The other day, I went to a bookstore and picked up a copy of Nwachukwu Frank Ukadike's Black African Cinema. It's been years since I read anything serious on the topic. A decade ago, I would have considered myself a fairly informed person about it, at least in its early development in the 1960s and 1970s.
I never felt totally confident about that, though. Most of what I watched was from a syllabus or something that I watched using one as a jumping-off point. That made me an appreciator of Ousmane Sembène's work, which I recommend as a starting point, maybe with a little reading or extra watching for context. That's great, but I still didn't feel like I had a thorough understanding of African Cinema.
One of my favorite movies that has come out in the last decade is Mati Diop's Atlantique. It's a complicated movie, about ghosts, possession, responsibility, crisis, and more. Diop's background further complicates things, being that she's the niece of Djibril Diop Mambéty. Mambéty directed Touki Bouki, a landmark narrative work in Senegalese filmmaking. I don't think that Mati Diop's career is down to her lineage, more that I'm intrigued by the connection. That's a connection that she's apparently explored herself in Mille Soleils, but I haven't seen it.
That's part of why I picked up Ukadike's book. Reading the introduction, I found familiar names, but more are from the theory that he says he will bring to bear than are from the names of films that I've seen. I'm looking forward to watching more, and thinking about them, while reading the book.