Africa Through the Hollywood Lens

Presented by:

AMREF’S Coffeehouse Speakers Series on global development

Featuring:

Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine and Anthony Morgan

“The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue,

but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story”

--Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, author of Half of the Yellow Sun and Purple Hibiscus

Quotable

Out of Africa, 1985

Reaching wide audiences is valuable, but problems can develop when simplification edges towards

distortion.

-- “What Hollywood tells us about war and poverty” The Guardian

Quotable

The Gods Must be Crazy was banned in Trinidad and Tobago

following protests claiming that the film was racist.

The film was very popular worldwide, however, grossing over

$100 million.

Did you know?

The power of film as a particular representational genre is clearly a double-edged sword. There is no doubt that films can convey a visceral sense of a given situation or issue more vividly than any academic text or policy report.

--The Projection of Development: Cinematic Representation as An(other) Source of Authoritative Knowledge? World Bank Study 2013

Quotable

“"Beyond Borders" has good intentions and wants to call attention to the plight of refugees, but what a clueless vulgarization it makes of its worthy motives. Of course there's more than one way to send a message, and maybe this movie will affect audiences that wouldn't see or understand a more truthful portrait of refugees.”

---Roger Ebert Movie Review Beyond Borders

Quotable

Films produced in developing countries tend to be received by western audiences as being closer to reality. Such films, can influence poor policies by foreign nations.

-- “What Hollywood tells us about war and poverty” The Guardian

Did you know?

“It is impossible to engage properly with a place or a person without engaging with all of the stories of that place and that person. The consequence of “the single story” is this: it robs people of their dignity. It makes our recognition of our equal humanity difficult. It emphasizes how we are different rather than how we are similar.”

--- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, author of Half of the Yellow Sun and Purple Hibiscus

Quotable

Blood Diamond, 2006

Fearing that the popularity of the film Blood Diamond would affect sales, the World Diamond Council spent $15 million on a public relations and education campaign in the months before the movie was released.

The Diamond Council tried to persuade Blood Diamond's director to add a disclaimer to the film that would cite the Kimberley process and note that Sierra Leone's civil war was long over.

--Ethics on Film: Discussion of "Blood Diamond“, Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs

Did you know?

“It is the storyteller who makes us what we are, who creates history.”

--- Chinua Achebe, author

Quotable

It is instructive to recognize the value of films as an archive of popular ideas about the vicissitudes

of development, as reflections of the prevailing societal zeitgeist, and last but not least, as powerful teaching tools for bringing alive and humanizing important,

if inherently vexing, global issues.

--The Projection of Development: Cinematic Representation as An(other) Source of Authoritative Knowledge? World Bank Study 2013

Quotable