What Reviewers Are Saying About
VIDEOS OF AFRICAN AND AFRICAN-RELATED PERFORMANCE:
AN ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
From African Research And Documentation, University of Cambridge, No. 74, 1997.
"VIDEOS OF AFRICAN AND AFRICAN-RELATED PERFORMANCE, by Carol Lems-Dworkin. Evanston, IL, The Author, 1996. xx, 334pp. ISBN 0-9637048-1-8. US$ 57.00.
Reviewed by Keith Hart, Director, Centre for African Studies, University of Cambridge
The author has collected information on almost 1,400 videos, each of which gets a description a few lines long with some very basic facts: format, length, country, date, distributor. There is a very full and useful subject index, as well as indices of names and distributors, and some valuable appendices and notes. The whole compilation has involved a lot of work, and it should be acquired by any library dealing with video, Africa or performance.
The definition of the content gave Ms. Lems-Dworkin a bit of a headache. "African and African-related' means, in effect, the Continent and the black diaspora, especially in the Americas. Originally she set out to document the performing arts on video, but art is not functionally separated from life in Africa, and she eventually settled on the term `performance.' Then the issue was what should be excluded from such a broad category. In the end she left out most feature films and included all videos of plays and musicals. She need not apologise for having used her judgement with the remainder, and the resulting collection does have a recognisable identity, certainly more so than most catalogues in this genre."