Speaking of Queer African Cinema's scope, Lindsey Green-Simms declares that her book should not be read as definitive or encyclopedic. Rather, it should be seen as a useful set of readings and a model of reading for scholars, activists, and filmmakers. Independently of that claim, the insightful study in four chapters fulfills the encyclopedic (in its erudition) function in addition to accomplishing what the author set out to do. In its curation of queer cinematic texts from both francophone and anglophone Africa, the book not only brings to light a vibrant archive but also charts innovative reading praxes that may inspire other scholars.
Primarily, Green-Simms sees her examination of avant-garde films, realist dramas, popular melodramas, occult films, and a music video as demonstrating that the types of resistance the texts restage “are always multilayered, always determined by a complex entanglement of racial, gendered, and sexual identities and national politics...