Latest Film Research Articles

The “found story” in Derviş Zaim’s cinema: Documentary reality through the possibilities of digital cinema

Derviş Zaim’s cinema is a cinema of exploration. Zaim blends found story with fiction, constructing a framework in which content and form reinforce each other. His films Somersault in a Coffin (1996) and Cycle (2013), based on real events and characters, are rooted in found stories drawn from the fabric of life. Zaim’s latest film, Tavuri (2023), is a cinéma vérité style documentary that chronicles the last five years of the life of con artist Mustafa Serttaş. The possibilities offered by digital cinema contribute significantly to Zaim’s journey along the boundaries between documentary and fiction. This study examines how Zaim incorporates Siegfried Kracauer’s concept of the “found story” into the narrative structure of films, focusing on his use of digital technology while experimenting with different forms and styles within the context of auteur theory. The aim is to analyse the films in terms of characters, plot, setting, mise-en-scène, and editing.

Afrofuturist Horror on the Western Frontier: Capitalism’s Reckoning and Queer Possibilities in Jordan Peele’s Nope

Abstract: As in all his films to date, Jordan Peele deftly weaves metaphor in Nope , his latest film, to critique capitalism and its white supremacist foundations. The film’s monsters include an abstracted alien and a domesticated chimpanzee gone violent and come to signify capitalism’s recalcitrant reckoning. Drawing from Black feminist studies, Afrofuturism, and queer theory’s work on utopia and potential in queer failure, Peele compels viewers to consider Black Americans’ centrality in the formation and destruction of American capitalism. What other worlds become possible in the process of the Black and queer protagonists’ survival against the Lovecraftian monster? This study examines how horror becomes a useful lens—for rethinking the role of Black people in horror, for its contribution towards more critical discussion on capitalism’s legacy and its impending collapse(s). And, most importantly, for centering and imagining decolonial futures led by queer people of color.

Dementia and Relational Forms in Gaspar Noé’s Vortex (2021)

Abstract As the number of diagnoses grows, dementia increasingly seems to represent old age and the cultural fears that surround it. Representations of dementia have recently begun to multiply in a range of cultural forms as their authors rise to the challenge of exploring a condition that is frightening and hard to grasp. This article examines how Gaspar Noé’s latest film, Vortex (2021), provides a unique cinematic reckoning with dementia through its use of a split screen to register each character’s movements, independent from and simultaneous to the other. It argues that the split screen, along with a dense intertextuality and cinematic self-reflexivity, allows for an exploration of relationality that opens up multidirectional forms of narrative, attention, and care. Through these strategies, Vortex dismantles the illusion of the autonomous subject that dementia is often seen to threaten. The article asks about the ethics of representation with regard to Alzheimer’s disease and considers how Noé’s film, within the context of French cinema, might offer a different way of representing the illness: how does Vortex move beyond a neuroscientific reduction of self to memory, while also resisting a compensatory reframing of Alzheimer’s disease to such a positive degree that it disavows the pain and loss that the disease causes?

Changing Narratives of Ageing: Emma Thompson’s Performances of Female Old Age in Late Night and Good Luck to You, Leo Grande

At the onset of her sixtieth decade, Emma Thompson remains an active and prolific actress, whilst 'age' has become a more salient trait in her cinematic roles. In the recent Berlinale presentation of her latest film, Good Luck to You, Leo Grande (2022), Thompson’s declarations on her character (a recently widowed woman called Nancy Stokes) received considerable media attention. Referring to her character’s story, Thompson declared that not only is women’s pleasure silenced and made invisible still in the twenty-first century, but the female ageing body is also hidden and considered a hateful view to look at. Thompson’s previous film in a leading role, Late Night (2019), depicts a similarly critical moment in the life of a successful late-night talk show host called Katherine Newbury, whose career seems to reach a dead end when she turns sixty and the channel she works for decides that her show is not profitable anymore. While Nancy Stokes starts a quest to have an orgasm past her sixtieth birthday, Katherine Newbury’s quest focuses on proving that a woman’s creativity and popularity do not have to diminish with age. In this article, we present a textual analysis of the counter-narratives of female aging developed through two of Emma Thompson’s latest lead roles. Within the genre of dramatic comedy, these cinematic narratives of female old age address and subvert topics that are still considered taboo from either ageist or sexist perspectives, or both, and which are closely related to (female) sexuality, creativity and body image in later life.

