Fourteen Films on African Art.

Fourteen Films on African Art: The Death of an African King with Sarah Adams; A Year in the Life of an African Family: The Bamogo Family of Burkina Faso; Fulani: Art and Life of a Nomadic People; Birds of the Wilderness: The Beauty Competition of the Wodaabe People of Niger; African Art in Performance: The Winiama Masks of the Village of Ouri; Artas a Verb in Africa: The Masks of the Bwa Village of Boni; Masks of Leaves and Wood: The Bwa People of Burkina Faso; African Artas Theater: The Bwa Masks of the Gnoumou Family of Boni; Speaking With God: A Mossi Baga Diviner in Burkina Faso; African Pottery Techniques; African Weaving: Spinning, Strip Weaving in Burkina, Kente in Ghana; From Iron Ore to Iron Hoe: Smelting Iron in Africa; Arts of Ghana: Brass Casting, Pottery, Adinkra, Kente, Stool Carving; African Sculpture: Carving a Crocodile Mask, Shaping a Mask of Leaves by Christopher Roy Art and Life in Africa Project, University of Iowa 2001-2008. http://www.uiowa.edu/~africart/List of DVDs/Index.html. $24.95 DVD, $30 Blu-Ray

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The fourteen documentary DVDs on art, art making, and culture in West Africa produced by Christopher Roy since 2001 are extremely beneficial to students, artists, scholars, and collectors alike. Each DVD offers individual chapters (for example, African Pottery Techniques includes convex mold, concave mold, rare hammer and anvil technique, coiling technique, direct pull technique, firing) for isolated showings. These chapters are excellent teaching tools, animating what students often only see as static in museums and readings. For artists, particularly weavers and potters, the attention to the art-making process and the high quality close-ups will be especially useful.

The majority of the films focus exclusively on Burkina Faso (Speaking with God; Masks of Leaves and Wooch African Sculpture; Art as a Verb in Africa; African Art as Theater; African Art in Performance; A Year in the Life of an African Family; From Iron Ore to Iron Hoes), while others include Burkina Faso and Ghana (African Weaving, African Pottery Techniques), Ghana (Arts of Ghana, The Death of an African King), and the Sahel Region (Birds of the Wilderness, Fulani).

Roy's familiarity with his subjects and their comfort in his presence radiate in the Burkina-based films. His voice-over narration is exceptional and reminiscent of Roy Sieber's A Great Tree Has Fallen (1973) and Henry John Drewal's Yoruba Performance (1990), staples in any class of African art. In each film, he discusses art and culture within the context of contemporary issues central to people's lives such as HIV, parasitic diseases, malaria, drought, and herder/farmer conflicts. Further, Roy breaks down assumptions about the field of African art. He reminds viewers that African art is meaningful in motion, that mask patterns are not merely decorative, that traditions are constantly changing, and that the stereotyped popular images of African are often misleading. In Art as a Verb in Africa we are told, "art is not hung on the wall or placed on a coffee table; it is something Africans do." This is poignantly shown when watching the dance gestures at a Ghanaian funeral, the costumes of Fulani women as they plait each others' hair, and the dancing of masks in a marketplace below a microwave tower. We learn that the reserved movements of the Mossi baga, who dances to summon ancestral spirits, is a widespread African dance technique. Roy narrates, "The slow, eloquent dance of the elderly diviner is a marked contrast to the frenetic, rapid athletic performances which are the stereotype of performance in Africa. My personal experience over thirty years in Africa is that this stately and eloquent performance is more usual than the rapid dances invented to please a non-African consumer market" (Speaking with God).

Roy's extensive experience in Burkina Faso since the early 1970s along with the help of Mossi collaborators and cameramen has enabled him to capture exceptional footage of everyday life and rare events. He records a group of smiths from the Bamago family who have gathered to smelt iron for the first time in more than sixty years. He films the last elderly man to still produce indigo cloth in 2002.

In this collection, Roy allows ample time to experience process and in so doing one is struck by the skill, labor, and time needed for mid-day meal preparation, making charcoal, processing thread on a drop spindle, or coiling a clay pot. A Year in the Life of an African Family opens with a shot of Mossi women grinding sprouted millet in preparation for beer. In the film, we witness the Bamogo family harvesting millet stalks and through this process we experience the transformation of production--harvesting, threshing, pounding, sifting, and finally making a meal with millet, pounded sorghum, and baobab leaf sauce. The process from wood to coal and dry clay to wet clay to kiln is also superbly illustrated.

