This study focuses on the role of women in African cinema – in terms of female directors working in the African film industries as well as the representation of women in African film. My research specifically focuses on francophone West African and lusophone and anglophone Southern African cinemas (in particular post-apartheid South African cinema). This research is necessary and significant because African women are underrepresented in theoretical work as well as in the practice of African cinema. The small corpus of existing theoretical and critical studies on the work of female African filmmakers clearly shows that African women succeed in producing films against tremendous odds. The emergence of female directors in Africa is an important but neglected trend which requires more dedicated research. The pioneering research of African-American film scholar Beti Ellerson is exemplary in this regard, as she has, since the early 2000s, initiated a new field of academic study entitled African Women Cinema Studies. My own research is situated within this emerging field and aims to make a contribution to it. The absence of women in public societal spheres is often regarded as an indicator of areas where societies need to change. In the same sense the socio-political and cultural advancements of women are indicators of how societies have progressed towards improved living conditions for all. Because the African woman can be viewed as doubly oppressed, firstly by Black patriarchal culture and secondly by Western colonising forces, it is essential that the liberation of African women includes an opportunity for women to verbalise and demonstrate their own vision of women’s roles for the future. The study analyses a large corpus of films through exploring notions of nationalism and post/neo-colonialism in African societies; issues related to the female body such as health, beauty and sexuality; female identity, emancipation and African feminism in the past and present; the significance of traditional cultural practices versus the consequences and effects of modernity; and the interplay between the individual and the community in urban as well as rural African societies. Female filmmakers in Africa are increasingly claiming the right to represent these issues in their own ways and to tell their own stories. The methods they choose to do this and the products of their labours are the focus of this study. Ultimately, the study attempts to formulate more complex models for the analysis of African women’s filmmaking practices, in tracing the plurality of a female aesthetics and the multiplicity of thematic approaches in African women’s filmmaking.

Cette thèse vise à définir l’espace post-apartheid tel qu’il est représenté dans le cinéma sud-africain. Depuis 1994, l’Afrique du Sud démocratique constitue un nouvel espace géographique et socio-économique, profondément marqué par l’héritage de l’apartheid. Notre thèse vise à conjuguer l’analyse stylistique de films sud-africains et une réflexion civilisationniste, influencée par la géographie et la sociologie, sur ce qui fonde l’espace post-apartheid. Nous étudions le cinéma de fiction qui permet la représentation de l’espace tel qu’il est perçu, voire souhaité par le cinéaste, parfois en contradiction avec les enjeux commerciaux. La refondation du cinéma sud-africain après 1994 a-t-elle donné naissance à une nouvelle représentation de l’espace ?L’espace post-apartheid au cinéma se définit d’abord en rapport avec l’ancien espace, en opposition ou dans la continuité. Notre étude se concentre sur l’héritage de l’apartheid dans les années 2000, dans l’industrie du film et dans la mise en image d’un territoire national clivé et de villes divisées. Nous abordons ensuite la représentation récurrente de trajectoires individuelles en butte à cette géographie héritée, focalisation qui contribue à mettre à distance l’espace prescrit par l’ancien régime. Nous établissons enfin que l’espace cinématographique post-apartheid est défini en rapport avec la construction d’une nouvelle identité depuis 1994. Certaines ambiguïtés en découlent, dans la représentation du township et des étrangers africains ou dans la réception des films, et soulignent la redéfinition complexe de l’espace et de l’identité en Afrique du Sud afin que celle-ci puisse être véritablement « nouvelle ». / This study focuses on the representation of post-apartheid space in indigenous South African fiction films. I work towards a definition of cinematic post-apartheid space, putting forth its ambivalent relations to the apartheid past, between heritage and rejection, on the levels of geographical space, socio-economic space and, mostly, represented space. I situate myself at the intersection of South African cultural studies and reflections on post-apartheid space, and of the study of the new South African cinema. I focus on fiction since it gives most room for filmmakers to represent space as they perceive it, or desire it, to be, and on feature films which carry most of the South African industry’s ambitions in terms of international recognition.I first look at the heritage of apartheid in terms of the South African film industry, the divisions of the national territory and the structure of the South African city. I argue that post-apartheid cinematic space is first and foremost defined in relation to apartheid space, whether in opposition or in terms of heritage. However, recurrent representations of individual trajectories clash with that inherited geography and are a means for filmmakers to distance themselves from the previously prescribed relations between characters and space. I also argue that the definition of a new South African identity is crucial to the characterization of post-apartheid space in films. The ambiguous representations of township space or African foreigners in South African films and the emphasis on the nationality of films in film reception put forth how deeply paradoxical the reinvention of space and identity is in post-apartheid South Africa.