Asiya Khalitova

The chapter is devoted to history of the Guinean cinema from the 1960s to nowadays. The author analyses the influence of different generations of Guinean filmmakers (‘pioneers’ and ‘newcomers’) and their backgrounds on the national film industry.
During the Cold War Guinea massively supported by the USSR sent thousands of its nationals to study at universities of the Eastern bloc countries. The cinema and other propaganda instruments of ‘Guinean socialism’ were established under the influence and with support of the USSR and its satellites.
At the same time the Guinea’s first president’s paranoia and fear of plots caused the ‘institutionalization’ of systematic repression against new intellectuals. In the 1970s the majority of ‘pioneers’ of the national film industry were accused of dozens of alleged plots and imprisoned.
After the First Guinean President Sékou Touré’s death and the military coup d’etat in 1984, the cinema created by ‘pioneers’ was almost eliminated by the new regime of general Lansana Conté. This negligence towards the cultural heritage might be considered as post-socialist trauma, the attempt to bury all that had been connected to the socialist period in Guinea.
In contrast with the ‘pioneers’, the post-socialist generation of Guinean filmmakers (‘newcomers’) are either self-educated or in the majority have graduated from Western (mostly French) universities. Today we can also witness the phenomenon of increasing French cultural influence in Guinea, first of all in film industry. This cultural policy by French authorities exceeds ‘soft power’ and expresses a new paradigm of ‘French influence diplomacy’.
The objective of this research is to understand the professional and identity cleavages between ‘pioneers’ and ‘newcomers’ as well as their influence on the development of the Guinean cinema. As a consequence of the small amount of data and documentary sources in Guinea, this research work is primarily based on the empiric data collected in the field, in particular a series of interviews conducted by the author in Guinea and Russia from 2015 to 2017.

Editors In 'The Omnipresent Past', Bondarenko and Butovskaya have compiled a fascinating collection of papers exploring the variegated ways that the continent's rich and complex history-precolonial, colonial and postcolonial-continues to impact and sometimes to haunt the lives of contemporary Africans and persons of African descent. The volume combines phenomenological approaches that consider the ways Africans experience historical memory alongside considerations of the ways in which past modalities of power continue to structure African realities. The editors have done a remarkable job of including African contributions to scholarship. This is a thought-provoking and comprehensive set of papers. Robert Launay Northwestern University Historical Anthropology of Africa and African diaspora is increasingly gaining a worldwide attention. This volume edited by Dmitri M. Bondarenko and Marina L. Butovskaya is a particular indication of the importance of the Past as far as Africa is concerned. The main objective of the volume is to present various manifestations of how the past influences the present in African societies and diaspora communities nowadays. The editors and contributors to the volume have achieved this objective by using in a very good way a specific methodological point of view which reaffirms the manifold relations between History and Anthropology within the framework of post colonial studies. The contributors have magnificently related how the past can shape modern Africa. I hope that the texts of high quality presented in this volume will initiate a dialogue, through which we will arrive at the conclusion that solutions in shaping modern Africa and African diasporas can come from objective analysis of different contexts and different perspectives. The volume is a treasure for all of us, especially Africans and Africanists. It serves also as an indispensable reference book for all students of history, anthropology, psychology and other social sciences. Jean Paulin Mengue Me Ndongo University of Yaounde 1 The colonial epoch in Africa struck the continent with many hard shocks: those shocks, however, can now be seen as just one episode in the continent's historical evolution. That evolution continues today, and is being shaped by the presence of the colonial and precolonial past in the cultural, social, and political spheres alike. Bondarenko and Butovskaya's volume brings that presence sharply into focus, both in the African continent itself and in its diaspora. External influences and pressures may play a key role in shaping Africa; it is the creative response of Africa's peoples to those pressures which will ultimately play the decisive role in the continent's future evolution. Anyone seeking to understand that evolution should read this volume.