Filmmakers in sub-Saharan francophone Africa have been using cinema sinceindependence in the 1960s to challenge existing Western stereotypes of thecontinent.

In Africa Shoots Back, Melissa Thackway illustrateshow directors working in a postcolonial context have produced these alternativedepictions of African identity. She shows how memory and history have become centralthemes in African films and how local cultural forms have been integrated into thefilm medium. Interviews with eight African filmmakers enlarge Thackway's account ofthe new cinematic codes and previously silenced voices given life in Africanfilm.