African Energy Worlds in Film and Media
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Indiana University Press
Publishing:3rd Mar '25
£23.99
This title is due to be published on 3rd March, and will be despatched as soon as possible.
Can you imagine a post-petroleum world? African Energy Worlds in Film and Media joins energy humanists committed to undoing our deep dependence on fossil fuels and advancing equitable energy transitions by advancing this vision with a spotlight on African perspectives.
African cinema is a rich and varied medium for investigating the entanglements and social embeddedness of energy with global modernity and for imagining a world that leaves fossil fuels behind for unrealized green energy futures. African Energy Worlds in Film and Media shows us how African cinema makes sensible the energetic aspects of life in the ecological mesh that is planet Earth and grounds us in the everyday of the postcolonial, bringing attention to the enduring legacies of racism and colonialism that unevenly distribute energy-related violence and risk and amplifying Africans' demands for access to the energy networks that undergird modernity. With a focus on feature, documentary, and arthouse films, including canonical films by Ousmane Sembène and Djbril Diop Mambety and new work by emergent directors Nelson Makengo and Djo Tunda Wa Munga, author Carmela Garritano examines how these stories depict an array of energy sources from mineral extraction to wind and the by-products of these energy processes, like plastic and electronic waste.
Situated at the intersection of film studies, African studies, and energy humanities, African Energy Worlds in Film and Media analyzes the political, social, and economic dimensions of global energy forms and systems as represented in African cinema.
"African Energy Worlds is an inspired and inspirational study of the imbrications of energy and film in Africa. Carmela Garritano presents African film as an important medium for understanding the unevenness of energy logics in a neoliberal era, engaging with the violence of energy generation in Africa as well its possibilities. The resulting book is hermeneutically rich and theoretically innovative as it breaks new grounds in African film and media studies and the energy and environmental humanities."—Cajetan Iheka, author of African Ecomedia: Network Forms, Planetary Politics
"African Energy Worlds challenges entrenched notions of Africans as vulnerable, passive victims of environmental injustice. Instead, Garritano shows how contemporary media, energy, water, and waste disposal infrastructures intersect in surprising ways: while electricity allows filmmakers' creativity to flourish, unreliable access also elicits creative responses among Africans as active producers and consumers of both energy and film. The humble plastic flip-flop opened a hopeful path toward education and postcolonial national development. Spanning the diverse scales of hyperlocal movie cultures and transnational partnerships, this book offers an indispensable overview of the breadth and depth of African filmmaking since the 1990s, with revelatory re-readings of familiar favorites and attention to lesser-known gems. Garritano traces multifaceted connections between film and modernity, by demonstrating how digital effects can "materialize magic" and occult worlds onscreen while also insisting on the urgency of Africans' modest demands for inclusion in the benefits of petromodernity and a more just world beyond fossil fuels. A highly readable and necessary book, brimming with important insights for advocates for energy and climate justice as well as scholars in African and film studies and environmental and energy humanities."—Jennifer Wenzel, author of The Disposition of Nature: Environmental Crisis and World Literature
ISBN: 9780253072283
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
210 pages