Africa: CODESRIA at FESPACO 2009: New Directions in African Cinema
The Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA), in partnership with the Pan African Film and Television Festival (FESPACO ), is pleased to announce a two day workshop on “New Directions in African Cinema” that it is organising in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, on 4th-5th March 2009. FESPACO is a biannual event which was founded in 1969 to promote the development of the African cinema industry by providing a venue to reflect on, showcase and celebrate achievements in the industry.
CODESRIA at FESPACO 2009: New Directions in African Cinema
Date: 4th-5th March, 2009
Venue: Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.
The Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA), in partnership with the Pan African Film and Television Festival (FESPACO ), is pleased to announce a two day workshop on “New Directions in African Cinema” that it is organising in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, on 4th-5th March 2009. FESPACO is a biannual event which was founded in 1969 to promote the development of the African cinema industry by providing a venue to reflect on, showcase and celebrate achievements in the industry. FESPACO seeks to contribute African voices and perspectives to the global cinema movement. The 2009 edition of FESPACO began in Ouagadougou on 28th February, and will end on 7th March 2009.
The theme for the 2009 FESPACO, which is the 21st edition of the festival, coinciding with its40th Anniversary, and the 20th Anniversary for the African Film Library of Ouagadougou, is “African Cinema, Tourism and Cultural Patrimony”. The festival features a wide range of activities to celebrate the anniversaries including itinerant exhibitions on the years of FESPACO and African cinema, film screenings, conferences on FESPACO and the FESPACO Foundation. The 2009 edition will pay tribute to Ousmane Sembène, doyen of African filmmakers and pioneer of FESPACO, who passed away on 9 June 2007.
The CODESRIA workshop will be held at the Splendide Hotel in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. Participants include the Executive Secretary of CODESRIA, Adebayo Olukoshi, Kofi Anyidoho, Convenor of the CODESRIA Pan African Humanities Institute Programme at theUniversity of Ghana Legon, Manthia Diawara, Mbye Cham, Maguèye Kassé, Antoinette Tidjani Alou, Pinkie Mekgwe, Fani-Kayode Omoregie and Africanus Aveh. The workshop, facilitated by Kofi Anyidoho, Manthia Diawara and Pinkie Mekgwe, is structured around four panel discussions on the following themes:
- Writing Africa’s Visual History
- The Pan African Cinematic Frame
- Innovations: Projecting Africa’s Future
- Beyond Four Decades of FESPACO: the Place and Space for Visual Arts in Africa’s Development
Curatorial Statement
In the curatorial statement prepared by Manthia Diawara on behalf of the CODESRIA Humanities Institute Programme, the intention is to use the platform provided by FESPACO to produce a coherent theory of the aims of the new African cinemas. One may even speak of new paradigm shifts in African cinema made possible by the emergence, in the last twenty years or so, of new structures of film and video production, especially in South Africa and Nigeria. Clearly, there are more diverse African cinemas today than 25 years ago, when most of the productions were enabled only by the French Bureau du Cinema. Several policy changes have also intervened at the level of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs--from the Fonds Sud/CNC to ARTE/France and the European Union funds in Brussels to the sponsorship of FESPACO--to lead us to speculate beyond the monolithic offering of African films as provided by art houses and festivals. At the very least, no serious scholar can any longer afford to ignore the industrial and cinematic success of Nollywood videos.
Contemporary African cinemas have assumed the role that African literature used to play in the 1960s. Just as the writings of Chinua Achebe, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Wole Soyinka and others depicted the movements of decolonization and the utopia of independence, today, African filmmakers concern themselves with postcolonial desires in the political, economic and cultural regimes imposed by globalization.
What is fascinating about the new African cinemas is the manner in which they give voice to Africans to communicate trans-nationally to citizens in other public spheres. The films reveal to us different points of views on such global themes as the end of the nationalist utopia in Africa, the impact of structural adjustment, migration, war, identity politics and environmental and health issues.
The primary intention behind this workshop and programming of African films at FESPACO is to draw attention to new directions and creative visions in contemporary African cinema. CODESRIA is of the view that there are new, contending and often conflicting film languages and critical stances coming out of Africa today that have remained invisible largely because of a monolithic and politically correct definition of African cinema by Western art houses and festivals.
The workshop will aim to unveil the diversity of African film languages, and the different creative and political visions behind them. CODESRIA believes that the best way to reveal these diverse film languages—from Djibril Diop Mambety, to John Akomfrah, Abderrhamane Sissako, Balufu Bakupa Kayinda, Jean-Pierre Bekolo and the Nollywood videos—is through a curatorial vision that emphasizes not only the difference between African cinema and cinema in the West, but also the diversity of film languages and political engagements in Africa.