African Cinema and Urbanism Marie-Paule Macdonald 9781839991073

The changing nature of African landscapes, from rural to urbanized spaces, has been a pre-occupation of African media producers since the beginnings of the African film industry in the 1960s. The authors bring together several examples of African documentary and fiction screen media that present, evaluate and criticize urban and rural landscapes, and the rural and urban dynamic of development, in relation to contemporary issues, from biodiversity, sustainability and deforestation, to inequity, women's rights, political instability, to climate change-related themes of water and food supply, security and sovereignty. These works, comprising multi-platform cinema, streamed moving images and especially documentaries, depict the situations and open the door to rethinking and eventually to the possibilities of proposals responding to the situations portrayed.

Marie-Paule Macdonald is an associate professor at the School of Architecture, University of Waterloo. Her publications include Jimi Hendrix Soundscapes (2016) and rockspaces (2000). Macdonald is a registered architect, MOAQ (member of the Order of Architects of Quebec).

Sheila Petty is a professor of media studies at the University of Regina, author of Contact Zones: Memory, Origin and Discourses in Black Diasporic Cinema and co-editor of Directory of World Cinema: Africa.