ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT
FESPACO - Africa’s Hollywood Held in Burkina Faso (West Africa), the festival was started in 1969 to help counter the growing influence of Western culture.Today, it has caught the eye of filmmakers and audience from outside the continent.
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By Emily Bowers OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso
he lights here are bright, the stars are plenty and the fans queue up for the top movies. But it ’s not Toronto, or Cannes, and it doesn ’t try to be. This is Africa ’s Hollywood, the Pan-African Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou, or FESPACO, the biggest festival showcasing African cinema anywhere. Every two years, this African city comes alive with home-made cinema, bringing African stories to its own silver screens, delighting audiences of local Burkinabé and foreigners alike, who pay about US$2 a ticket. More than 200 films are screened in theatres across the city, from feature films in contention for the festival ’s top prize to short flicks from around the world. For the landlocked West African nation of Burkina Faso nestled deep in the Sahel – a hot, dry region between the lush tropical south and the northern Sahara desert – the film festival represents an economic boom and a chance to show off its culture. But for African filmmakers, FESPACO is a chance to tell their own stories to a diverse audience of Africans and foreigners. Sylvestre Amoussou has been living in Paris for 20 years, but is originally from the tiny West African nation of Benin. His film Africa Paradis reverses the immigration tale: economic troubles and civil wars in Europe have forced thousands to try to migrate to Africa. Amoussou says FESPACO is the chance for Africans to see stories about themselves, made by Africans, instead of by filmmakers from outside the continent. It ’s a chance to reclaim African stories and tell them to the world, he said, instead of the usual reverse. And African filmmakers are tackling timely and sensitive subjects such as immigration, continental politics, religion and the clash of
traditional culture with modernisation. But making a movie in Africa isn ’t easy, Amoussou says. The big challenge for filmmakers here is funding, getting money to make their movies that aren ’t backed by a Hollywood studio. Like many independent filmmakers, Africans have to scrounge for money. Amoussou ’s Africa Paradis got a majority of its 2 million euro budget from Africans in the Diaspora, along with a bit from his European co-producer and some funding from European donor governments. Outside of the festival atmosphere of parties and screenings for a week in Burkina Faso, this is a challenging time for African cinema. The English-language market is dominated by Nigeria ’s so-called Nollywood, a prolific industry that makes films straight to video compact discs that are sold in markets in Nigeria and beyond. Shot with small budgets, simplistic storylines and usually in just a few weeks, Nollywood has helped erase much of the domestic film-going market, with cinemas closing down commonly across the continent. So FESPACO comes as a bi-annual breath of fresh air for African cinephiles. And going to a movie in Burkina Faso, which ranks fourth from the bottom on the United Nations ’ Human Development Index, is an event on its own. For the most popular movies, selling out means filling the aisles and having people perch on any free space. During the screenings, animated conversations break out, cellphones chirp and scenes that make one person cry makes another giggle. Burkina ’s theatres are full year-round with both American and locally-made movies. This year ’s FESPACO included screenings of Blood Diamond and The Last King of Scotland, garnering some of the longest line-ups of the festival of fans eager to get inside. But at a time when Hollywood-made, African-themed
FESPACO is the biggest festival showcasing African cinema anywhere.
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Daria! Issue III