African Studies Association of the UK Conference

Description

Stream: Future of African Screen Worlds

Paper 1: Maîtresse d’un Homme Marié: Re-tracing Womanhood in Senegalese Screen Worlds

This research explores the ways in which internet television is transforming the screen media industry in Senegal, through a focus on the first two seasons of the women-led and womanist internet television series La Maîtresse d’un homme marié [Mistress of a Married Man], directed by Kalista Sy, and distributed online, for free, by Marodi TV, both in its YouTube Channel and mobile application. Maîtresse d’un homme marié is the first Senegalese series that tells women’s stories from a woman’s points of view. The series, released on 25 January 2019, became viral, with over 5 million viewers per episode, and has been compared to Sex and the City in international media. In 2019, following its international success of her first series, Kalista Sy made it to the BBC’s list of the 100 most inspiring and influential women from around the world. Maîtresse d’un homme marié is an intersectional and complex site of negotiation of feminism in contemporary Senegal, involving producers, actors and fandom communities alike.

The series reflects and creates a Senegalese world, contesting hegemonic global flows of cultural production and distribution. It illustrates how mobile screen world have created new forms of sociality and community in Senegal and beyond. It further foregrounds gender in the conceptualisation of (Senegalese) screen worlds, questioning the extent to which the internet has enabled (or not) the production and circulation of screen media made by women. It reclaims these spaces first and foremost for Senegalese women in relation to stories about and for themselves, and becoming both a statement and promotion of the label “Made in Senegal”. Informed by two interviews with the director and the textual analysis of the series and a sample of fandom community spaces (namely, Facebook, YouTube and The Senegalese Twisted Blog), this research paper also contributes to decolonizing existing scholarship on media fandom.

This conceptualisation of (Senegalese) screen worlds centred on gender has led to closer engagement with women-led spaces of production and circulation, such as the Festival Films Femmes Afrique (FFFA) in Senegal. In 2022, thanks to funding from the Screen Worlds research project, Estrella Sendra collaborated with the festival in the curation of two short films by debut women filmmakers followed by a discussion with them. FFFA was one of the festivals selected for the design and trial of the methodology tested as part of the New Frontiers and Research Fund project ‘Decolonizing Film Festival Research in a Post-Pandemic World’, funded by the Government of Canada [NFRFR-2021-00161, 2022-2024]. In 2023, the Journal of Festive Studies published Estrella Sendra’s in-depth study on this festival and its audience-centred curatorial approach, in the article ‘Traveling to Audiences: The Decentralization of Festival Spaces at the Festival Films Femmes Afrique in Senegal. Screen worlds continues to be an inspiring heuristic device to explore Cinephilia, production and circulation in increasingly mobile and multi-modal environments where collaboration is key to counter-act the historic marginalisation of African screen worlds.

Rountable: Global Screen Worlds
Paper 2: 'The Possibility of an “Us”: Yasujiro Ozu’s Legacy in Alain Gomis’ Cinema'
This paper offers a comparative study of Franco-Senegalese filmmaker Alain Gomis and Japanese filmmaker Yasujiro Ozu to examine the legacy of the latter and how this may be reflected in Gomis’ four, first feature-length films, L’Afrance (2001) and Andalucia (2007), Today (2012) and Félicité (2017). These films are put in conversation with three films by Ozu: I was Born But… (1932); the latter’s remake in colour over two decades afterwards, Good Morning (1959); and Tokyo Story (1953). The chapter departs from a transnational encounter with Gomis, where he suggested that the beauty of cinema lied on the possibility of saying ‘us’. We question what a ‘cinematic us’ may look like. We argue that Ozu’s style is not merely ‘applied’ to Gomis’ films, but wholly embraced and embodied. It speaks to an ‘us’ that exists beneath the surface of these nations and locations, interior and exterior space melding into one.

Period	29 Aug 2024 → 31 Aug 2024
Event type	Conference
Location	Oxford, United KingdomShow on map
Degree of Recognition	International