HI260 Z

History on Film

Africa on Screen

Instructor: Jessica Cammaert

Email: jcammaert@wlu.ca

jvcammaert@gmail.com

Office Hours: DAWB 4-127, Thursdays, 2-4 pm

Course Description

This summer, HI260 Z History on Film will explore selected themes in African history. As a film-based lecture

course, it will introduce undergraduate students to important events, individuals, and problems in African history.

Treated as an archive – a primary source - film is an important tool for shaping how we think about the past.

While films are subject to the same scrutiny as written sources, the approach of films and film directors to history

differs. The imagery and re-enactment of ‘reality’ on screen presents challenges us to question how and what

history is portrayed. Similar to ‘historians’ in their crafting of historical narratives on screen, directors create

scripts, narratives, and imagery, often taking liberties with what historical evidence is presented. For these

reasons, History on Film provides us exciting opportunities to challenge how and by whom history is told as well

as what is conveyed through presence and absence in film.

In exploring themes in African history, History on Film considers pre-colonial creation myths, settler societies,

Africa and the World Wars, resistance, independence, apartheid, and war and genocide. With these themes, we

will explore what films have to tell us about race and racialized violence in colonialism, resistance, independence,

and contemporary forms of conflict and discrimination. We will also explore how African perspectives on

colonialism and independence differ from former colonial powers and those outside of the continent. While

African films are our primary focus, documentaries, colonial propaganda and Hollywood feature films will also

be considered. In general, two films will be shown on each topic – namely, settler societies, the World Wars,

Resistance, and Independence, with the final two films focusing on contemporary concerns of apartheid and war

and genocide.

The lectures and required readings will provide important context and competing historical interpretations of the

various events being studied. Primary “evidence” will take the form of the films themselves. In this way, the

course requires you to become active historians, reading and assessing the “evidence” (i.e. the films) in light of

the interpretations to be found in the lectures and readings, and using this evidence to formulate your own

interpretations of them. This is what the assignments and final exam will ask you to do. In this way the course

aims to help develop your skills in both critical analysis and research. As some students may be unfamiliar with

African history, considerable time will be spent in lecture providing introductory background knowledge and

historiography. Kevin Shillington’s History of Africa text is an extremely helpful resource as it provides essential

background reading.

Required Texts (available at the Bookstore):

Vivian Bickford-Smith and Richard Mendelsohn, eds. Black and white in colour: African

history on screen. Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 2007.

Kevin Shillington. History of Africa, 3rd edition. New York: Palgrave MacMillan.2012.

HI260 Z Course Reader

Most films can be accessed through the Library, inter-library loan, or through various

movie rental shops.

Film Itinerary

July 9 Introduction No film

July 11 Screen ‘Griots’: Oral Keïta!: l’Héritage du griot (Dani Kouyaté, 1996)

Sources in African History

July 16 Settler Societies Out of Africa (Sydney Pollack, 1985)

July 18 Settler Societies A Time There Was: Stories from the Last Days of

Kenya Colony (Donald McWilliams, 2009)

July 23 Africa & the World Wars Black and White in Color (Jean-Jacques Annaud,

1976)

July 25 Africa & the World Wars Camp de Thiaroye (Ousmane Sembene; Thierno

Faty Sow, 1988)

July 30 Fighting Colonialism Flame (Ingrid Sinclair, 1998)

August 1 Fighting Colonialism The Battle of Algiers (Gillo Pontecorvo, 1966)

August 6 Independence Lumumba (Raoul Peck, 2000)

August 8 Independence The Last King of Scotland (Kevin Macdonald,

2006)

August 13 South Africa & Apartheid Mapantsula (Oliver Schmitz, 1987)

August 15 War & Genocide Hotel Rwanda (Terry George, 2004)

Course Structure

The course is taught in a four hour block from 6-9:50pm on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Lecture

length will vary with the length of the film, but there will always be a short break before the film

begins.

Evaluation:

Critical Review (due July 25th) 10%

Essay (due date varies with topic) 30%

Discussion 20%

Final Exam (TBA) 40%

Total: 100%

Critical Review –

Your first assignment is to write a critical review which combines the Robert Rosenstone readings found within

the HI260 Z Course Reader with either Out of Africa or A Time There Was. This review should be 5 pages long

(excluding title page and bibliography).

As well as demonstrating an understanding of the Rosenstone readings, your critical review should point out how

his arguments relate to the film you are examining: i.e. how does Rosenstone’s book help us understand Out of

Africa?, or how does A Time There Was support or challenge Rosenstone? Please note that your arguments in the

review should be supported throughout with well-chosen, illustrative examples from the selected readings

included in the Course Reader and the film under consideration.

