ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces the basic notions of science that will be used to analyze the films. It offers a reading of the central issue, which is how the thinking that guides physics scientists’ approach to space and time could be relevant to film studies, and specifically African film. This will include the study of relative frames in special relativity and frames in cinema, and how cinematic temporality compares with dilation of time in special relativity. Time and space have classical meanings in physics and cinema; both changed with recent thinking in both domains, and the goal here is to explore how changes in scientific thought might bear on cinema studies approaches.
