Filming African Creation Myths
Godfred Baffour Asamoah,
Douglas Robert Mensah,
Alfred Oppong
Mythology and oral storytelling play a central role in the African cinematic tradition. One of the reasons why African filmmakers make recourse to mythology and oral storytelling is because they want to express an African worldview and thus counter the colonial and neo-colonial oversimplification of Africa cultures seen as bereft of grand narratives on itself and the world. Cinema in Africa developed in the context of a dominant European presence that created and transferred ideologies of supremacy and race in all forms of communication, including the rapidly expanding film industry.
One of the ways in which African counter-discourse has been cinematographically expressed is the so-called “epic” film genre, These films counter derisory descriptions of African cultures through highly refined and aesthetic images. The filmmakers offer and construct their worldview by means of African cosmologies as expressed in myths, epics and tales. African film production is more and more diversified, and nowadays the “epic” genre characterizes art films circulating in international festivals as well as the more ‘popular’ and marked-oriented video films.
In most films of the epic genre we find mythological elements treated by means of symbolic images and characters’ qualifications. Retelling creation myths, on the other hand, is less common and follows two main directions. The creation can be visualised at the beginning of the film as background for the narration of the deeds of ancient heroes and present characters. Exemplary of this approach is the film Keita, the heritage of the Griot (the Heritage of the griot, meaning the West African bard) of Dani Kouyaté. In a few other cases episodes of the creation myth are weaved in the filmic narration. Distinguished examples are two Malian films, that is, Yeleen (1987) directed by Souleymane Cissé and La Genèse (1999) directed by Cheick Oumar Sissoko.