*Please note: a copy of Rosenstone’s History on Film/Film on History is on reserve at Laurier Library.

This assignment is due in class on July 25th

.

Essay –

In this course, you will be required to write one, 10-page essay. The essays must answer one of three questions

listed below.

To prepare this essay, you must utilize the required readings on the topic chosen as well as 2-3 additional sources

which can be found under ‘suggested further reading’. Using these secondary sources, you should engage with the

‘primary evidence’ provided in the films on your chosen topic.

Note: it is not necessary to provide a long description of the narrative of the films. A brief overview at the outset

of the essay will suffice.

Essay Questions

1. Critically compare and contrast the depiction of African soldiers (involvement/experiences/treatment) in

Black and White in Color and Camp de Thiaroye.

Due in class on August 1st

2. Critically compare and contrast the depiction of women and gender in anti-colonial resistance in Flame and

Battle of Algiers. Due in class on August 8th

3. Critically compare and contrast the depiction of African leaders in Lumumba and The Last King of Scotland.

Due in class on August 15th

Guidelines for Preparing Assignments

All written work should be double-spaced, in 12 point font, with approximately 1” margins on top and

bottom, and 1.25” to 1.5” margins on left and right sides.

Good writing is essential. You will lose marks for poorly written or poorly organized essays. Proof read

your essay carefully before you submit it.

Please remember to include your name and student ID number, and to keep a copy of all the written work

you submit.

You must also use the footnote or endnote system of notation, and include a bibliography. You will lose

marks by not doing so, or by citing incorrectly.

It is not necessary to give the timing of an event or dialogue from the films in your footnotes. The first

time you refer to the film cite it as follows—with the director and date of release—in the body of the

essay: i.e. Hotel Rwanda (Terry George, 2004). Thereafter, simply refer to details from the film in the

essay without citation, for example: “This point is confirmed in the scene when Paul Rusesabagina (Don

Cheadle) meets with the Canadian Army Colonel….” It is also conventional to refer to both the actor and

the character he/she plays in the film as in the example above, the first time that you refer to them.

A useful resource for your written work is Mary Lynn Rampolla’s A Pocket Guide to Writing History

(Boston: Bedford/St Martin’s, 2003).

Discussion –

Attendance and discussion is an important component of this course. A class discussion will

follow the viewing of each film. While time for discussion will vary depending upon length of

lecture and film, students are expected to actively participate in discussion with a focus on

quality and engagement rather than quantity. Given the nature of HI260 Z, discussion is

imperative to students’ understanding of course content.

Final Exam –

The final exam takes place during the week of August 22nd

to 24th

(the exact time and date to be

announced). It will be three hours long, and it will cover all the films that have been shown in

the course. An exam review session will be held during the discussion period of our final lecture

this term. Additional office hours may be held for assistance/review. The exam is worth 40% of

your final grade.

Schedule

Week One

July 9: Introduction

Introduction to Course – no film

July 11: ‘Screen Griots’: Oral Sources in African History

Watch: Keïta!: l’Héritage du griot (English subtitles)

Read: Keïta 1995 “Transmitting the Sundjata to the Next Generation” in African Film,

re-imagining a continent (Course Reader)

Ralph A. Austen, Beyond ‘history’: two films of the deep Mande past (B & W text)

Week Two

July 16: Settler Society (Kenya)

Watch: Out of Africa

Read: Nigel Penn, White in Africa: Kenya’s colonists (B & W text)

Josef Gugler, “Out of Africa. Settler Romance in Nature Paradise” in African

Film: Re-Imagining a Continent (Course Reader)

July 18: Settler Society (Kenya)

Watch: A Time there Was: Stories from the Last Days of Kenya Colony

Read: Cora Ann Presley, “The Mau Mau Rebellion, Kikuyu Women, and Social

Change” (Course Reader)

Week Three

July 23: Africa and the World Wars

Watch: Black and White in Color

Read: Toby Haggith and Richard Smith, “Sons of our Empire: Shifting Ideas of ‘Race’

and the Cinematic Representation of Imperial Troops in World War I” in Empire and

Film (Course Reader)

July 25: Africa and the World Wars

Watch: Camp de Thiaroye

Read: Bill Nasson, Cheap if not always cheerful: French West Africa in the world wars

(B & W text)

Josef Gugler, “Fiction, Fact, and the Critic’s Responsibility: Camp de Thiaroye, Yaaba,

and The Gods Must be Crazy”. In Focus on African Films (Course Reader)

