The Poetics of Radical Hope in Abderrahmane Sissako’s Film Experience

The Poetics of Radical Hope: The Abderrhamane Sissako Experience communicates pieces of evidence that Sissako is the most talented and the most sophisticated filmmaker of his generation. This imaginative excellence emanates from new aspirations to fashion an original African cinematic aesthetic for a politic of radical hope and creative adaptation. Sissako’s contribution extends to all aspects of the indigenous motion pictures industry to help rebuild the continent’s cultural infrastructures and create intellectual and cultural spaces to mobilize narrative strategies to contribute in the making of potent African collectives. Far from being abstract, Sissako's logic of contribution resists facile reading and demands a direct and profound engagement with the text. Sissako is one of the best filmmakers working today because his cinema constitutes a generative contribution to the contemporary production of African intelligibility. This logic of contribution helps to better articulate the historical logics and practices of a continent in constant throes of situational emergencies. The cinemas confront African colonial legacies to contemporary globalization discourses that grip the contemporary global condition, notably: political instability, poverty, illiteracy, digital divide, global warming and food shortages, diseases and the so-called "clash of civilization." The Poetics of Radical Hope in Abderrhamane Sissako's Film Experience' communicates pieces of evidence that Sissako is the most talented and the most sophisticated filmmaker of his generation. This imaginative excellence emanates from new aspirations to fashion an original African cinematic aesthetic for a politic of radical hope and creative adaptation. Sissako's contribution extends to all aspects of the indigenous motion pictures industry to help rebuild the continent's cultural infrastructures and create intellectual and cultural spaces to mobilize narrative strategies to contribute in the making of potent African collectives. Far from being abstract, Sissako's logic of contribution resists facile reading and demands a direct and profound engagement with the text. Sissako is one of the best filmmakers working today because his cinema constitutes a generative contribution to the contemporary production of African intelligibility. This logic of contribution helps to better articulate the historical logics and practices of a continent in constant throes of situational emergencies.0 Part I: On the Genealogy of the Camera-Eye and Sissako’s Poetic Possibilities Chapter 1: Mapping the Theoretical Terrain: Cinema, Sensor-Ship, and the Search for Authenticity in the Age of Neoliberal Rationalities and Islamic Terror Chapter 2: The Camera-Eye, The Arte wave and Afro-Futurism Part II: Aesthetic and Film Analysis Chapter 3: Sissako’s Cinema: Communal Life as an Aesthetic Practice Chapter 4: Life on Earth (1998): Meditation on Belonging in a Globalized World Chapter 5: Heremakono (2002): On African Imaginative Landscapes, Frontiers, and Journeys Chapter 6: Bamako (2007): Africa, Cowboys, and Postcolonial Economic Blues. Chapter 7: Timbuktu (2015): Notes on Art, Terror, and Cosmopolitan Politics Chapter 8: Conclusion: Marginal Subjectivities and Globalization: The Subaltern Speaking About the Author This book explores Sissako’s original cinematic vision, which tackles complex in-depth African realities with the power of imaginative excellence. Sissako’s work defies existing normative global geopolitics and conditions of knowledge and aesthetic production in Africa through radical hope and creative adaptation.