Emblematic Elusions: Eros in African Cinema – Edition III (Visages de Femmes)

Emblematic Elusions: Eros in African Cinema portrays how African filmmakers redefine the Black form in the visual field from the wounded signifier to an embodied vessel for liberation. Using an erotic lens, each edition presents a film essay analyzing a significant Black African film.

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Edition IIl delves into evolving “Visages de Femmes” (1985) [Faces of Women] through two contrasting tales set in Ivory Coast’s metropolitan [Abidjan] and rural [Koffikro] life. “Visages” caused industry ruckus since its release and within African film critique for its 11-minute love-making scene; of a “licentious Eden in which bronze bodies dive and emerge lustfully and acrobatically in the luscious bed of a nearby river surrounded by dense, erect trees.” (Pfaff, 1996) The mid-eighties feature disrupted ideas around censorship, taboo, nudity, and indecency.

Edition III emphasizes the filmmaker’s cinematic adaptation of pre-colonial oral tradition with a lens focused on female pleasure and agency. Eros is repositioned within the cultural landscape as the chapbook relies on historical visual, practical and ritualistic evidence of ancestral erotic exuberance. “Visages de Femmes” equally navigates the power dynamics embedded in the complexities surrounding women’s economic mobility. Through the concept of ''libidinal economy’ – by way of Lacan, Deleuze and Lyotard — Edition III questions transactional strategies of subordination and alternating forms of currency; youth, beauty, flesh. Honouring a social realist tradition, Écaré is directing towards forms of potential sociocultural revolution. This edition offers a comprehensive examination of the film''s thematic depth, cinematic techniques, and its contribution to the discourse on African womanhood’ desire, agency, and economic mobility.