This is the first issue of The Journal of African Films & Diaspora Studies (JAFDIS), a multi-disciplinary, peer-reviewed, international journal intending to provide a forum for the publication of articles from academics, business practitioners, and policy makers.

Publications on African cinema seldom present individual filmmakers, and this is the reason this focus was chosen for the first issue of the journal. The seven filmmakers presented here, through personal interviews and studies of their works, are Lancelot Oduwa Imasuen, Obi Emelonye, Niyi Akinmolayan and Tunde Kelani from Nigeria, representing three different cultures and languages of the country (Edo, Igbo and Yoruba), then Kalosi Ramakhula from Lesotho, David Achkar, a French-Guinean filmmaker, and Raoul Peck from Haiti, whose family spent many years in the Congo. This panoramic view of African cinema, straddling Francophone and Anglophone worlds and considered through the lens of its practitioners, is due to scholars based in Nigeria, Lesotho, the UK and Canada and whose domains cover the arts, screen media and languages. One of the issues addressed here is that of African and national languages, revealing the steady growth of films in national and regional languages. The various contributions all confirm the vitality and vibrancy of an African cinema feeding on ancestral oral traditions but equally inspired by the continent’s troubled contemporary history.

Using the interview, direct observation and literary methods, Osakue Stevenson Omoera engages Imasuen in a conversation which highlights his wide-ranging experiences and his perspectives on the current issues at the heart of the globalizing African film tradition and industry called Nollywood. The article is a good introduction to the young and serious-minded filmmakers in Nigeria whom Jonathan Haynes has referred to as the “New Nollywood” filmmakers. Babatunde Onikoyi’s interview of Niyi Akinmolayan, another film director and producer, is the occasion to discover another one of this group of filmmakers, whose films are beginning to attract global attention and significance. These interviews cover the filmic contents but also film technologies that have defined the Nigerian cinema. The third interview, that of Obi Emelonye, Creative Director of the Nollywood Factory, London, by Françoise Ugochukwu, opens another avenue, that of the vibrant UK-based African diaspora. Emelonye’s story, that of a lawyer turned filmmaker who greatly contributed to the professionalization of the Nigerian cinema in diaspora, reveals the variety of paths African film production can take in diaspora. Lekan Balogun’s contribution adds an important element to this survey of the Nigerian screen, with an analysis of two films, Saworoide (1999) and The Narrow Path (2006), by the Nigerian filmmaker, Tunde Kelani, who has distinguished himself as one of the leading contemporary Nigerian and, without any doubt, African cinema icons and storytellers.

The last three articles take us to other African countries. Limakatso Pepenene and Ntsele Radebe survey Kalosi Ramakhula’s production, a rewriting of history in a context where historical documentation is predominantly authored by historians and ethnographers who complement their research through oral resources. This filmmaker’s approach is special, mixing visual media, fine arts and cinema. The article uses a semiotic analysis of selected paintings to examine the multiple layers of potential meanings communicated by the filmmaker. Servanne Woodward’s comparative analysis reminds us of the checkered history of the continent. A typical example of the bold way in which African filmmakers have been reflecting on burning political issues, it focuses on the 1991 films of David Achkar and Raoul Peck, both inspired by the figure of Patrice Lumumba (1925-1961), the first Congolese prime minister and victim of a political murder, and combining autobiography and a search for identity. On the whole, this first issue offers a glimpse into the wealth of a continental cinema in rapid evolution. The issue ends with a book review of the essays offered to Soyinka on his 80th birthday, reminding us of the lasting relationship between cinema and literature.