African Films and FESPACO

The Pan-African Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou (FESPACO) was founded in 1969. It began as an intimate week-long gathering of filmmakers and enthusiasts in the capital of what is now Burkina Faso to watch contemporary films made by African filmmakers. At its peak in the 1990s, it attracted hundreds of thousands of spectators, both local and international. Since the 2000s, iterations have been smaller affairs, significantly impacted by both changes of government in Burkina Faso and wider political instability in West Africa, as well as ongoing debates about what films it should be showcasing. Despite such challenges (and with only one exception in the mid-1970s), however, FESPACO has remained a constant on the African continent, faithfully screening films by African and diaspora filmmakers every two years for more than half a century. FESPACO was conceived in the age of decolonization by a group of men and women who are considered to be the pioneers of African cinema, including the Senegalese writer and filmmaker Ousmane Sembène. It was established as the first sub-Saharan showcase of African filmmaking, an emergent and significant field in the era of independence when cinema was prized for its ability to make visible African realities and to (re)constitute national histories eclipsed by colonial rule. The concept of a distinctly “African” cinema was articulated most extensively by filmmaker and scholar Paulin Soumanou Vieyra and referred to films made by Africans, telling African stories, principally for African audiences. For Vieyra, Sembène, and their contemporaries, it was essential to take back control of the art of cinema on the African continent, where it had predominantly been deployed as a colonial tool; FESPACO was conceived as the regular forum for those committed to its development to come together and share their work. Through the course of its development, FESPACO has been confronted with a number of challenges regarding its form and its evolution. Its strong connections with the Burkinabe state have been seen as both a significant factor for its growth and its success, and, particularly in the era of Blaise Compaoré, as a source for concern regarding freedom of expression. Since the turn of the 21st century, questions about where video filmmaking—an industry that has proliferated on the African continent in a manner unprecedented internationally—fits within FESPACO’s definition of cinema have been consistent. The festival has, over the years, been accused of being both outdated and elitist in its commitment to celluloid, but also of straying from its original remit to showcase African stories for African audiences, accusations it has responded to by the creation of new prize categories and requirements for submission. The year 2019 was one of reflection, but many critics felt that after some difficult years the festival was showing signs of rejuvenation. Though it is now one of many film festivals on the continent committed to showcasing African cinema, there remains significant appreciation for the historic status of FESPACO as a preeminent sub-Saharan cultural institution.

Shaming Colonial Africa

An examination of the ways in which shame was used during the colonial period both to encourage submission to the colonial project and to resist that oppression. The primary texts to consider are Le vieux nègre et la médaille by Ferdinand Oyono for its depiction of shame’s utility in maintaining social hierarchies and how, ironically, a shameful narrative can contest that power, Les Bouts de bois de Dieu by Ousmane Sembène, for its more strident shaming and addition of economic and legal aspects of shame, and Le pauvre Christ de Bomba by Mongo Beti and L’Aventure ambiguë by Cheikh Hamidou Kane for their inclusion of the role religious shame plays in colonial oppression.

Le transfert culturel chez Ousmane Sembène : du péritexte auctorial au péritexte traduit

The aim of the contribution is to show, through examples taken from the analysis of paratextual elements, the liminal space lying outside the fiction, how the cultural diversity, of which Ousmane Sembène’s opus is the expression, is treated first by the author and in a second step by the Italian translator, mediating the intercultural dialogue. This research also provides a few useful suggestions for a ‘good’ translation of sub-saharian Francophone literatures.

Periphery and Intimacy in Anti-Imperial Culture and Politics

In the late period of nineteenth- and twentieth-century French imperialism, French thinkers, artists, and colonists had long held a fascination with the “others” inhabiting France’s colonies. Intimate contact and cross-cultural encounters led to descriptions and often violent differentiations of these groups that helped define French identity. But what might we learn by employing a “postcolonial praxis” that seeks new ways of interrogating identity from anti-imperial actors? Taking the perspectives of three key anti-imperialists—Frantz Fanon, Ousmane Sembène, and Simone Lellouche Othmani—this article unearths their perceptions about France and French identity. For these figures, France could represent either an unfulfilled promised land or a place of exile. Frenchness, likewise, ran the spectrum from a set of desired if unattainable qualities, an immoral culture to be resisted at all costs, to a national identity to be deployed for political strategy. This radical approach turns Frenchness into an “other” while contributing to the emergence of new postcolonial identities. At the same time, it demonstrates how three important definitions of France and of Frenchness depended upon both peripheral positionality and intimate access to French culture.

Film Comedy in Africa

The rich oral traditions of storytelling in Black Africa have evolved into cinematic forms, adapting social satire and political humor to the realities of modern life. After a brief history of the region and its early encounters with the medium of motion pictures, this chapter introduces concepts like négritude, the griot storyteller, pan-Africanism, and Afropolitanism to explain how African beliefs and sub-Saharan cinema differ from others in the world and how African filmmakers like Ousmane Sembène and Djibril Diop Mambéty, Jean-Pierre Bekolo and Adama Drabo, Henri Duparc and Benoît Lamy, Flores Gomes and Fanta Régina Nacro have fashioned a cinema that reflects the way Africans see themselves and their place in the world.