This dissertation explores how films about Africa depict contemporary economic globalization. Particular attention is paid to the ways in which narrative styles and visual imagery are used to project themes of economic globalization and how these styles are ideologically framed to reflect the neoliberal economic policies in Africa. By concentrating upon the ways in which these films represent globalization, this project breaks from the popular tendency in discussions related to cinema and globalization in Africa to apply a political economy approach that focuses mainly on the socioeconomic and political structures of film industry in Africa. Accordingly, this dissertation generates a dialogue between the art of cinema and the critical discourse on globalization through a theoretical framework informed by African cinema, social realist cinema, and Third Cinema. This dialogue is developed as the dissertation responds to two posed basic questions: What socioeconomic realities in regard to economic globalization are presented in contemporary films about Africa? And, secondly, what cinematic modalities are used to narrativize these socioeconomic realities?
The study focuses on four films: Hyenas (Djibril Diop Mambety, 1992); Bamako (Abderrahmane Sissako, 2006); Darwin's Nightmare (Hubert Sauper, 2004); End of the Rainbow (Robert Nugent, 2007). It includes an introduction, three chapters, and a conclusion. The introduction provides a brief overview of the study and a literature review. Chapter one offers a discussion on the Hyenas focusing on the violence associated with the implementation of the neoliberal economic policies in Africa. Chapter two is an analysis of Bamako centering on the destructive nature of the economic globalization. Chapter three provides an examination of documentary film depiction of the agent of economic globalization as reflected in End of the Rainbow and Darwin's Nightmare. The conclusion finalizes the discussion with some recurring insights regarding the general representation of economic globalization in films about Africa.