ABSTRACT
There are different traditions and practices in African cinema, there also exist several critical lenses through which to read African cinema. The common denominator among all these theoretical approaches resides in their analytical approach to film as text—textual analysis, that is, idea that a film can be read on the merits of its formal elements. Besides serving to understand cinema, postcolonial theory has been widely used in the reading of African post-colonial literature and cultures, and history and politics in the postcolony. For the nation-building paradigm, it is premised on the idea of film being used as a means for political and cultural liberation to better foster the development of the 'young' nation-states following the end of colonial rule. Considering the historical context of its birth and the liberation rhetoric that is often associated with the work of the first generation of filmmakers, African cinema has been categorized as part of Third Cinema by the Ethiopian film scholar Teshome Gabriel.
