Ignoring Africa comes as second nature to the West, as the former masters turn their eyes away not only from the political and economic chaos left behind by centuries of ruthless colonialism but from the struggling film industries that have, with little benefit of Western investment and influence, produced such masters as Djibril Diop Mambety and Ousmene Sambene of Senegal, and Idrissa Ouedraogo of Burkina Faso. These days, however, as the current (though the films aren’t all new) African Film Festival at the Museum of Fine Arts suggests, Africa is being ignored by Africans as well, or at least its film industry is. And some African filmmakers have turned their gaze inward.

That’s certainly the case with Bye Bye Africa (1998; February 2 at 8 p.m.), expatriate director Mahamat Saleh Haroun’s prolonged, self-reflexive adieu to his native land of Chad (it screened a few weeks ago as part of the Human Rights Festival). Made in the spirit of Godard (who is quoted to the effect that cinema preserves memory) by way of Wim Wenders and Abbas Kiarostami, it opens with the filmmaker being awakened in his Parisian apartment by news of his mother’s death back in the old country. He returns for the first time in years, finding the film industry in shambles and the cinemas in ruins, replaced by “video clubs” featuring Hollywood junk. Undaunted, he strives to make a film titled Bye Bye Africa, and the circle is complete. It’s all a little self-enclosed, perhaps, but Haroun has a good eye and a resonant presence. Shots of derelict theaters and their owners evoke Wenders’s Kings of the Road, and a persistent little boy with a mock homemade camera suggests that the urge to make movies will prevail regardless of who’s watching.

Taking a more direct approach to the encroachment of Hollywood is Cameroon filmmaker Jean-Pierre Békolo’s spiky allegory Aristotle’s Plot (1996; February 3 at 3:45 p.m.). A zealous cinéaste decides to purge African cinema of Western domination and restore native cultural values and traditions to the screen. To that end, he concocts a pulpy allegory in which he becomes a philosophical superhero who does battle with Van Damme Schwarzenegger, and Lee.

Well, maybe not the real Jean-Claude, Arnold, and Bruce — those are the names taken by denizens of one of the local video clubs (the kind that, as in Bye Bye Africa, show Hollywood junk). In any case, the ensuing gun battles and tortured dialectics are not much clarified by the filmmaker’s voiceover meditations applying Aristotelean æsthetics to the whole affair. A certain Richard Lester zaniness lifts some of the heavier going, and at times the murky metaphors clarify and create a lucid insight into the quandary of the African filmmaker, who must straddle Western and traditional cultures and choose between compromise and irrelevance. In the end, though, I wish Békolo had heeded the ancient sage’s advice to imitate an action, not a fuzzy concept.

Jean Odoutan’s Barbecue-Pejo (1999; February 3 at 2 p.m.) appears to have done so. This film was not available for screening, but its tale of a Beninese corn farmer who buys an old Peugeot in the hope of becoming a bush cab driver sounds as if it were aiming to balance black-comic naturalism and sociological fable: when the engine, inevitably, gives out, the farmer converts it into a flour mill.

The hero of South African filmmaker Ntshaveni Wa Luruli’s Chikin Biznis (1998; February 9 at 6 p.m.) is similarly resourceful. Sipho, a wizened drone working on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, has chucked his job after 20 years to seek his fortune by more traditional means — selling live chickens at the marketplace. Employing a disreputable pal named Babyface as an assistant, he buys a van and a hundred fowl and embarks on his new career.

It’s a rough start, both for the movie and for Sipho. A rival chicken vendor casts a spell, and Sipho, who looks a little like Redd Foxx, indulges in some cut-ups worthy of ’70s American sit-coms when — as his wife ruefully remarks — his chicken business has made him think he’s a rooster. But the lemony-lit dusty streets of Soweto, with its particolored façades, the irrepressible soundtrack of South African music, and the hearty performances of the vivid ensemble smooth the rough edges. Slyly but resoundingly the film becomes a celebration of community and individual empowerment. There may not be much reference to show business in Chikin Biznis — Babyface is almost lynched by a mob when he’s caught selling portraits taken by a camera with no film — but the business of living shines with a conviction that’s impossible to ignore.

