What does open-access scholarship say about griot-informed oral storytelling in West African screen narratives, and what limits does it state?

A 2022 University of Cape Town PhD thesis reviews scholarship that likens West African filmmakers to griots and proposes a model of how filmmakers mediate oral tradition, analysed through three films chosen because they adapt literature drawn from oral tradition (Xala, Karmen Gei, Invasion 1897). The griot comparison is a cited scholarly interpretation, and the selected sample cannot stand for West African cinema generally; no production workflow is documented. Curator qualifications: Article and thesis read 2026-10-22; scholarly interpretation, not production records. Thesis restricted to private study or non-commercial research: rights hold on reuse beyond short quotation. Limitations: Article and thesis read 2026-10-22; scholarly interpretation, not production records. Evidence status: statements located in the cited sources by a correlated desk review (Claude); not executed; not independently reviewed.

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