The Pan-African Cinema Movement: Achievements, Misfortunes, and Failures (1969–2020)

Abstract

The Pan-African Cinema Movement:Achievements, Misfortunes, and Failures (1969–2020) Férid Boughedir (bio) Survival of intercultural dialogue, failure of economic strategy, and solidarity action Is it a coincidence that in the past decade in Africa, the two revolutions against the injustice of a prolonged dictatorial power—two spontaneous popular uprisings, without political guidance or leadership, eventually forcing both heads of state into exile—have a common point that has never been mentioned for the occasion? These two countries, Burkina Faso and Tunisia, are the only countries on the continent to have regularly organized Pan-African film festivals since the 1960s, soon after their political independence from French colonialism: the Carthage Film Festival (CFF, Journées Cinématographiques de Carthage) born in 1966 in Tunisia, and the Pan-African Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou (Festival panafricain du cinema et de la télévision de Ouagadougou, FESPACO) born in 1969 in Burkina Faso. Both Festivals are a tremendous popular success with a record audience. They have been creating for more than half a century a new type of African viewer, aware and eager to see their own image finally filmed by Africans, after more than a century of colonial denial of their cultures and identities! Could the cinematographic Pan-Africanism initiated by these two countries represent a vehicle for regular cultural dialogue between the two shores of the Sahara and between the different language areas of Africa, as well as a vector of social and political awareness through the power of the seventh art image? In other words, the famous role of "evening class," meaningful even to the illiterate, attributed from the outset by the doyen of Senegalese filmmakers, Ousmane Sembène, to African cinemas. This question is definitely worth asking for me, some years after the 50th anniversary of both the FESPACO and the Carthage Film Festival. It seemed useful to me to offer a point of view of their history, subjective of [End Page 236] course, since I was one of the actors. I want to help to trace, without complacency, part of the adventure and evolution of this unitary movement led mainly by artists and referred to as "the Pan-African Cinema movement" or "Cinematographic Pan-Africanism" through the successes and failures of these institutions. I. Birth of Cinematographic Pan-Africanism Historically, the concept of cinematographic Pan-Africanism was born in 1969, with the first (non-competitive) edition of the FESPACO in Ouagadougou and the first Pan-African Cultural Festival in Algiers. A year earlier, the 1968 Carthage Film Festival (CFF, born in Tunisia in 1966, the same year as the Festival of Black Arts in Dakar) officially integrated this concept because of the geographical and cultural situation of Tunisia which made the competition both Pan-African and Pan-Arab. As a result, the non-African Arab countries of the Middle East joined the Arab speaking countries of North Africa in the competition. Cinematographic Pan-Africanism as a movement of intercultural dialogue through festivals—launched by the Carthage Film Festival in 1969 and the FESPACO in 1969—has experienced a constant expansion, as evidenced by the emergence of many other festivals in all regions of Africa: 1. East Africa • In 1981, the MOGPAFIS (Mogadishu Film Symposium) was launched in Somalia. I took part in its implementation with the Pan-African Federation of Filmmakers (FEPACI). • The MOGPAFIS survived until 1987, near the end of Siad Barre's regime. • Zanzibar International Film Festival in Zanzibar. 2. Southern Africa • Zimbabwe International Film Festival in Harare, Zimbabwe. • The DOCKANEMA in Maputo, Mozambique. • Sithengi Cinema Festival in Cape Town and Durban International Film Festival in South Africa. 3. West Africa • The RECIDAK (Dakar Film Meetings), launched by Annette Mbaye d'Erneville in Senegal. [End Page 237] • The Quintessence or International Film Festival of Ouidah, launched by Jean Odoutan in Benin. 4. Central Africa • The Black Screens Festival, launched by Bassek Ba Kobhio in Cameroon. 5. North Africa • The African Film Festival in Khouribga, founded by Nour-Eddine Saïl, one of the undisputed "fathers" of Moroccan cinema, who died from the coronavirus at the end of 2020. • Cinematographic Framework of Hergla founded by Mohamed Challouf, spiritual son of Tahar Cheriaa...