May 03 2021 Bloodflowers: Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Photography, and the 1980s Bloodflowers: Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Photography, and the 1980s by W. IanBourlandDurham: Duke University Press, 2019; 336 pp., 92 b/w ill. $27.95 paper Alexandra M. Thomas Alexandra M. Thomas alexandra m. thomas is a History of Art and African-American Studies PhD student at Yale University, where she researches African and African diasporic visual and expressive cultures, global modern and contemporary art, feminist and queer theory, and critical museum studies. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Author and Article Information Alexandra M. Thomas alexandra m. thomas is a History of Art and African-American Studies PhD student at Yale University, where she researches African and African diasporic visual and expressive cultures, global modern and contemporary art, feminist and queer theory, and critical museum studies. Online Issn: 1937-2108 Print Issn: 0001-9933 © 2021 by the Regents of the University of California2021Regents of the University of California African Arts (2021) 54 (2): 93–95. https://doi.org/10.1162/afar_r_00586 Cite Icon Cite Permissions Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Search Site Citation Alexandra M. Thomas; Bloodflowers: Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Photography, and the 1980s. African Arts 2021; 54 (2): 93–95. doi: https://doi.org/10.1162/afar_r_00586 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search nav search search input Search input auto suggest search filter All ContentAll JournalsAfrican Arts Search Advanced Search Rotimi Fani-Kayode, the Yoruban photographer of Black queer lifeworlds, is coming home. Nigerian curator Bisi Silva imagined this homecoming as a solo exhibition. It would take place in 2039 as part of a queer-friendly future in the Lagos art scene. In the epilogue of his 2019 book, Bloodflowers: Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Photography, and the 1980s, W. Ian Bourland reflects on Silva's speculative proposal. Bourland marks the ways in which Fani-Kayode's creative practice—bringing together homoerotic photography, Western art historical iconography, and African aesthetics—was far ahead of its time. One might read this hypothetical return as a call for historians of African art to take seriously the ongoing project of situating Rotimi Fani-Kayode's work as “in some crucial way, Yoruban” (p. 250). Born in 1955 to an elite Yoruba family, Fani-Kayode spent the earliest years... © 2021 by the Regents of the University of California2021Regents of the University of California You do not currently have access to this content.

October 01 2020 Daniel P. Biebuyck: 1925–2019 Allen F. Roberts Allen F. Roberts Allen F. Roberts is Distinguished Professor of World Arts and Cultures at UCLA and a member of the African Arts editorial board. aroberts@arts.ucla.edu Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Author and Article Information Allen F. Roberts Allen F. Roberts is Distinguished Professor of World Arts and Cultures at UCLA and a member of the African Arts editorial board. aroberts@arts.ucla.edu Online Issn: 1937-2108 Print Issn: 0001-9933 © 2020 by the Regents of the University of California.2020The Regents of the University of California African Arts (2020) 53 (4): 15–16. https://doi.org/10.1162/afar_a_00547 Cite Icon Cite Permissions Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Search Site Citation Allen F. Roberts; Daniel P. Biebuyck: 1925–2019. African Arts 2020; 53 (4): 15–16. doi: https://doi.org/10.1162/afar_a_00547 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search nav search search input Search input auto suggest search filter All ContentAll JournalsAfrican Arts Search Advanced Search Daniel P. Biebuyck died on December 31, 2019, aged 94. First trained in philology and law at the University of Ghent, Dr. Biebuyck took advanced degrees in cultural anthropology at the London School of Economics. Working for the Belgian Institute for Scientific Research in Central Africa from 1949 to 1961, he undertook detailed ethnographic studies in east-central Belgian Congo among Lega, Nyanga, Bembe, and related peoples. He wrote monographs and scholarly articles from these experiences, and through shorter IRSAC projects, he visited more than fifty other Congolese ethnic groups, contributing to wide-ranging overviews such as Congo Tribes and Parties (1961) that he coauthored with Mary Douglas. Through a position at the University of Delaware in 1961, Dr. Biebuyck helped found the Department of Anthropology. After teaching anthropology at UCLA from 1964 to... © 2020 by the Regents of the University of California.2020The Regents of the University of California You do not currently have access to this content.

Kenneth Harrow's new edited volume on African filmmaking is a collection of essays that in a sense functions in a fluid and manifestly effective way. To start with, the volume's editor makes clear to us that we should not expect the essays contained in the book to provide a complete presentation of cinema throughout the African continent, as such would obviously be difficult to achieve in any single volume. Instead, each one of the five extensive chapters seeks to provide an introduction to and overview of the historical trajectory of five ostensibly regional cinematic traditions which, as Harrow explains, “coalesce around key features of geography and language” (p. ix).The book moves from an essay on Francophone cinema, more or less entirely from West Africa, to a study of Anglophone West African films in Nigeria and Ghana and on to an exploration of the lengthy history of filmmaking in Egypt. The remaining two studies are concerned with the national cinemas of Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria, commonly referred to as forming the major portion of the Maghreb, and an examination of filmmaking in South Africa from the late nineteenth century up to the second half of the second decade of the twenty-first century.In all cases, the essays provide a plethora—at times a seeming avalanche—of information about filmmaking in these regions, addressing topics such as methods of funding, government control and censorship, scriptwriting, actors' careers, technological and practical challenges, successes and failures, and virtually every relevant aspect of the practical elements of filmmaking one might think of. Included with each chapter is a wide-ranging filmography that can easily serve as a jumping off point for several years of viewing pleasure and contemplation. Despite the fact that the book does not attempt to address East and eastern African filmmaking, there are a few nods in that direction contained in the chapter on Anglophone Nigerian and Ghanaian films. In these chapters the author acknowledges, for example, the collaborations between East African and Nigerian studios.The collection does not claim to be a comprehensive study of the topic under consideration and as a result—and quite justifiably—there is no conclusion appended to the volume. The chapters themselves in many cases do not seem to be working toward overarching synthetic conclusions about the cinematic products and productions they contend with, which, once again, seems perfectly in keeping with the spirit of the historical breadth and contemporary open-endedness of the material encompassed within each study.The volume also—and perhaps rather conspicuously for someone such as myself, who comes from a comparative literature and cultural studies background—is decidedly light on film analysis and the use of theory to explain the importance and artistry of the works under consideration. While there are a few stabs made at what I would call “textual” studies of the narratives of the films themselves in terms of plot, imagery, and characterization as they relate to sociocultural phenomena, this is not the main objective of the chapters and such analyses as are included in the book barely scratch the surface of these rich and complex works. I do not make this observation in order to find fault with the book, for as I have explained, the authors do an excellent job of providing the reader with information, albeit of a different sort, through their surveys.The collection of essays presented here will serve the lay reader as a fitting and stimulating initial foray into the complex of histories and artifacts which together constitute these multiple African cinemas. At the same time, they offer even the most expert scholar of African filmmaking so much and such exact data as far as the contextualized historical trajectories of the cinematographic traditions that are dealt with here, they cannot help but find something of use within this veritable forest of filmographic facts. Taken together with more general works such as those by Manthia Diawara and Olivier Barlet as well as Valérie Orlando and Ken Harrow's own works on African cinema from the second half of the twentieth century onwards, this volume will serve as a crucial resource in terms of information about the specific historical data surrounding various African filmmaking traditions as well as the implications of these creative endeavors in the larger schemata of the formation of African identities in these regions.