Join the Department of Afroamerican and African Studies
and the African Studies Center for our next

AFRICA WORKSHOP
"Petronoir African Cinema: Reading Recent African Films for Energy"

Carmela Garritano
Associate Professor of International Affairs, Texas A&M University

TUESDAY, DEC. 5
4:00 PM
4701 Haven Hall (DAAS Conference Room)

Can't make it? Join us on Zoom: https://umich.zoom.us/j/99340604276

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This talk suggests the term “petronoir” to describe prestige and art films from Africa that re-tool the narrative and formal conventions of film noir to denounce the endlessly deferred promises of oil-based national development and infrastructural modernity. The films analyzed in this presentation detail patchwork, failed, or underdeveloped petroleum infrastructures across several African cities and closely examine the novel forms of labor and sociality that emerge in response to energy shortage. These films project infrastructural longing and, at the same time, testify to the creativity of Africans living with under-resourced energy distribution networks.

In these ways, petronoir African cinema intervenes in the dominant discourse of climate crisis and energy transition. It reminds us that our efforts to address global warming and break free from fossil fuels must grapple with the modest and justified energy demands of those on the margins of petromodernity.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Dr. Garritano works at the intersection of politics and film and media, and her research has been supported by Fulbright IIE, the West African Research Association, and the US Department of Education’s FLAS program. Trained in African area studies, her writing combines theoretically-grounded inquiry with ethnographic and archival research methods. Her first book, "African Video Movies and Global Desires: A Ghanaian History" (Ohio University Press, 2013), is a historical account of movie production in Ghana, beginning with the first films of the Gold Coast Colonial Film Unit, through the struggles of the Ghana Film Industry Corporation, and finally to the emergence and growth of a loosely-configured, commercial movie industry between the late 1980s and 2010. The book was selected as a Choice Outstanding Academic Title and was awarded The First Book Award by the African Literature Association.

Additionally, she is co-editor, with Kenneth W. Harrow, of "A Companion to African Cinema" (Wiley-Blackwell, 2019), a volume that brings together some of the most exciting writing on African film and media today. It spotlights research that draws from well-established methods, such as postcolonial theory, as well as new work informed by affect theory, film festival studies, and sound studies.

Dr. Garritano has also published writing on African literature, postcolonialism, and Nollywood. Her work has appeared in top-tier journals such as The Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, Modern Fiction Studies, Black Camera, The Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry, African Studies Review, and Research in African Literatures.

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For questions about the event or to request accommodations, please email ecnirp@umich.edu.