Overview

Projections of Dakar studies the audiovisual creations and practices of twenty-first-century Senegalese filmmakers living, working, and distributing their films in urban Senegal. Although some observers have described contemporary Senegalese cinema as a dying industry, this book shows that it retains great potential. Senegalese cinematic practitioners are forging unique, dynamic responses to social challenges and producing content in innovative forms. Like contemporary Senegalese cinema, African urban centers are often perceived as sites of despair and social decay. In each chapter of this book, Devin Bryson and Molly Krueger Enz focus on a particular urban issue and analyze how Senegalese filmmakers document and reimagine it from diverse perspectives and contexts. The authors draw from interviews and ethnographic observations to center filmmakers’ practices and conceptualizations of contemporary cinema in Dakar. Bryson and Enz trace developments in production, distribution, viewership, and audience response since 2012 to study how these films and their production both reveal and contribute to how people live in the city, relate to one another, build their lives, advocate for change, find joy and meaning, and build community. They also document and articulate more equitable and inclusive forms of these activities. Ultimately, the book illustrates how Senegalese filmmakers reimagine Africa as a place that will lead to a better future for its inhabitants.

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9780896803480

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Reviews

Devin Bryson and Molly Krueger Enz offer a cogent overview of some of the major cinematic works produced in the last few decades by Senegalese filmmakers residing in Senegal. Drawing on important theoretical frameworks of leading African thinkers and film scholars, this book offers a deft discussion of the seminal themes that have emerged in African intellectual circles as they relate to contemporary Senegalese film. -- Valérie K. Orlando, University of Maryland Devin Bryson and Molly Krueger Enz offer a cogent overview of some of the major cinematic works produced in the last few decades by Senegalese filmmakers residing in Senegal. Drawing on important theoretical frameworks of leading African thinkers and film scholars, this book offers a deft discussion of the seminal themes that have emerged in African intellectual circles as they relate to contemporary Senegalese film. -- Valérie K. Orlando, University of Maryland

Devin Bryson and Molly Krueger Enz offer a cogent overview of some of the major cinematic works produced in the last few decades by Senegalese filmmakers residing in Senegal. Drawing on important theoretical frameworks of leading African thinkers and film scholars, this book offers a deft discussion of the seminal themes that have emerged in African intellectual circles as they relate to contemporary Senegalese film. -- Valérie K. Orlando, University of Maryland

Author Information

Devin Bryson is a professor of French and Francophone studies in the global studies program at Illinois College. He has published work in Research in African Literatures, the Journal of the African Literature Association, and African Studies Review. His research focuses on the cultural, cinematic, and literary practices and products from Francophone Africa, especially Senegal, and how those practices and products circulate locally and globally to reconfigure conceptualizations of African people, spaces, and relations. Molly Krueger Enz is a professor of French and the global studies program coordinator at South Dakota State University. Her research interests include gender studies, postcolonial studies, and Francophone literature and cinema from West Africa and the Caribbean. She has published articles in Black Camera, African Studies Quarterly, the Journal of the African Literature Association, Contemporary French and Francophone Studies, the French Review, and Nineteenth-Century French Studies.

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