BY MULUGETA GUDETA
The 28th edition of the FESPACO or the Panafrican Film and Television Festival recently took place in the Burkina Faso capital Ouagadougou in the presence of professionals of the African and Diaspora film and audiovisual industry, partners and media people, film and audiovisual researchers, and personalities from the world of arts and culture and members of the international selection committee that was nominated as part of the preparation for the festival. The selection committee members were nominated from a crop of talented and young African filmmakers, film critics and others who are playing a leading role in African and world film development.
Although the selection committee members were gathered earlier in 2022, an unfortunate event, namely the military coup that took place in the country almost six months back did not lead either to the postponement of the scheduled opening of the festival.
The hard work, determination, resilience and courage of the organizers could help change what earlier this year rather looked an uphill battle to turn challenges into a success story although not all the pre-festival expectations were met. The festival could be described as a positive flashpoint in the midst of the otherwise controversial political development in that proud African country.
What was therefore surprising about this year’s celebration of FESPACO or, was, as indicated above, the fact that it was planned in an atmosphere of normal political life while it was opened in a different atmosphere of post-coup atmosphere of uncertainty as the situation is not fully unresolved and remains largely precarious. Delegates to the festival nevertheless managed to come to the capital Ouagadougou to attend the 28th version of FESPACO which is in itself a show of dedication and respect to African culture in general and the art of cinematography in particular.
FESPACO or the Panafrican Film and Television Festival based in the Burkinabe capital Ouagadougou is a festival that “offers African film professionals the chance to establish working relationships, to exchange ideas and to promote their work. FESPACO’s stated aim is to “contribute to the expansion and development of African cinema, education as means of expression and awareness-raising.”
What is remarkable about FESPACO is that it is also working to establish a market for African films and industry professionals. Since it was established in 1969, FESPACO has invited festival attendees from across the continent and beyond Africa. Organizers at major international film festivals as well as the rising stars of African cinema had attended events in Ouagadougou. FESPACO is also the first Pan–African organization of its kind that was established by some of the pioneers of African cinema such as Sembene Ousman and others.
Historically, the establishment of the festival coincided with what is known in Africa as “the independence decade” of the 1960s when most African nations got independence from their former colonizers. It was a time of hope and great expectations and the festival was impacted by the subsequent historic events. The first festival in 1969 best expresses the main objective of the festival as it was undertaken under the theme of “the cinema, people and liberation”.
FESPACO was thus born in the fire of the early years of the post-colonial political process and reflected what the founders wanted to do with it. For the founding countries of FESPACO were Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Niger and Senegal. France and the Netherlands that were also represented at the festival and a total of 23 films were shown.
Nine African countries were represented at the second FESPACO while 40 films were shown. The festival has shown steady increase in the number of participating countries and the films that were shown at different stages of development. Different themes were selected for every annual festival and the main theme for the 2007 festival was for instance “the actor in the creation and promotion of African films”.
The main themes of the festival always reflected what was at stake for African cinema at a particular moment. Thus FESPACO has travelled a long way from its inception to the present covering a total of more than 50 years.
The festival has experienced many twists and turns in its long existence as a major Pan-African cultural institution. However, as political events in Africa changed through time, new challenges presented themselves for African filmmakers. Although FESPACO is the first and oldest film festival, there are at least four major international film festivals that feature African cinema. These are the Pan- African Film Festival, the Panafrican Film and Television Festival, the African Film Festival and the New York African Film Festival.
There are also film festivals that take place in individual African countries, including the Addis Ababa International Film Festival. “It is an annual cultural event organized by Initiative Africa. It is a unique initiative to use the power of documentaries and short films to support innovative ways of creating awareness of social issues.”
The Addis Ababa International Film Festival has many achievements to its credit. According to available information, “Thirteen successive annual events have taken place from 2007 to 2019. Participation in the organization of the film festival has grown from a modest two volunteers in 2007 to more than thirty in 2018. It has showcased many local filmmakers at the festival, thereby promoting their films and celebrating their unique documentary film content.”
Coming back to FESPACO, the first truly African Film Festival was born in an atmosphere of African combativeness against colonial and neocolonial oppression when the centuries old African social and cultural traditions were considered “primitive” or “uncivilized” by European and American political and cultural authorities. African Cinema has been fighting against these and other stereotypes and biases for much of the last half a century.
Meanwhile FESPACO has grown from a small local initiative by educated African intellectuals and politicians, into another powerful cultural expression of the African people who are still living under economic and cultural oppression in the context of the so-called globalization of culture and under Western cultural hegemony. The Western film industry is a real behemoth or a colossus that is still undermining every small initiative in Africa on its unstoppable journey to global cultural domination.
It is sometimes proving almost impossible to withstand its supremacy although African filmmakers are constantly trying to tell the world their side of the story of African film development or make their cases heard by the global audience that has been always mesmerized by Hollywood. It is a kind of David versus Goliad fight in the lavish and technology-savvy and the biggest money making machinery in the world of global cinema.
The force behind the ongoing ebb and flow in African film productions, starting from the financial to the technological and story aspects, is Western cinema and more particularly American cinema. It is shaping cinematic tastes as well as impacting the success and failures in Third World cinema as such. Hollywood is not of course interested in the production of films with African or black themes.
The struggles for cultural liberation, the challenges of Diaspora Africans or immigrants who are uprooted and who are threatened with loss of identity are not interesting issues to Hollywood. And when it permits the production of black films by black actors, black casts and black directors working around black inspired themes it is rather lured by the money involved rather than by generosity or solidarity with black people anywhere in the world.
Suffice it to see how “Black Panther” and its sequel “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” were imagined and realized as blockbusters with new ideas and new techniques, themes and special effects. The films are of course highly imaginative or symbolic rendering of the potential true face of blackness in our contemporary world which far from being the high-flying fantasy it is in “Black Panther”.
Hollywood rarely allows such films to find their niche in its world of white movie moguls for their fantastic portrayal of the real-life black lives that are found in African ghettoes and American backstreets or London subways or in French refugee centers and German shelters where blackness is less than heroic and more than fantastic.
African cinema or FESPACO as it celebration has not yet made its point by exploring the universal black condition which is sometimes more brutal than the human condition in general. There have been brilliant Africa filmmakers along the way but not powerful ones who could fight and win the battle for the equality of blackness in global culture.
African cinema and African film festivals should not therefore be the only avenues for annual gatherings of the best and brightest African films and filmmakers whose works are often shaped by Western studios and techniques to reflect black lives that do not matter for them to the global audience and to the black people themselves. The festivals should rather be platforms for shaping a new approach to African cinema, not in the technical sense but in the thematic or narrative sense, as well as a new African film policy that might be shaped in line with the African vision of to total liberation from neocolonialism as well as aggressive globalism. African cinema therefore needs to be turned into a powerful cultural weapon in the fight against the Western cultural behemoth as the first theme of the FESPACO festival back in 1969 affirmed.
The Ethiopian Herald March 18/2023
