necessary for deliberating on, understanding, and participating in the future of an art form that, to a large extent, shapes our thinking in a number of areas. This symposium hopes to direct attention to the powerful, risk-laden alliances of art and society at its most critical moment—when a specific culture begins to shape that alliance.3 Toni Morrison's engagement with cinematic literacy as practice equally reflects the concerns of this Close-Up: the relationship between art and society, indeed, cinemas of Africas and Diasporas—how these articulations are read and understood, and the manner in which they produce, disseminate, and validate knowledge. This question is specifically posed by Carrie Dailey, who is featured in the Close-Up, during her research project in the early 1970s on the evolution of Ousmane Sembène as an artist. And hence the organizing principle of this Close-Up draws from the various threads formulated above, and the discourse of the many women whose voices are included in these pages—mapping the journey they have taken from then to now. The title "The Africas/Diasporas of Women in the Evolution of a Trans-African Film Practice and Critical Inquiry" calls attention to the multiplicity of locations, providing a place for the explication of African/diasporic histories (historical and new Diasporas), as well as an elaboration of the peregrinations and the negotiation of hybrid, indeed symbiotic, identities of so many of these women. So, the discussion of women within these spaces examines how their diasporic film practice/activism connects to Africa, or, how their African film practice/activism connects to these diasporic locations. In so doing, it gives specificity to the selection of texts and voices. And it may resolve the conundrum of where to place identities of the "African American," located in that sprawling, all-consuming hegemonic space, which has the habit of defining, indeed naming the African Diaspora experience. So, it is the African/diasporic relationship as it relates to direct and ongoing cinematic practices that would define this place. End Page 184 Diasporic identities encompass, as well, the expansive intracontinental diasporas formed by intracontinental migrations. Moreover, beyond the...