Beyond despair

Globalization is reducing diversity to a minimum of conservative, standardized products: homogenized, pre-digested, regurgitated, slickly packaged goods for universal, easy, unthinking consumption. That's happening all over the world. But closer to home, and to our hearts, is the problem that there is less and less space for African filmmakers to be seen or heard. This is not to say that films about Africa are not seen on North American and European television and cinema screens - it is that these films are processed by non-Africans.

June 1, 2006

Globalization is reducing diversity to a minimum of conservative, standardized products: homogenized, pre-digested, regurgitated, slickly packaged goods for universal, easy, unthinking consumption. That's happening all over the world. But closer to home, and to our hearts, is the problem that there is less and less space for African filmmakers to be seen or heard. This is not to say that films about Africa are not seen on North American and European television and cinema screens - it is that these films are processed by non-Africans.