Africa's Fourth Cinema

A Yorùbá Ontology

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by Saheed Adesumbo Bello

Type

Studies

Subject

Countries > Africa

Keywords

Africa

Publishing date

2026 (November 09, 2026)

Publisher

Routledge

Collection

Routledge African Media, Culture and Communication Studies

Language

English

Relative size

Physical desc.

Hardcover • 88 pages
5 ½ x 8 ½ inches (14 x 21.5 cm)

ISBN

978-1-032-94136-3

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Book Presentation:
This book investigates the power that film has in philosophizing from an African perspective. In so doing, this book helps to decolonize, de‑Westernize, and diversify our understanding of the relationship between film and philosophy.

Premised on Wole Soyinka’s the Fourth Stage, which is also known as the fourth area of experience where the metaphysical questions of the past, the present, and the future are entangled, this book conceptualizes the Fourth Cinema. Connecting the fields of divinity, philosophy, and film studies, this book provides a Yorùbá ontology of film, grounded in the oratures and rituals of Òrìsà (Yorùbá Gods), which have gone through several media of storytelling before the invention of film technology. This book explores the metaphysical sources of the fourth cinema in the motifs, colours, sounds, and other languages/metaphors of Òrìsà; and thus, discusses the themes of individuality, communality, morality, drama, sacrifice, spirituality, death, tragedy, and annihilation via the fourth cinematic storytelling.

At a time when African film, and Nollywood in particular, is growing and gaining in international acclaim, this book provides an important non‑Western study of the intersection between film and philosophy. It will be of interest to researchers of world religions, philosophies, and cinema.

See the publisher website: Routledge