Recursos fotográficos en el cine de Wes Anderson. El caso de 'The French Dispatch'

Las relaciones entre fotografía y cine se ubican en una intersección interdisciplinar de los lenguajes artísticos de ambos medios, a la vez, opuestos y complementarios. En este trabajo, nos acercamos a la fotografía como recurso fílmico vinculado a la detención del tiempo y la creación de la memoria individual y colectiva en el discurso cinematográfico. En concreto, se examina la vinculación entre fotografía y cine en la obra de Wes Anderson, tomando su última película, La Crónica Francesa (2021), como caso de estudio. A partir de los trabajos previos de otros autores se ha elaborado una plantilla de análisis, la cual nos ha permitido distinguir la consideración de la fotografía como esencia constitutiva del filme a través de la detención de los elementos profílmicos de la puesta en escena. Del análisis se extrae que el empleo de la fotografía es un recurso narrativo frecuente en el cine de Wes Anderson como parte de las puestas en abismo y la autoconsciencia de la representación, a la vez que presenta implicaciones semióticas en relación con la memoria y el paso del tiempo.

Dream Super-Express: A Cultural History of the World's First Bullet Train by Jessamyn R. Abel

Reviewed by: Dream Super-Express: A Cultural History of the World's First Bullet Train by Jessamyn R. Abel Morris Low (bio) Dream Super-Express: A Cultural History of the World's First Bullet Train By Jessamyn R. Abel. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2022. Pp. ix + 289. Brad Pitt's latest film, Bullet Train (Sony, 2022), reinforces what Jessamyn Abel contends are the contradictory images of Japanese high-speed rail: futuristic but also hiding some of the social problems, power plays, and politics at work in the larger society. Pitt's film is based on Bullet Train: A Novel (2021) by Japanese author Kōtarō Isaka, who portrays the train as the thrilling site of intersecting stories. Abel in her [End Page 269] own way also examines how the idea of the bullet train was used by various actors to promote their own agendas and the affective power of the train in helping the Japanese to reimagine their sense of identity as individuals, as well as at the level of city and nation. Readers of this journal will likely know Takashi Nishiyama's Engineering War and Peace in Modern Japan, 1868–1964 (2014) and Christopher Hood's Shinkansen: From Bullet Train to Symbol of Modern Japan (2006) before it. Abel builds on these studies. Steering largely clear of the technical matters that Nishiyama and others have written about and going beyond the chronological history that Hood helps provide, she regards the bullet train not as representing a major technological leap; her interests lie elsewhere. While readers may be familiar with Abel's recent articles on the topic, versions of which are included in the book, the total is greater than the sum. Each chapter provides insights combined with thoughtful analysis and offers a range of perspectives backed up by careful archival research that provides us with some sense of official narratives and disputes. We are also introduced to the scholarly literature in both Japanese and English, as well as to relevant magazine and newspaper articles, films, novels, and art. The latter sources allow us to gain some insight into the popular imagination surrounding the train and all its social and political baggage. Those who are interested in the history of railways and know Wolfgang Schivelbusch's The Railway Journey (1986) will be familiar with some aspects of what Abel covers: the ways in which trains transform the landscape, changing ideas of time and space, and regional identity (ch. 2). But Abel goes beyond this. While cultural representations of the bullet train for both domestic and international audiences are part of what she examines, we also are privy to the policy-making process surrounding the bullet train in the planning stages, the fraught decision-making and politicking around the location of stations, and the displacement of residents to make way for the train (ch. 1). The train was linked to the future in terms of Japanese aspirations to become an information society (ch. 3). It also created a moment of nostalgia for Japan's former empire during the 1930s, when the Asia Express ran through Manchuria and there were hopes for a bullet train to be built in Japan itself (ch. 4). These hopes would later be realized, just in time for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, changing perceptions of trains and providing the Japanese government with a symbol of Japanese technological prowess that could be showcased at the 1964–65 New York World's Fair (ch. 5). While the prospect of a superconducting maglev train running between Tokyo and Osaka has been relegated to the distant future (conclusion), the Japanese people continue to embrace high-speed rail for the many reasons that Abel outlines. She makes the simple but profound statement that "people used physical infrastructures to build conceptual ones that would help them make sense of their world and reshape it in ways they hoped would make it better" (p. 19). I [End Page 270] recommend the book to all readers interested in the history of technology. It provides a useful framework for scholars to employ when considering other technologies. We need to pay close attention to how they emerged and were contested, while acknowledging the many meanings that can...

