CURRICULAR GUIDE FOR TEACHING ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE

CURRICULAR GUIDE FOR TEACHING ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE

Table of Contents:

A. Background Articles

B. Films and Videos

Allah Tantou

Aristotle’s Plot

Asientos

Black Girl

Barom Sarret

Battle of Algiers

Bopha!

Ceddo

Cry the Beloved Country (1952)

Cry Freedom

In Darkest Hollywood

A Dry White Season

Emitai

Everyone’s Child

Femmes aux yeux ouverts (Women with Open Eyes)

Finzan

Flame

Le Franc

Generations of Resistance

Guelwaar

Guimba the Tyrant

Harvest: 3,000 Years

Heritage Africa

Hyenas

Jit

Keita: Heritage of the Griot

Lumumba: La Mort Du Prophete

Maids and Madams

Mandabi

Monday’s Girls

Neria

Sambizanga

Sankofa

These Hands

Touki Bouki (The Journey of the Hyena)

La Vie Est Belle (Life is Rosy)

Wend Kuuni

World Apart

Xala

Yaaba

Yeelen

Zan Boko

A. BACKGROUND READINGS

Ciccone, A. (1995). Teaching with authentic video: theory and practice. In H. Eckman et al (eds.), Second Language Acquisition: Theory and Pedagogy. Lawrence Earlbaum Associates.

Diawara, M. (1992). Anglophone African production. In M. Diawara, African Cinema: Politics and Culture. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Diawara, M. (1989). Oral literature and African film: narratology in Wend Kuuni. In J. Pines and P. Willemen (eds.), Questions of Third Cinema. London: British Film Institute.

Gabriel, T. H. (1989). Towards a critical theory of third world films. In J. Pines & P. Willemen (eds.), Questions of Third Cinema. London: British Film Institute.

Harrow, K. (1995). Introduction: shooting forward. In Research in African Literature (Special Issue on African Film), 26 (3): 1-5.

Harrow, K. (1997). Women in African Cinema. Matutu: Journal for African Culture and Society, 19: vii- xii.

Racevskis, M. (1996). Applications of African cinema in the high school curriculum. Research in African Literatures, 27 (3): 98 -109.

Tomaselli, K. (1994). Decolonising film and television (teaching film and TV in Africa). In MATHASEDI, Nov/Dec.

Ukadike, N. F. (1994). Introduction. In N. F. Ukadike (ed.), Black African Cinema. Berkeley: University of California Press.

B. FILMS AND VIDEO

ALLAH TANTOU, 1991

62 minutes in French with English subtitles

Director: David Achkar

Distributor: California Newsreel

Purchase Price: $195.00

Rental Price: $95.00

Synopsis: This film confronts the immense personal and political cost of human rights abuses common to some evolutionary governments in post-independent Africa. Filmmaker David Achkar accomplishes this by following the life of his diplomat father, Marof Achkar, who became a political prisoner in Sekou Touré’s Guinea during the late 1960s.

Critique: Allah Tantou is the first African film to confront the immense personal and political costs of the widespread human rights abuses on the continent. It follows filmmaker David Achkar’s search for his father, his father’s search for himself inside a Guinean prison and Africa’s search for a new beginning amid the disillusionment of the post-independence era. One of the most courageous and controversial films of recent years, Allah Tantou speaks in an unabashed personal voice not often heard in African cinema.

“The life of Marof Achkar can be seen as emblematic of much recent African history. In 1958, his countryman, Sekou Touré declared Guinea the first independent French African colony and became a hero of Pan-Africanism. Marof Achkar, a leading figure in the Ballets Africans, served as U.N. ambassador for the new government. In 1968, Achkar was suddenly recalled, charged with treason and vanished into the notorious Camp Boiro prison. His family was exiled and, only after Touré’s death in 1984, did they learn of his execution in 1971.

“In a cinematic tradition which has privileged the calm collective voice of the griot, Allah Tantou speaks with the fragmented, uncertain rhythms of the individual conscience. Achkar juxtaposes diverse, sometimes contradictory texts -- documentary, newsreel, dramatizations, photos, journals -- to deny us a single, authoritative narrative space.”

(Critique quoted from California Newsreel’s Library of African Cinema. 1995-96 Catalog.)

IN THE LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE CLASSROOM

Topics for Discussion: Post-colonialism; African politics; Art and Political Commitment; Biography.

