Cart
Free US shipping over $10
Proud to be B-Corp

Xala Summary

Xala by James S. Williams (Royal Holloway, University of London, UK)

Xala (1974) by the pioneering Senegalese director Ousmane Sembene, was acclaimed on its release for its scorching critique of postcolonial African society, and it cemented Sembenes status as a wholly new kind of politically engaged, pan-African, auteur film-maker. Centring on the story of businessman El Hadji and the impotence that afflicts him on his marriage to a young third wife, Xala vividly captures the cultural and political upheaval of 1970s Senegal, while suggesting the radical potential of dissent, solidarity and collective action, embodied by El Hadjis student daughter Rama and the group of urban undesirables who act as a kind of raw chorus to the affairs of the neocolonial elite. James S. Williamss lucid study traces Xalas difficult production history and analyses its daring combination of political and domestic drama, oral narrative, social realism, symbolism, satire, documentary, mysticism and Marxist analysis. Yet from its dazzling extended opening sequence of revolution as performance to its suspended climax of redemption through ritualised spitting, Xala presents a series of conceptual and formal challenges that resist a simple reading of the film as allegory. Highlighting often overlooked elements of Sembenes intricate, experimental film-making, including provocative shifts in mood and poetic, even subversively erotic, moments, Williams reveals Xala as a visionary work of both African cinema and Third Cinema that extended the parameters of postcolonial film practice and still resounds today with its searing inventive power.

About James S. Williams (Royal Holloway, University of London, UK)

James S. Williams is Professor of Modern French Literature and Film at Royal Holloway, University of London, UK. His previous publications include Space and Being in Contemporary French Cinema (2013); Encounters with Godard: Ethics, Aesthetics, Politics (2016); Ethics and Aesthetics in Contemporary African Cinema: The Politics of Beauty (Bloomsbury Academic, 2019), winner of the R. Gapper Prize for the best book in French Studies; and Frantz Fanon (2023).

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments Prologue: Dakar, 1974 1. From Novel to Image 2. Africanity ? Africa 3. A Curse is Still a Curse 4. The Postcolonial City as Third Space 5. Evian or Spit 6. The Future is Female Epilogue: The Legacy of Xala Notes Credits Filmography

Additional information

NGR9781839025983
9781839025983
1839025980
Xala by James S. Williams (Royal Holloway, University of London, UK)
New
Paperback
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
2024-05-02
112
N/A
Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
This is a new book - be the first to read this copy. With untouched pages and a perfect binding, your brand new copy is ready to be opened for the first time

Customer Reviews - Xala