Teologija i/ili (pop)kultura - religija Kriptona

From the end of the 1930s when superhero comics formally appeared, until the latest film and television interpretations, we have seen the extraordinary influence of characters and symbols, of which the most famous and certainly the most recognizable is Superman with his striking superhuman powers. In this paper we wanted to shed light on the religious imagination of different authors. This provided a basis for an attempt to reconstruct what we would call a spiritual background of the most famous character in the world comics. Providing knowledge about the history, mythology and especially about the religion of the planet Krypton, we dared to analyse Raoism as an ancient religion, with its cultural, theological, organizational and ritual peculiarities.

Flux Gourmet: a visual feast with a starved social mission

Deliciously eccentric, stylishly arranged, and uncompromising, Peter Strickland's latest film, Flux Gourmet, is a tale of culinary and alimentary performance, but this latest outing of the British director is all spice and no flavour. His first film since 2018, it only deepens his dive into the bizarre world that we now know he calls home. Although striking and provocative, it stops there in terms of impact on his audience. This highly conceptual piece lacks a sense of togetherness and seems to wander directionless, albeit through a glorious and intriguing landscape.

Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche's Terminal Sud (2019) and the Resurgence of a Franco-Algerian Archive

In this article, the author engages with the latest film by Franco-Algerian filmmaker Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche, Terminal Sud (2019). The article situates the film within a cultural and political context characterized by a variety of polemical discourses: these concern the relationship between cultural memory and the French colonization of Algeria, the Algerian décennie noire (1991-2002), and policies of Franco-Algerian "reconciliation" pursued by the acting French government since 2017. With reference to this immediate context, the author examines a number of political, historical, and theoretical perspectives on the nature of the "archive" before undertaking a critical analysis of Terminal Sud's aesthetic practices of spatio-temporal deterritorialization, mixing semiotic referents, and cinematic aniconism. Through this analysis, the author contends that Terminal Sud enacts a visual recreation of an immaterial Franco-Algerian archive that responds to the fragmentation and destruction suffered by its material counterparts during, and following, French colonization of Algeria in the years 1830-1962. In doing so, this article explores the potential role of visual culture as a means to express a shared Franco-Algerian consciousness.

Guest Workers and Non-Aligned Friends: Postsocialist and Postcolonial Solidarity in Želimir Žilnik’s Recent Films about Migration

ABSTRACT This article examines the intersections of historic and contemporary trajectories of migration in Želimir Žilnik’s latest films. Docudrama Logbook Serbistan (2015) and feature film The Most Beautiful Country in the World (2018) focus on contemporary African and Asian migrants who cross the Balkan route to the European Union. Both films place in conversation the histories of emigration to western Europe from (post)colonial countries and (post)socialist eastern Europe, highlighting the migrants’ shared economic alienation from European prosperity. In turn, documentary Our Man in Gabon (2014) addresses the legacy of the Non-Aligned Movement, which sent many socialist Yugoslav companies and workers to construction sites across the Global South. The films highlight the extent to which Yugoslav socialism depended on migration—the export of to both western Europe and the Global South—which, along with its legacy of Non-Aligned anticolonialism, creates potential for solidarity with contemporary migrants traveling across the Balkans.

