A New Generation

In one of his last articles on African cinema, written in 2000, Pierre Haffner posited the existence of three waves of African filmmaking (the 1960s, the 1970s and the 1980s–1990s). This present chapter argues that it is now possible to see the outlines of a new wave or generation, the first to be comprised entirely of filmmakers who, because of their date of birth, never experienced life under colonial rule. Filmmakers born since independence now make up about 15 per cent of the total number of francophone African filmmakers – and a far greater proportion of those currently active (they are responsible for almost a third of all features made in the five years since the beginning of 2000). They have also begun to dominate African film festivals, with Ayouch and Sissako winning at FESPACO in 2001 and 2003 respectively, and Asli at the JCC in 2004. Forty filmmakers – five of them women – have given us over fifty feature films in the years since the late 1990s. About two-thirds of these new filmmakers come from the Maghreb: one from Algeria, thirteen from Morocco and ten from Tunisia. The rest come from nine of the independent states south of the Sahara.