Artistic epistemologies: Black cinema and the idea of Africa

What is Africa? Is it what it was, say, a century ago? What knowledge about contemporary Africa is deducible through its cinemas? These questions are the backdrop of this Special Issue of the Journal of African Cinemas , which aggregates different apertures through which Africa can be grasped through its diverse cinematic cultures. The issue connects the idea of Africa, in the sense of Africanism, with its cultural ontologies. The different debates about the idea of Africa, which the different authors advance, inform us of the new cultural possibilities for theorizing Africa.