Pain and glory: Narrative (De)constructions of older gay men in contemporary Spanish culture and cinema

If (older) gay men have recurrently been stereotyped as hypersexual and as sexually voracious, they have also been represented as weak and effeminate, miserable and lonely, and as less manly than their heterosexual counterparts (Goltz, 2014; Freeman, 2010). Quite often, as Goltz reminds us, the two stereotypes intersect, as in classic films such as Death in Venice, Gods and Monsters, or Love and Death on Long Island, to name but a few, where ageism and homophobia combine to judge intergenerational relations as inappropriate and gay characters as “dirty old men” eager to recover their lost youth. Given these negative images, it is no wonder, then, that both youthism and ableism have become part and parcel of contemporary gay culture, which may also be linked to the few positive cultural images available of aging or disabled gay male bodies (Goltz, 2014). Starting off from the assumption that bodies are shaped and reshaped in complex interactions between physical and symbolic dimensions, the paper will demonstrate, however, how (auto)biographical narratives of older gay men, what we call “egodocuments,” may be useful to rethink such traditional (mis)conceptions. Crossing the traditional divide between the Social Sciences and the Humanities, the study will draw on both life stories and film representations of older gay men in Spain, focusing on Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar's (2019) latest film, Pain and Glory, as a (semi-)autobiographical re-vision of traditional representations of gay men's aging. While Almodovar's protagonist and alter-ego, Salvador Mallo, appears as “prematurely aged” (Curtis and Thompson, 2015) due to bodily pain and disability, the film also travels back and forth from Mallos's childhood and youth to his maturity. This shows aging not only as a life-course experience, but also helps redefine it as a “queer” rather than linear or “straight” experience (Halberstam), allowing for both “pain and glory” to coexist in old age. Almodóvar's portraiture of gay aging will be compared to the life stories collected in a number of focus groups with Spanish older gay men, which will provide equally complex, varied, and often contradictory narratives.

Batman as Modern Revenge Tragedy: The Shakespearean Dark Knight

Batman as Modern Revenge Tragedy: The Shakespearean Dark Knight Both Bob Kane’s Batman and Shakespeare’s Hamlet, lose parents, dress in black, put on antic dispositions, and go on personally motivated, violent missions for justice and revenge. The characters enter what seems to be an infinite mourning, where their innately flawed visions of obtaining justice are paired with unstoppable determinations. With my presentation, I intend on using video to demonstrate the historical trends of the revenge tragedy genre, and analyze their potential connection to the comic book medium, especially Batman. Using video, I can explore “adaptation” and all its nuances by implementing costume and visuals that mirror both the bard and the bat. Comics like The Dark Knight Returns (1986) and feature films like Batman V Superman, The Dark Knight Trilogy, and other Batman films act, in my view, as modern revenge tragedies; perhaps “Batman” becoming the entity that it is today has something to do with a legendary play, Hamlet, or at the very least, the legendary renaissance drama theatrics that might be hidden within it. Additionally, in light of Coen’s latest film, The Tragedy of Macbeth (2021), and Reeves’s The Batman (2022) release around the corner, themes of darkness, “dark knights,” and revenge continue to rivet contemporary consumers of the theatric and the cinematic.

«MULTIGENRE CONVENTION» ЧЕРЕЗ ПРИЗМУ ПОПУЛЯРНОЇ КУЛЬТУРИ США

The article gives a brief description of the most famous festivals and conventions of popular culture in the United States, which include Comic-Con International: San Diego, New York Comic Con, Wizard World Chicago Comic Con, AggieCon, Alamo City Comic Con, All-Con, ApolloCon, Archon, Big Apple Comic Con, Blerdcon, CarnageCon, Chattacon, Chicago Comic & Entertainment Expo, ClexaCon, CoastCon, ConCoction, ConGlomeration, ConnectiCon, CONvergence, Dragon Con, Emerald City Comic Con, Fan Expo Boston, Fan Expo Dallas, FanX, Florida Supercon, Genericon, Heroes Convention, LA Comic Con, MidSouthCon, MOBICON, MomoCon, Motor City Comic Con, Pacific Media Expo, Pensacon, Phoenix Fan Fusion, Sci-Fi Valley Con, Silicon Valley Comic Con, WonderCon, Zenkaikon. The most common thematic areas that fill the main structure of convention programs, in particular presentation of rare and latest examples of the comic’s industry, popularization of the idea of the value of collecting, providing space for novice artists to disseminate their work in the alley of artists. At the same time, with the growing dominance of the video game industry, board and card games, as well as themed collectible toys, remain widely popular. Most festivals feature cosplay competitions that reward the winners, autograph zones with invited celebrities, large-scale panels for exhibitions, where in addition to purely visual pleasure you can join workshops, thematic lectures and seminars. Events include Film Festival, cosplay and costume contests, dances, also the option of game playing. Programs include opportunities to preview the latest film industry news, anime, video game testing and sketches of leading artists from companies specializing in comic book content, exhibition panels with authentic material from the set of popular film franchises and interactions.