ARISTOTLE’S PLOT, 1996

71 minutes French with English subtitles

Director: Jean-Pierre Bekolo

Distributor: JPB Productions

Purchase Price: $295.00

Synopsis: This feature film examines the trials of African movie-making in a humorous, and critical, manner.

Critique: In a southern African town, a group of wanna-be gangstas hangs out at the Cinema Africa, subjecting themselves to megadoses of the latest actions fests. They’ve taken the names of their screen gods: Van Damme, Bruce Lee, Nikita, Saddam, and the leader Cinema. Africa of Hollywood, replacing Schwarzenegger with Sembene. The government is indifferent and the gangsta won’t come quietly, so he takes matters into his hands and becomes a vigilante for an indigenous film culture.

“In its combination of critical questioning and anarchic glee, Aristotle’s Plot harks back to Godard, but with a sense of humor all its own. Instead of working toward the end of cinema like Godard, Bekolo just wants a new beginning and a decent middle.”

(Critique quoted from article by Cameron Bailey, Toronto Film Festival Catalogue 1997)

IN THE LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE CLASSROOM

Topics for Discussion: Post-colonialism; Aristotle’s Poetics; Popular Culture; Film and Culture

ASIENTOS, 1995

52 minutes in French with English subtitles: 35mm

Director: Francois Woukoache

Distributor: Francois Woukoache

Synopsis: This film traces the connections between the history of Goree Island and one man’s place in the present.

Critique: On Goree Island off the coast of Senegal, a young man seeks refuge from present-day strife in

a journey into history. Though no pictures captured the brutality of Goree Island’s slave trade,

it retains memories of profound horror and strength. With keenly perceptive narration,

Woukoache connects an unspeakable past with a forgetful present. Asientos’s closest relative is perhaps

Alain Resnais’s Holocaust reflection Nuit et Brouillard. But this film remains unique. Few have

photographed the coast of West Africa or the details of black skin with such unerring beauty.

(Critique quoted from article by Cameron Bailey, Toronto Film Festival Catalogue 1997.)

IN THE LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE CLASSROOM

Discussion Topics: Slavery; The Slave Narrative; Historical Memory.

BLACK GIRL, 1965

60 minutes in French with English subtitles

Director: Ousmane Sembene

Distributor: New Yorker Films

Rental Price: $125.00

Synopsis: A dramatization depicting the tragic story of a young Senegalese woman who goes to the French Riviera to work for a French family.

Critique: This drama is a powerful indictment against neo-colonial and racial insensitivity and ignorance. In this early work, Ousmane Sembene uses the story of Diouana to point out many injustices perpetrated by Europeans against Africans. The family that employs Diouana under false pretenses actual perpetuates a slave‑master relationship that should have ended with the abolition of slavery or certainly at Senegal's independence. The pejorative comments of the whites about Africa and Africans are often spoken in front of Diouana, as if she were not a thinking, feeling human being. The white men discuss the huge profits to be made in Dakar, and the French women, themselves subject to gender stratification, are able to afford domestics for every household chore. An African mask is used in the film as first a gift to the white couple from Diouana, then a symbol o the European's ignorance of African culture, and finally as an accusing reminder that a young black boy wears to follow Diouana's employer. The main flaw with the production is that it is literally unrelenting in its one‑sided condemnation of French expatriate relations with Africa; however, the power and message are worth the viewing of this somberproduction.

(Critique quoted from the African Media Program Database of African Film, Michigan State University)

IN THE LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE CLASSROOM

Topics for Discussion: gender and class relations, racial & ethnic representations

BOROM SARRET, 1963

19 minutes in french with English subtitles

Director: Ousmane Sembene

Distributor: New Yorker Films

Rental price: $25.00

Synopsis: African cinema of a day in the life of a Barom Sarret (horsecart driver) trying to earn a living in urban Dakar, Senegal.

Critique: A poignant depiction of the lives of the urban poor throughout the Third World. The film is obviously slanted in order to make its point. The point, therefore, is well made. The driver of the cart cannot bring imself to charge his neighbors, and conversely he is cheated by the wealthy customer. The driver's only crime is poverty, and the system is geared to punish him for it. Sembene, in this early film, addresses the problems that are common to most of his work: the futile dependence on religion by the illiterate the insensitivity of the elite to the problems of their poorer countrymen, and the loss of even the most basic means of employment and dignity. The photography and technical aspects of the film are somewhat dated, but they only add to the overall impact of the compact indictment of the exploitation of the poor in urban areas. (Critique quoted from the African Media Program Database of African Film, Michigan State University)

IN THE LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE CLASSROOM

Topics for Discussion: early post-colonialism, class representations and relations, equity

BATTLE OF ALGIERS, 1966

123 minutes in French with English subtitles

Director: Gillo Pontecorvo

Distributor: Macmillan Films

Purchase Price: $59.95

Rental Price: This film can be rented from some commercial video stores.

