This article aims to recall the significance of the ‘relationship to memory’ in cinematic and audio-visual media in Sub-Saharan Africa in contrast to the often ideological uses which have been made of a ‘relationship to history’. The article begins by reconsidering attempts to represent history by directors such as Ousmane Sembène, Med Hondo and Haile Gerima, by analysing these representations within the framework of political discourse of legitimization. Then, this article attempts to situate this discourse within the critical and theoretical literature which have appeared in relation to African cinema since the 1970s; thus the question is to determine limitations which must necessarily be assigned to this discourse of political legitimization, within a theoretical framework which includes a ‘methodological-epistemological’ point of view as well as an aesthetical one. The article then reconsiders some African films made since the 1990s in which a ‘relationship to memory’ was involved. The article concludes that, in discourse about African media, the danger has always been more on the side of the political legitimization of a certain relationship to history the symbolical and aesthetical relationship to memory.