 Per Harrow, African women filmmakers became prolific during the 1980s and 1990s, "finally providing us with something more significant than Sembene's images of long-oppressed wives or daughters" and that "Perhaps the best way to understand post-engagement cinema is as that of a cinema that has begun to turn in the direction of women as harbingers for Africa's future.” Woman centric films were traditionally less essentialist and less about double repression by African patriarchal culture and Western colonising forces.Themes are a common element in cinema and the cinema of Africa often covers colonialism and its aftermath, among other topics and events that have impacted life in Africa.Films that feature or are directed by African women may contain themes such as eroticism, African feminism, objectification, or arranged marriage and polygamy.