Parasite, or What Remains after Class Antagonism

In response to the prevalent reception of his latest film as a class allegory concerning the rich and the poor, Bong Joon-ho suggested that one instead look for Parasite’s appeal in its immanent dimension qua cinematic work. Taking the director at his word, this study traces the unfolding of the film’s plot, starting with the opening sequence, whose quasi-‘slice of life’ depiction of the protagonist (Kim) family’s squalor pans out to oppose the ensuing image of IT company CEO (Park)’s posh lifestyle, thereby laying the ground for the former’s infiltration of the latter’s residence in search of work. To insist on this apparent symbolism of economic disparity, however, is to overlook the narrative’s kaleidoscopic rhythm, which retroactively shifts the significative coordinates of the succeeding scenes. Thus, more than a symbol of affluence and high social standing, Park’s luxurious house functions as what Žižek termed the ‘organizational device’ around which the suspense heightens, giving rise to a continuous variation of filmic genres ranging from a family drama, a caper film, a suspense thriller, a black comedy and so on. This formal aspect of generic vicissitude finds its figurative embodiment in the changing configuration of oppositional dyads, in which groups of characters are continually pitted against one another until the climactic moment of violence, where suddenly rid of signification of the social, the confrontation of sheer bodies erupts. One way to account for this twisty narrative move would be to relate it to the post-revolutionary situation of South Korea in the wake of the 2016 candlelight protest, a condition in which the claims of history still hauntingly reverberate against the mundane backdrop of the post-historical (or post-human) sensibility; but the film’s bearings extend beyond the limits of geographical boundary to the extent that it problematizes our involvement in the film not only as its audience but as living agents caught up in the pulsating inertia of historical change even amidst the protracted impasse of a global pandemic.

Was it obvious to everyone else that I'd fallen for a lie?

When actor Sean Connery died in October, 2020, media coverage focused on his success as the secret agent James Bond. The franchise is still going strong, with Bond now played by Daniel Craig and No Time To Die, the latest film, now in cinemas. That enduring appeal is partly due to the movies consciously keeping up with the times and reflecting contemporary trends. Yet Connery's Bond films are still screened on prime-time TV in the UK; remarkable, given that the first of them, Dr No, is nearly 60 years old and invidiously features White actors made up to look Asian.

Protecting image rights in the face of digitalization: A United States and European analysis

AbstractThe star of the movie “Rebel without a Cause,” James Dean, died in 1955. Yet the latest film he will officially be credited in, dates back to no sooner than 2020. Indeed, the movie “Finding Jack” will incorporate a hologram of James Dean, resurrected from the dead to play a character in this brand new performance under his name. This does not represent an exceptional singular case however. Technology is advancing at a drastic pace; which legislation sometimes struggles to keep up with. The novel ways of digitally reproducing human beings have brought along with them serious questions concerning Personality Rights protection. These rights diverge considerably from one jurisdiction to another, on a variety of topics such as the acknowledgement of posthumous protection or the scope of the right to privacy versus publicity rights, for example. This paper offers an evaluation of these rights, based on a comparative analysis across different civil and common law countries, which will hopefully provide an insight into how image rights are being safeguarded at present. The paper concludes proposing a potential future framework to ensure personality right protection in an increasingly digitized world.

