Queer cultures and African cinema: Deliberations on patronage and vulnerabilities

This article analyses selected documentaries about queer experiences in Uganda and Nigeria. It focuses on counter-discourses on Africa’s heterosexual normativity, advancing three perspectives. The first concerns globalization and rapid cultural exchanges enabled by various forms of mobility, which bring cultures into contact, promoting interferences. The documentaries analysed here reveal that queer African cinema and the identities it brings to light reflect the continent’s long history of interaction with the rest of the world and the exchanges therein. The second focuses on the evangelical efforts towards the politics of queerness, which also align with the legislation of sexuality in Uganda. Thirdly, the article demonstrates how the media sometimes perpetrates the vulnerability of queer identities, as represented in cinema. The debates around queer sexualities that these documentaries raise interrogate religious patronage and public antipathies towards queer identities in Africa. The article concludes that the pro-queer documentary films discussed play advocacy roles, opening new fronts for resistance against oppressive experiences.