Synopsis: A story reconstruction in documentary style of Algerian resistance to the French between 1954 and 1957.

Critique: “This powerful film is a documentary-style reconstruction of the Algerian rebellion against the French between 1954 and 1957. It focuses on the FLN (National Liberation Front) guerrilla underground and the tactics used by the French to destroy it. Flashbacks show the rebels’ terrorist campaign and the escalation of torture, murder and destruction on both sides. A dramatic example of the tragedy of violent revolution. It is useful in a larger study where alternatives to violent social change are presented. Sympathetic to the FLN, the film makers portray them as underdogs fighting valiantly for social justice, because of this the film may produce support among viewers for terrorism.”

(Critique quoted from War and Peace Guide 1980, pp. 75-76.)

IN THE LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE CLASSROOM

Discussion Topics: Art and Politics; Colonialism; Identity; Revolution

BOPHA!, 1993

120 minutes in English

Directors: Daniel Riesenfeld and Morgan Freeman.

Distributor: Viewfinders, Inc.

Purchase Price: $19.95

Synopsis: This video uses a dual media approach to represent the harsh realities of Apartheid South Africa: stark and often violent documentary footage which is interspersed with videotaped scenes from an award winning South African play, Bopha!

Critique:

IN THE CLASSROOM

Classroom handout: The video addresses number of central issues in Apartheid South Africa: life in the urban townships, severe racial prejudice and hierarchy, endemic unemployment, inadequate and oppressive educational system, over‑crowded housing, political oppression, and most centrally, police brutality.

The video captures, particularly in the powerful scenes from the play, the deep wounds that Apartheid inflicted on individuals and families. Of particular relevance to our course is the (a) tension between Njandine (the father) and his teenage son Zulakie, caused by their diametrically opposed perspectives on the current (1970s) situation in South Africa, and (b) the internal angst experienced by Zulakie as he struggles to deal with the deep ambiguities comforting youth in South Africa.

To help us understand the scenes from Bopha! the isiZulu word for arrest or detention, I have summarized the characters that appear in the play:

Njandine, the father and a sergeant in the infamous South African Police force (SAP). Njandine, as the narrator (Sidney Poitier) tells us, is a pejorative term, used by township dwellers to describe black policemen. The word, in isiZulu, means "running dog." Njandine, is the quintessential "collaborator." He does the dirty and violent work necessary to up‑hold the apartheid system. However, though he does the work of the baas, and thus plays an important role in maintaining the system, the play‑write portrays Njandine as a more complicated and not totally unsympathetic character.

Njandine, represents the deep ambiguities and contradictions of the apartheid system. In order to survive and live a somewhat humane existence, many South African blacks where forced to chose between occupations (such as the SAP, but also teachers and many others) which helped reproduce the system or unemployment and a life a misery. When criticized by his son for being a policeman Njandine responds with biting sarcasm‑"When I a vagrant where were you? When I was homeless where were you? When I was starving, where were you?" When I was starving, where were you?" Watch for ways in which Njandine's character demonstrates this ambiguity and tension.

Lalanki, Njandine's brother, who has just moved from his rural homeland (Qwa Qwa), to live in a township. Lalanki is, however, an "illegal" since he does not have permission to be in the urban areas; his pass‑book does not have the proper documentation. Consequently when the police approach a group of men searching for work Lalanki's passbook show that he his an illegal and he is given the choice of joining the police force or deportation to Qwa Qwa. In resignation he joins the police force stating "If you can't beat them, join them." However, unlike his brother, Lalanki, is a very reluctant "collaborator."

Watch for ways in which he demonstrates resistance and opposition.

Zulakie, the son, is a student in a "typical" township school. The play takes place in the late 1970s when students in the townships took the lead in resisting apartheid. The immediate focus of their protest is opposition to inferior education and particularly to the policy of using Afrikaans, the "language of particularly to the policy of using Afrikaans, the "language of the oppressor" as the medium of instruction, even in mathematics. Zulakie is torn between his familial duty to his father, who wants to him to follow him into the police force, and his own sense of justice constructed from his very different perspective (from his father's) of the reality of contemporary (1980s) South Africa and his dreams for the future.

