Sexual Politics and African Cinema

“This talk examines the ways in which African directors engage with sexual identities in fiction and documentaries in a context where homophobia and transphobia have become central to social and political discourse. It will look at the strategies used to represent sex in fiction, hence classifying it as a signifier of a (decadent) nation, as well as a discrete social commodity. It will examine how, in fiction, African narratives often “represent” sex with strategies that exclude nudity or intercourse, while aggressively promoting heteronormativity in several documentary films. That occurs within a sociopolitical discourse that replicates cultural practices, Western human rights and anthropological anxieties.”