Week Four

July 30: Fighting Colonialism (Zimbabwe)

Watch: Flame

Read: Teresa Barnes, ‘Flame’ and the historiography of armed struggle in Zimbabwe (B

& W text)

Josef Gugler, “Flame: A Twofold Struggle” in African Film: Re-Imagining a Continent

(Course Reader)

August 1: Fighting Colonialism (Algeria)

Watch: Battle of Algiers

Read: Patrick Harries, The Battle of Algiers: between fiction, memory and history (B &

W text)

Week Five

August 6: Independence (Congo)

Watch: Lumumba: La Mort du Prophete (English subtitles)

Read: David Moore, Raoul Peck’s Lumumba: history or hagiography? (B & W text)

August 8: Independence (Uganda)

Watch: The Last King of Scotland

Read: Ricardo Guthrie, “Minstrelsy and Mythic Appetites. The Last King of Scotland’s

Heart of Darkness in the Jubilee Year of African Independence” in Hollywood’s Africa

After 1994 (Course Reader)

Week Six

August 13: South Africa and Apartheid

Watch: Mapantsula

Read: Josef Gugler, “Mapantsula: Black Resistance to White Oppression” in African

Film: Re-Imagining a Continent (Course Reader)

Robert Cancel, “‘Come Back South Africa’: Cinematic Representations of Apartheid

over Three Eras of Resistance”. In Focus on African Films (Course Reader)

August 15: War & Genocide

Watch: Hotel Rwanda

Read: Mohamed Adhikari, Hotel Rwanda: too much heroism, too little history – or

horror? (B & W text)

Joyce B. Ashuntantang, “Hollywood’s Representations of Human Rights. The Case of

Terry George’s Hotel Rwanda” in Hollywood’s Africa After 1994 (Course Reader)

Notes

Deadlines and Late Submission

Deadlines for the submission of work are taken seriously. Work submitted after a deadline

without adequate documentation in support of a legitimate reason for its lateness (e.g. a doctor’s

certificate), will be penalised at the rate of 2% per day, including weekends, to a maximum of

30%, after which the assignment will receive a mark of “0”. If you are having difficulties

meeting deadlines, please come and see me. Absolutely no essays will be accepted after August

19th

.

Submitting Assignments

Written assignments must be handed in during class time. Email submissions will not be

accepted.

Plagiarism

The University employs software that can check for plagiarism. Students may be required to

submit their written work in electronic form and have it checked for plagiarism.

Special Needs

Students with disabilities or special needs are advised to contact Accessible Learning Office for

information regarding its services and resources. Students are encouraged to review the Calendar

for information regarding all services available on campus.

Foot Patrol

After class call 886-FOOT for a walk or drive home – No Walk is Too Short or Too Long!!!

Further Reading/Viewing

Week One

Chapters 6 & 7 (Shillington)

Ruth H. Finnegan, The oral and beyond: doing things with words in Africa. Oxford: James

Currey, 2007.

Toyin Falola and Fallou Ngom, Oral and written expressions of African cultures. Durham:

Carolina Academic Press, 2009.

Jan Vansina, Oral tradition as history. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985.

David C. Conrad and Djanka Tassey Conde, Sunjata a West African epic of the Mande peoples.

Indianapolis: Hackett Pub, 2004.

Stephen Paterson Belcher, African myths of origin. London: Penguin, 2005.

Week Two

Chapter 22 & 23 (Shillington)

Greet Kershaw, Mau Mau from below. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1997.

Huw C. Bennett, Fighting the Mau Mau: the British Army and counter-insurgency in the Kenya

Emergency. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.

Wambui Waiyaki Otieno, Mau Mau’s daughter: a life history. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner

Publishers, 1998.

E.S. Atieno Odhiambo, Mau mau & nationhood: arms, authority & narration. Athens: Ohio

University press, 2003.

Tabitha M. Kanogo, Squatters and the roots of Mau Mau, 1905-63. Athens, Ohio University

Press, 1987.

Shamsul S.M Alam, Rethinking Mau Mau in colonial Kenya. New York: Palgrave Macmillan,

2007.

Dane Kennedy, Islands of White: Settler Society and Culture in Kenya and Southern Rhodesia

1890-1939. Durham: Duke University Press, 1987.

Jock McCulloch, Black Peril, White Virtue. Sexual Crime in Southern Rhodesia, 1902-1935.

