African Cinema Is More Than 'Black Panther'

Makanaka Tuwe is a Zimbabwe-New Zealand writer living in Auckland.

Black Panther provided a positive boost of melanin on our screens, a boom to the box office and—I hope—sparked the beginning of undoing years of narrow representations in endless slave movies. If we aren’t slaves we are gangsters, thots, needing aid or are around wildlife hitting the bongos, Africa smile plastered on our faces; each image serving as a barrier to how society experiences us and how we experience society.

But why do I feel so strongly about this? I was born in Zimbabwe and moved to New Zealand with my family when I was 10 years old. I know the future of black people largely depends on the opinions of those who rely on mainstream media for information about Africa and its people, black people. Not only are such narratives tiring, they are damaging as they inform interactions with the justice system, education system, the workforce and socially. I mean it isn’t uncommon for people to be surprised at how “articulate” I am. The idea that I grew up in a backward environment and learnt English here i.e was “civilised in the West” and, worse yet, the exoticism of my “different” appearance is why I stay unsurprised at how deeply systematic this racism shit is, but it’s all good it’s casual isn’t it?

Recently, two documentaries I've seen have given me a chance to better understand the African continent through stories that deal with identity, politics, love, family, religion, sex and life. While one left me empowered, the other left me questioning the lens in which stories are told through and reinforced how necessary it is to engage in conversations that critic a colonial lens, after all accurate representation matters and these depictions will continue until we tackle these issues.

In Sacred Water, Director Olivier Jourdain introduces us to Vestine Dusabe a sexologist and radio host on a mission to promote sexual pleasure. I was thrilled that in a world that demonised female sexual wellbeing my people were having open conversations about kunyaza or female squirting on a late-night radio show, in classrooms, on the streets and at the watering hole. Us backward Africans were talking about squirting and running sex workshops focused on female pleasure, how progressive and liberal!

While achieving kunyanza is packaged as a sexual practice that sheds a light on gender relations in Rwanda, I was confused at how male pleasure was the driving force. How did the empowerment of women using sexual resources and being encouraged to normalise their sexual wellbeing and pleasure have anything to do with keeping, pleasing and satisfying the men?

In interviews we hear women say “It [kunyanza] was created for our husbands’ peace” and that it is a way of stopping their partners from cheating. We see women visiting doctors to get herbal concoctions because they have no “water” and it is important for the man to “find the water” otherwise he will cheat. Not only does this sound like “boys will be boys”, it also diminishes the women’s existence to a thing responsible for satisfying her husband or else.

At the same time I had to check myself. Internally I was battling not othering the documentary by viewing it with my Western worldview. Yes, I am African and I experience the world as a black, Zimbabwean woman but being raised in New Zealand, in a culture different to the one I or my parents were born in means as much as I hate to admit it, my ideas on what is right or wrong are Westernised. For example the idea of what a man, womanhood or what gender roles each plays in society is different from place to place so who am I to dictate what female empowerment is and isn’t?

What I found interesting was the fact that the documentary was written and directed by a French man. Why was the gaze of an outsider: colonial, male and white focused on the sexual pleasure of African women? Being a black woman in these streets means two things: exotic other from the jungles of Africa and now Wakanda or a booty twerking video vixen with animalistic sexual prowess. For yonks we have been subjected to media of tribal African women showing their bare breasts. Something I think is not different to the treatment Sarah Baartman, a South African woman who was forced to tour Europe as a circus freak in the 19th century due to her buttocks. How was this documentary different in not dissolving the personal and sexual agency of African women? The medium has changed but has the message? Personally, I see this documentary as part of a discussion about the intersecting attitudes and beliefs towards gender and sex when influenced by Westernisation and local traditions.

Now, don’t get me wrong I am not saying because Jourdain is white he shouldn’t have created the documentary but we can’t not have conversation about white gaze and its voyeuristic history on black bodies and also the danger of stories that add to stereotypes. Now more than ever we must engage in dialogue that seeks to remedy misrepresentation and guard stories zealously especially in the wake of National Geographic's 130 year old delayed and questionable apology. I say questionable because it’s profitable to be woke, baby.

Pieced together through archive footage of electric live performances and interviews from family and friends, Mama Africa took me on a journey through the 76 years of the phenomenal Miriam Makeba’s life.

After appearing in Lionel Rogosin’s 1959 apartheid expose Come Back Africa Miriam finds herself banned from her homeland South Africa and lands in New York as a performer at the Village Vanguard. Soon after arriving Miriam is swept to higher heights by Harry Belafonte and finds herself performing hits like ‘Pata Pata’, ‘Malaika’ and ‘Soweto Blues’ around the world.

While Miriam’s musical career doesn’t begin in New York, it is there her influence is felt and ripples through politics and her position as civil rights activist cemented through her song lyrics that urged for democratic change. Prior to her arrival in New York, Miriam’s career was already booming in South Africa having sung and toured with the Cuban Brothers, the Manhattan Brothers and founded the Skylarks—an all woman singing group.

In 1963 we see Miriam addressing the United Nations advocating for the rights of blacks in South Africa who were living under inhumane and segregated conditions enforced by apartheid. She becomes the first black woman to speak at the United Nations and from there gains her nickname Mama Africa for the way she brought attention to the state affairs in her homeland. Upon Nelson Mandela’s release, Miriam returns home to directly influence another generation of artists.

Making use of photos and footage, Kaurismäki captures the life of a woman who was loved not only by her family and friends but by the world and everyone she came across. As the documentary finished I couldn’t help but be left wanting more of Miriam Makeba, surely where there is woman there is magic! The film managed to represent her exactly as she was: artist, crusader, lover, mother and grandmother.

Being able to see a version of myself left me inspired not only to slay—she served looks!—but to continue telling more stories that are aimed at offering a wider selection of black representation. As I’ve always said films introduce us to new worlds, realities and spaces unimaginable, let our introductions be handled with care.

Sacred Waters and Mama Africa are showing at the fourth annual African Film Festival New Zealand 2018. The festival runs from April 5 to April 15 at Rialto Cinemas Newmarket, Auckland and Wednesday May 9 to May 13 at Embassy Theatre Wellington.

Follow Maka on Instagram.