User:Epolonyi/sandbox/Women in African Cinema

Prominent Women directors
African women have been involved in filmmaking since the 1950s. However, few of these were given access to the creative process beyond acting. Of the fifty women professionals who attended the 1991 Panafrican Film Festival (FESPACO), only three of these were filmmakers. Women achieved visibility in Africa as directors starting in the 2000s, with the work of several African women filmmakers appearing at international film festivals and winning awards for directing. Until recently, there was no online platform, publication, filmography or bibliography that acknowledges all the feature films, documentaries, shorts and works in video, television, and digital media that African women have directed over the past several decades.3 The scholar of African Studies Beti Ellerson published Sisters of the Screen: Women of Africa on Film, Video and Television in 2000 and the film documentary Sisters of the Screen: African Women in the Cinema in 2002 and founded the Centre for the Study and Research of African Women in Cinema in 2008.4 The Center also manages of blog on African Women in Cinema.5

3For a filmography and bibliography see Schmidt, Nancy J. “Sub-Saharan African Women Filmakers: Agendas for Research” and “Women in African Cinema: An Annotated Bibliography.” In ''African Cinema. Postcolonial and Feminist Readings'', edited by Kenneth W. Harrow, 277–304, 305–37 and the filmography and bibliography in Ellerson, Beti. Sisters of the Screen: Women of Africa on Film, Video and Television. Trenton, NJ; Asmara, Eritrea: Africa World Press, Inc., 2000.

4http://www.africanwomenincinema.org/AFWC/Mission.html

5http://www.africanwomenincinema.org/AFWC/Blog.html