Dominica Dipio

African cinema is principally premised on the framework of cinema as an instrument of education more than entertainment. The corpus of films investigated in this project includes feature films in sub-Saharan Africa that gained recognition in the 1960s. After the post-euphoric era of political independence of most African countries, African (film) artists saw themselves as responsible guardians of their new nations and viewed their artistic forms of expression not simply as popular forms of entertainment, or celebration of national myths, but as critical, political, and ideological instruments. Given this context, this research examines how issues related to gender and the position of women in African communities are represented by filmmakers, as part of the conscientization agenda, and what this reveals about gender relations in African communities.