Thread: FESPACO 2011 – Preview

The 22nd edition of Africa's largest film festival promises a bright future for one of the world's fastest growing film industries

This year’s FESPACO Film Festival sees the hot, dusty streets of Ouagadougou, capital of Burkina Faso, come alive with festival goers from across Africa and, indeed, the world.

The French colony formerly known as Upper Volta was renamed Burkina Faso (meaning ‘Land of Upright Men’) by colourful revolutionary former President Thomas Sankara. A keen proponent of FESPACO, his legacy lives on with successive governments throwing their weight behind what was originally conceived as a pan-African celebration, using film as a means for militants and revolutionaries.

Over the last 20 years the emphasis of the festival has shifted and a new generation of filmmakers, heavily influenced by the success of Nollywood, has moved away from a cinema of auteurs, bankrolled by the French government or the EU. African cinema is now a legitimate commercial venture, and African business is supporting homegrown filmmakers to take advantage of low-cost digital video.

As well as being the showcase for African cinema and television, FESPACO also features conferences, debates, masterclasses, programmes of free music concerts and a huge market promoting local products. FESPACO 2011 takes place over several venues, including SIAO, a large convention centre transformed into a mediatheque where audiences can take in a variety of feature films, documentaries, soap operas.

On Monday February 28 a conference organised by a consortium of media partners on new initiatives for distribution of African cinema takes place, and the mothballed city centre screens are reopened specially for the week-long running of the festival. Just a hint at the importance and prestige the FESPACO holds.

FESPACO 2011 – Preview | Blog | littlewhitelies.co.uk