Beyond experiencing the process of production, the images speak volumes about gender relations, aesthetics, transformation, and even child rearing and artistic instruction. For example, we encounter a scene of a young boy drumming and another of a girl helping her mother fetch clay. In African Sculpture, we witness rare footage of male artists shaping a mask of leaves in the bush before a masquerade. The artists wrap the naked masker completely in wild grasses and adorn the head with grasses and eagle feathers bound with porcupine quills. We literally watch the masker transformed into Do, making the wilderness god visible (from preparation to the performance) without any self-conscious awareness of the camera by the subjects. It is not until Roy travels among the Fulani that we see women glancing uncomfortably at the camera with the same apprehensive expressions we see in Herzog's Herdsmen of the Sun (1989).

Intermittent shots of Roy in the background of a scene or asking interview questions off camera also gives the viewer a glimpse of the process of filmmaking and students and scholars experience Roy's fieldwork techniques firsthand. Viewing data collection in the films recorded in Niger and Ghana is less illuminating than the Burkina-based films where narration and subtitles tell a polished story. In Death of ah African King, for example, we are exposed to the messiness and multiplicity of funerals in Ghana and we witness the filmmakers trying to make sense of it. On the first day of this six day long event, we hear women telling Adams about the funeral of Nana Frimpong but we have no clear narrative and when Twi is spoken in several places, it is without translation. On the second day of the funeral, we see a chief dancing and we are told that he made an error in protocol with his hand gestures. First the audience needs to know that his hand gestures are noteworthy and then we need to understand how he acted incorrectly. In general, the film raises more questions than it answers for uninformed viewers and concepts such as "chief" "queen mother," "state execution," "soul discs," "Krontehene" and "Omanhene" are not defined. A statement describing what will be seen in the video, including animal sacrifice and its significance, would greatly improve these telling images. In Arts of Ghana we are again exposed to rich art-making practices, including kente cloth, Paa Joe's coffins, and Adinkra cloth, but through the lens of a curious stranger who essentially asks a series of "what's this?" "what's that?" questions. When Roy mispronounces "Bonwire" in African Weaving and asks the name of the village where he is filming Asante stool carving in Arts of Ghana, we wish that a more informed narration could take the place of the interview. And when in a Ghanaian restaurant with another Caucasian male remarking that the restaurant is "clean, well lit, with good service and friendly staff" we begin to feel we are watching a travel video. Unlike the art and cultural practices documented in the films from Burkina Faso, the lost wax casting demonstration in Ghana is difficult to follow and the final breaking of the mold is not included. In addition, the historical significance of brass weights is not adequately discussed. Many of the sumptuous shots throughout the Ghana and Niger films, however, make up for these criticisms. Kente weavers throwing shuttles like lightning through the loom, Fulani men in made-up faces rolling their eyes and pursing their lips in the Guerwaal dance, and Asante women in black and red damask wailing in grief during a funeral are worthy reasons to include these films in your library.

Some of the DVDs have shorter versions appropriate for class length. While the long videos (90 minutes) provide a sense of the complexity and monotony of an actual event, they may keep students from the main focus. Videos should also be previewed for length before screening. African Pottery Techniques, titled Pottery in Africa on the video itself, is 85 minutes, not "about 60." African Weaving is listed as 25 minutes but it is 19. On a minor note, some of the earliest films have places of poor quality narration, shifting volume levels, and washed out subtitles and a few covers have misspellings or barcodes that obscure the back cover text. Lastly, it is important to note that some films share footage and narration (for example, Fulani and Birds of the Wilderness; Arts of Ghana and African Weaving).

In his films, Roy gives liberal recognition to his co-creators (Sarah Adams in African Weaving), researchers (Heather King in Fulani), directors (Carol Thompson in Art as a Verb in Africa), cameramen and informants (Yacouba Bamogo, Jacob Bamogo, Abdoulaye Bamogo) and some films include a bibliography in the credits. The Mossi Bamogo family (mentioned above) of affluent smiths and potters have played an important role in these productions, filming and staring in many of them, and helping to gain permission to film specific rituals, particularly the divination film in Dablo (Speaking with God). In this production, Roy explains that the Mossi elders chose what should be included in the film in hopes that it would serve as a record for future generation.

It is shame that, as scholars, we cannot easily turn our rich footage over to a publisher to refine, edit, and distribute for us as they would a book. Instead, Roy has had to produce all aspects of these films with, among others, the help of the people above. What he has done is remarkable and we are indebted to him for this collection. The lack of a professional film crew is easily overlooked because the images themselves and the stories they tell are extraordinary. Roy's films contrast sharply with the highly formulaic rich-in-image but content-lacking travel channel documentaries of Africa and provide an intimate and poignant understanding of art and life in Africa. The films reviewed here, as well as seven others released since the review was originally commissioned, can be purchased through http://www.uiowa.edu/~africart/ where low-res streaming video clips are also available.

PERI M. KLEMM is an associate professor of art history at California State University, Northridge, and the Book Reviews editor of African Arts. [e-mail]