Lab creation (Spring 2024)

Following the recent acquisition of the Ousmane Sembène archives by the Lilly Library, Paulin S. Vieyra’s papers at the Black Film Center & Archive and films at the Moving Image Archive, Dr. Vincent Bouchard has formed the Early African Cinemas Lab (EACL) at IU. Bringing together interested undergraduate and graduate students, specialists of African Film, and campus-based centers and resources, the EACL facilitates research into this rich and valuable collection of primary sources to provide a more accurate view of Francophone cinemas and to better understand the preliminary stage of cinematic activities and institutions in Senegal in the 1960s.

Lab Activities

Exploration of archives at Indiana University, in the US, in Europe, and in Senegal

The Early African Cinemas Lab will lead the exploration of archival materials on Early African Cinemas on the IU campus at the Lilly Library and, starting Spring 2025, at the Black Film Center & Archive. We will work to complete this data collection at governmental/corporate/private archives (Senegal, France, Russia, USA), where records on film co-production are available to scholars, in order to better stress the complex contexts of production and reception of Early African Cinemas within the field of African Film Studies.

Experiments with AVAnnotate (IU Libraries Moving Image Archive, Summer 2024)

This summer, Prof. Bouchard’s team of research assistants, led by graduate students in Francophone Studies Claire Fouchereaux (MA, FFS ’20) and Jordan Howard (MA, FFS ’23), is using an innovative tool in the digital humanities to analyze films from the preliminary stages of African Cinemas. Thanks to AVAnnotate, a platform for sharing annotations on audio-visual artifacts developed by Dr. Tanya Clement of UT Austin and Brumfield Labs, the team will annotate key moments of movies such as Afrique-sur-Seine (Vieyra, 1955) and La noire de… (Sembène, 1966), pointing out key details of the films in an interactive, accessible way.

Series of public events on the Legacy of Ousmane Sembène & Paulin S. Vieyra (April-May 2025)

In collaboration with Bloomington’s Buskirk-Chumley Theater, EALC is organizing an event series, the Legacy of Sembène & Vieyra, to underscore the crucial role of these two pioneers within African Cinemas. The public will be invited to view African films at the BCT and participate in discussions with film critics, some of the filmmakers’ collaborators, witnesses from the period, and African Film specialists. Contributing to the visibility of African Cultures and Francophone Studies in Bloomington, thanks to a Public Arts & Humanities Project Grant received by Prof. Bouchard. This event series will also act as a kick-off for the Collections of Sembène and Vieyra Archival Workshop bringing scholars to campus in summer 2025.

Organization of the Archival Collections Workshop: The Collections of Sembène & Vieyra (May 2025)

This 10-day workshop will offer researchers from around the globe the opportunity to explore Indiana University’s collections on Early African Cinemas. Specialists of the field will travel to Bloomington and work alongside junior scholars to explore IU’s rich archives each day. In the evenings, researchers will present and discuss their discoveries, and we will screen and hold conversations about African films on campus. Seeking to uncover a more accurate and precise understanding of the history of African cinemas, this workshop will also be an occasion to engage IU undergraduate and graduate students in primary and highly specialized academic research.

Lab-member achievements

Book Publication

Dr. Vincent Bouchard recently published his new book Cinema van, propagande et résistance en Afrique coloniale, 1930-1960 (Ottawa U.P., 2023), which explores the reception of propaganda films in colonial Africa. The monograph studies how cinema, like other modern infrastructure such as electric plants, railroads, or radio, impacted vernacular cultures: it brought in foreign values or cultural references and changed the media configuration in societies mainly structured around face-to-face interaction. Importantly, it finds that this first encounter with audio-visual images specifically structured local audiences’ collective imaginary at a time of anti-colonial struggles.

Residential Fellowship at the Institute of Advanced Study in Nantes (2024-25)

Recently awarded a fellowship from the Institute for Advanced Study in Nantes, France (2024-25), with additional support from IU’s Prestigious Award Leave Program, Dr. Bouchard will spend next academic year conducting archival research for his new book project on the impact of audio-visual images on the emergence of postcolonial identities. While away from IU, he will study materials on early audio-visual experiments under the French colonial administration of the late-1950s, the financial support from the French Ministry of Cooperation (1958-1981) for producing newsreels, in film distribution, and in screening educational films in newly independent West African nations, and the various impacts of these neocolonial politics.

-Vincent Bouchard