The Flame Trees of Thika (Film)

Week Three

Chapters 24 & 25 (Shillington)

Heike Liebau, The world in world wars experiences, perceptions and perspectives from Africa

and Asia. Leiden: Brill, 2010.

Santanu Das ed. Race, empire and First World War writing. Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 2011.

Hew Strachan, The First World War in Africa. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.

Ruth Ginio, French colonialism unmasked: the Vichy years in French West Africa. Lincoln:

University of Nebraska Press, 2006.

Edward Paice, World War I: the African front. 1st ed. New York: Pegasus Books, 2008.

David Murphy, “Fighting for the Homeland? The Second World War in the Films of Ousmane

Sembene”, L'Esprit Créateur, Volume 47, Number 1, Spring 2007, pp. 56-67

Emitai (Film)

Tasuma (Film)

Week Four

Chapters 26, 27 & 28 (Shillington)

Fay Chung and Preben Kaarsholm, Re-living the second Chimurenga: memories from the

liberation struggle in Zimbabwe. Uppsala: Nordic Africa Institute, 2006.

Eleanor O’Gorman, The front line runs through every woman: women & local resistance in the

Zimbabwean Liberation War. Woodbridge, James Currey, 2011.

Allison Goebel, Gender and land reform in the Zimbabwe experience. Montreal: McGill-

Queen’s University Press, 2005.

Terri Barnes, “We women worked so hard”: gender, urbanization, and social reproduction in

colonial Harare, Zimbabwe, 1930-1956. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1999.

Susan Geiger, TANU women: gender and culture in the making of Tanganyikan nationalism,

1995-1965. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1997.

Susan Geiger, Nakanyike Musisi and Jean Marie Allman, Women in African colonial histories.

Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002.

Tsitsi Dangarembga, Nervous Conditions: a novel. New York: Seal Press, 2004.

Chris Sheppard, With these hands. New York, NY: Filmakers Library, 1987

General Paul Aussaresses, The Battle of the Casbah: Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism in

Algeria, 1955-1957. New York: Enigma Books, 2010.

James McDougall, History and the culture of nationalism in Algeria. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 2006.

Fabian Klose, Human rights in the shadow of colonial violence: the wars of independence in

Kenya and Algeria. 1st ed. Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press, 2013.

Martin Evans, Algeria: France’s undeclared war. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.

Week Five

Chapters 29 & 30 (Shillington)

Guy Vanthemsche, Belgium and the Congo, 1885-1980. New York: Cambridge University Press,

2012.

Karen Bouwer, Gender and decolonization in the Congo: the legacy of Patrice Lumumba. 1st ed.

New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.

Patrice Lumumba, Congo, My Country. With a Foreword and Notes by Colin Legum. Translated

by Graham Heath. New York: Prager Pub., 1996.

Ludo de Witte, The assassination of Lumumba. London: Verso, 2011.

Oliver Moser and Frederic Tadino, From Congo to Zaire. New York, NY: Filmakers Library,

2011. Available Online via WLU Library.

Patrick Walker, Towards independence in Africa: a district officer in Uganda at the end of

empire. London: Radcliffe, 2009

David William Cohen, The combing of history. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994.

Okoiti Omtatah, Producing Gender Idi Amin Dada. Alexandra, VA: Alexander Street Press,

2004.

Week Six

Chapter 32 (Shillington)

John Laband, Daily lives of civilians in wartime Africa: from slavery days to Rwandan genocide.

Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 2007.

Audra Diptee and David Vincent Trotman, Remembering Africa and its diasporas: memory,

public history, and representations of the past. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2012.

Daniela Kroslak, The French betrayal of Rwanda. Bloomington, Ind: Indiana University Press,

2008.

Kfafela oa Magogodi, “Sexuality, Power, and the Black Body in Mapantsula and Fools” in To

change reels: film and film culture in South Africa, eds Isabel Balseiro and Ntongela Masilela.

2003.

Gerard Prunier, Africa’s world war: Congo, Rwandan genocide, and the making of a continental

catastrophe. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.

Ghosts of Rwanda. Film Media Group. New York, N.Y: Films Media Group, 2011. Available

Online via WLU Library

Sean Field. Oral history, community, and displacement: imagining memories in post-apartheid

South Africa. 1st ed. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.

William Beinart and Saul Dubow, Segregation and apartheid in twentieth-century South Africa.

London: Routledge, 1995.

William Beinart, Twentieth-century South Africa. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.

Derek Attridge and Jane Rosemary Jolly, Writing South Africa: literature, apartheid, and

democracy, 1970-1995. Cambridge, UK: 1998