In addition to these three main characters several other characters have "cameo" appearances in Bopha! There are two white characters: the police captain who is in charge of the township police station and training school, and a white employer who in his brief appearance refuses to give Lalanke work because "he lacked proper qualifications."

There is also a brief appearance by a black school teacher, also portrayed as a collaborator, for his compliant role in carrying out the policy of teaching mathematics in Afrikaans.

Glossary

Amandla! is the isiXhosa word for freedom. It was used with a raised right hand fist in empathic defiance of the apartheid system. (Used by protesting and arrested students in the play.)

Bopha (isiZulu) Roughly translated as "arrest" or "detection"

Baas (or Bas) Afrikaans word for "boss." African adults (particularly men) were expected to address all white men, regardless of age or status, as "master" (English) or "Baas" (Afrikaans)

Homelands: rural areas "officially established" as the "traditional" homes of the nine official designated African ethnic groups. Africans without permission to work and live in urban areas were forced to live in their ethnically designated homelands, even if they (or their families) had never lived in the designated area. The homelands (referred to at times in the video as "Bantustans") were all in economically depressed and agriculturally marginal areas. The nine designated homelands made up just 13 per cent of the total land area of South Africa.

Passbook violation: occurred when an African was in an urban area without permission of the district office. Permission to travel and live outside ones "homeland" was indicated in ones passbook.

Liberation Now, Education Later‑‑a frequent chant of protesting township students in the 1970s and early 1980s when they shut down their schools for long periods of time.

Toyi Toyi: The township "dance of resistance." In almost all of the protest scene in the video students and other township residents are chanting political slogans and dancing the "toyi toyi" (appropriated from traditional "warrior" dances).

Preventative Detention: Official policy which allowed those opposed to apartheid (from all "races") to be detain without trial.

Suppression of Communism Act (1956). This legislation banned the South African Communist Party and allowed for the detention, without trial of anyone “accused” of being a communist. Note that Njandine accused Zulakie of "becoming a communist" when he joined the school boycott. Anyone who showed opposition to apartheid was branded as a communist.

(This handout was provided by Dr. John Metzler, Michigan State University)

CEDDO,1977

120 minutes in French and Wolof with English subtitles

Director: Ousmane Sembene

Distributors: New Yorker Films; Third World Newsreel

Purchase price: $250.00

Rental price: $125.00

Synopsis: An African cinematic depiction of events of political intrigue in a fictional pre‑colonial Wolof kingdom in what is today Senegal.

Critique: This production is Ousmane Sembene's most ambitious film to date. Many levels of a traditional Wolof kingdom are explored within the framework of a political thriller. The scope of events and the character portrayals suggest a traditional oral epic narrative, while specific themes deal with great political and religious changes which swept West Africa in pre‑colonial times. Unfortunately, the historical content of the film contains some distortions of the spread of Islam in l9th century Senegal. Certainly, conversion was sometimes carried out by force, and Wolof kingdoms only infrequently allowed missionaries or slave traders to live and operate right in the capital. Under no circumstances would the branding of slaves by a white man be allowed in a village. Sembene's period piece is decidedly an impressionistic work, growing in great part from his feelings toward the contemporary Islamic establishment in Senegal. He builds his narrative around the great changes brought by Islam to aspects of succession, religion, participation in government, and the role of women. Sembene creates his interpretation of how a traditional Wolof kingdom came under Islamic rule, but he also is providing a rich glimpse into court protocol, especially the use of griots to offer praise of heroes and royalty and to act as mediators between king and the common people. Sembene is suggesting that complex levels of checks and balances to power existed in these traditional societies and that things have gotten progressively worse in his nation since that time. He is creating a type of origin myth, explaining what he perceives to be Senegal's contemporary situation. While some may argue with the viewpoint, there is no doubt that the production is designed on a grandly evocative scale which, despite its historical interpretations and literary license, constitutes a complex artistic statement. If viewed from the perspective of an impressionistic African cinematic work, this is a production not to be missed by scholars of film or Africanists who can unravel the many threads of the story and interpret its message for students.

(Critique quoted from the African Media Program’s Database of African Film, Michigan State U)

IN THE LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE CLASSROOM