Fifty Years of Memories for Shaping the Future!

Abstract

Fifty Years of Memories for Shaping the Future! Rémi Abéga (bio) We are at the crossroads of a long, tumultuous walk that has punctuated the lives of so many filmmakers and image operators in Africa. Moments of confrontation of memories and glances on African peoples and their Diasporas. So many exciting movies gave birth to an indelible African identity, taken to the pantheon of exchanges among civilizations from all over the world. This is the place where Africa and Africans have impregnated their various audiovisual and cinematographic approaches, where industries and image economies have developed and stated in a spirit of diversity, two great models, of which one is at the trailer of Nigeria, South Africa, and Ghana, and the other, in the maturation of a hybrid economic system, where so many countries and cinematographic approaches are still seeking ways and means for their survival since independence. Given the magic of the African image underpinned by the relevance and recurrence of FESPACO, whose history provides sufficient information on the pathways of fifty-years-old Pan-African cinema, one would have had far fewer references from the past and dreams to forge a future, starting from this mirror that projects today in the face of the world, a fairly comforting reality of images from Africa. In the exhortation of value scales and multicultural approaches that govern every corner of the African continent and its Diasporas, the thickness of our consciences and the vitality of our expectations are gradually shaping a system where genius and technologies serve as leftovers to the progressive construction of contributions and aftermaths of powers. Hence the option of enlivening and glorifying this fiftieth meeting, FESPACO, in its essence and its extensions innocently born in naive hands and under the impulse of a generation seduced by the magnetism of the seventh art, and carried away by the tireless efforts of women and men of value who made the Pan-African Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou (FESPACO), the world-class international event it has become. [End Page 337] Also, as a hymn and by reference to the poetry of one of the most illustrious champions of twentieth century Negritude, we must sing and dance to the glory of FESPACO, celebrate these mythical actions and the influence of this Pan-African institution among the most captivating events of the continent, that has generated so many feats, winners, and stars of African cinema and audiovisual. Yes, let's sing and dance for this festival where are screened every two years for five decades, many films that convey through African and diaspora images, various forms of cultural expressions in the field of creative arts, whether literary, musical, decorative, or specific, etc., all of which are anchored in the bubbling of our habits and customs; so many memorable landmarks that symbolize the dynamism of many trajectories and generations. We must sing and dance on the occasion of this fiftieth anniversary, as artists invigorated by the past and confident in a dazzling future, for these women and men of art, and for all African peoples often misunderstood or embittered, sometimes bruised and weakened, but always attractive and desirable. They create, develop, animate, convey, and proclaim in unison, the precepts of a common cinematographic heritage. Let's sing and dance for our cinematographic productions, often victims of the indifference of elites who lack the emotion and/or willingness to imitate what is done elsewhere, and who turn African filmmakers into a caste of fearsome, scaring, and sometimes marginalized people without real privileges or recognition established by society, nevertheless special people who capture and tirelessly illuminate poor and precarious civilizations. Together, we must sing and dance with frenzy and without shame to repulse instrumentalism and immobilism, in order to give our people and our environment, the social dynamics of the creators of Works of the Mind, in our countries with their specific realities, where it is not superfluous to note that others are moving backwards, or pulling down the icons and symbols of an African cinema carried by FESPACO, so that the maturation of socio-professional bodies and development opportunities rebound! For the memory of the founders and forerunners of FESPACO, and for...