Ignoring Africa comes as second nature to the West, as the former masters turn their eyes away not only from the political and economic chaos left behind by centuries of ruthless colonialism but from the struggling film industries that have, with little benefit of Western investment and influence, produced such masters as Djibril Diop Mambety and Ousmene Sambene of Senegal, and Idrissa Ouedraogo of Burkina Faso. These days, however, as the current (though the films aren’t all new) African Film Festival at the Museum of Fine Arts suggests, Africa is being ignored by Africans as well, or at least its film industry is. And some African filmmakers have turned their gaze inward.

That’s certainly the case with Bye Bye Africa (1998; February 2 at 8 p.m.), expatriate director Mahamat Saleh Haroun’s prolonged, self-reflexive adieu to his native land of Chad (it screened a few weeks ago as part of the Human Rights Festival). Made in the spirit of Godard (who is quoted to the effect that cinema preserves memory) by way of Wim Wenders and Abbas Kiarostami, it opens with the filmmaker being awakened in his Parisian apartment by news of his mother’s death back in the old country. He returns for the first time in years, finding the film industry in shambles and the cinemas in ruins, replaced by “video clubs” featuring Hollywood junk. Undaunted, he strives to make a film titled Bye Bye Africa, and the circle is complete. It’s all a little self-enclosed, perhaps, but Haroun has a good eye and a resonant presence. Shots of derelict theaters and their owners evoke Wenders’s Kings of the Road, and a persistent little boy with a mock homemade camera suggests that the urge to make movies will prevail regardless of who’s watching.

Taking a more direct approach to the encroachment of Hollywood is Cameroon filmmaker Jean-Pierre Békolo’s spiky allegory Aristotle’s Plot (1996; February 3 at 3:45 p.m.). A zealous cinéaste decides to purge African cinema of Western domination and restore native cultural values and traditions to the screen. To that end, he concocts a pulpy allegory in which he becomes a philosophical superhero who does battle with Van Damme Schwarzenegger, and Lee.

Well, maybe not the real Jean-Claude, Arnold, and Bruce — those are the names taken by denizens of one of the local video clubs (the kind that, as in Bye Bye Africa, show Hollywood junk). In any case, the ensuing gun battles and tortured dialectics are not much clarified by the filmmaker’s voiceover meditations applying Aristotelean æsthetics to the whole affair. A certain Richard Lester zaniness lifts some of the heavier going, and at times the murky metaphors clarify and create a lucid insight into the quandary of the African filmmaker, who must straddle Western and traditional cultures and choose between compromise and irrelevance. In the end, though, I wish Békolo had heeded the ancient sage’s advice to imitate an action, not a fuzzy concept.

Jean Odoutan’s Barbecue-Pejo (1999; February 3 at 2 p.m.) appears to have done so. This film was not available for screening, but its tale of a Beninese corn farmer who buys an old Peugeot in the hope of becoming a bush cab driver sounds as if it were aiming to balance black-comic naturalism and sociological fable: when the engine, inevitably, gives out, the farmer converts it into a flour mill.

The hero of South African filmmaker Ntshaveni Wa Luruli’s Chikin Biznis (1998; February 9 at 6 p.m.) is similarly resourceful. Sipho, a wizened drone working on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, has chucked his job after 20 years to seek his fortune by more traditional means — selling live chickens at the marketplace. Employing a disreputable pal named Babyface as an assistant, he buys a van and a hundred fowl and embarks on his new career.

It’s a rough start, both for the movie and for Sipho. A rival chicken vendor casts a spell, and Sipho, who looks a little like Redd Foxx, indulges in some cut-ups worthy of ’70s American sit-coms when — as his wife ruefully remarks — his chicken business has made him think he’s a rooster. But the lemony-lit dusty streets of Soweto, with its particolored façades, the irrepressible soundtrack of South African music, and the hearty performances of the vivid ensemble smooth the rough edges. Slyly but resoundingly the film becomes a celebration of community and individual empowerment. There may not be much reference to show business in Chikin Biznis — Babyface is almost lynched by a mob when he’s caught selling portraits taken by a camera with no film — but the business of living shines with a conviction that’s impossible to ignore.