Insistencia y expresión de la memoria

El medio histórico, como lo llama Merleau-Ponty, está constituido tanto por la historia privada como por la historia pública: ninguna de las dos es mera imposición determinista ni mera construcción arbitraria, sino antes bien un campo simbólico abierto y dinámico. Para Merleau-Ponty, en los dos casos tenemos un conjunto simbólico cuyo sentido se presenta como écart(divergencia). En su dialéctica, la actividad y la pasividad son necesarias para tejer este medio individual y público, pero siempre intersubjetivo. En el centro de esta aproximación ontológica se encuentra la memoria y la verdad del pasado. Nos proponemos aplicar este marco a la última trilogía fílmica de Patricio Guzmán ("Nostalgias de la Luz", "El Botón de Nácar", "Cordillera de los Sueños", estrenadas entre 2010-2019, pero especialmente al primer film citado) para analizar la manera que tiene de abordar insistentemente la memoria del acontecimiento chilenocomo llama Guzmán al golpe de estado y la dictadura subsiguiente en su país. Hoy, podemos decir que se ha resignificado dialécticamente la amnesia en memoria viva en la explosión popular del 2019. A pesar de que son películas situadas y enraizadas a un suelo y a una patria (una tierra [terre] como campo perceptivo, afirma Merleau-Ponty en La Pasividad), los acontecimientos son compartidos en una historia y una geopolítica comunes a quienes habitamos el sur del sur. Su estilo de filmar propio es una manera de ser un cuerpo exiliado que vuelve a hundirse en el desierto, el agua y las montañas del sur, pero su manera de ser ese cuerpo está estrecha, salvajemente, relacionada con la nuestra, transandina.

ANALISIS FAKTOR-FAKTOR YANG MEMPENGARUHI MINAT BELI PENONTON PENGGUNA APLIKASI TIKET BIOSKOP ONLINE

Abstract The development of information and communication technology makes all things we need is more practical and easy. For example, ordering or booking ticket for cinema through an application. It is an example of the application of technology that is used to attract the number of buyers by service providers. The easy access on getting product or item is the desire of every consumer. The entry of technology changes the patterns of consumer behaviour from manual to digital or online. The service provider of online cinema ticket provides some features which can attract and will be the important thing for some buyers. The changing of ticket sales through application will definitely change ticket sales figures. This study aims to determine the factors which influence audience buying interest through the online cinema ticket application. The method used is a qualitative method with a case study approach. Data collection is done through interviews with viewers who use the online ticket booth application in buying tickets in the mall jatinangor town square. The results showed several factors that influence the interest in buying tickets using the application, namely time efficiency, promos and discounts, the latest films available (coming soon), the opportunity to get bigger tickets, can determine the choice of seats, avoid the queue, easy to use in transactions.

On the present and future of Brazilian film studies: Some preliminary notes

This article consists of an overview of some of the most recent and influential academic work on the history and esthetics of Brazilian cinema, followed by some speculative notes on the future of Brazilian film scholarship. Based on recent trends and topics in the field of Film Studies in Brazil, I intend to demonstrate how the latest transformations in the Brazilian mediascapes and film market have stirred and molded new approaches to Brazilian cinema, notably amidst a new generation of film scholars. This overview covers Brazilian cinema and its related film scholarship from the “Retomada” years (1993–1994) up until some of the latest film releases (2019), or “Newest Brazilian Cinema.” Without the presumption of being an exhaustive account, this article aims to provide a panoramic and introductory annotated bibliography that will be useful for further studies and an inventory of current state-of-the-art film scholarship in Brazil.

Cultural Politics of Production and Francophone West African Cinema: FESPACO 1999

Cultural Politics of Production and Francophone West African Cinema:FESPACO 1999 Teresa Hoefert de Turégano (bio) The world's leading festival of African cinema, the Pan-African Festival of Cinema and Television in Ouagadougou (FESPACO), celebrated its thirtieth anniversary last year. Held every two years in the capital of Burkina Faso, the festival is a venue where all the latest films by African directors are screened, and anyone involved in African cinema is certain to be there. But many people who watch this cinema are not aware of the complex foundations of francophone West African (FWA)1 cinema. Beyond the immediate pleasure of watching the films, the way that FWA cinema is produced can tell us a lot about the continuing struggle by African directors to appropriate their own cinematographic image. In a broader sense, this cinema reveals much about FWA's ability to engage in a dialogue with France, Europe, and beyond. Many people only see Burkina Faso as an impoverished country because it is in sub-Saharan Africa and the World Bank classifies it as one of the world's least developed countries (LDC). As a result, there is a tendency to give FESPACO special treatment, which means that people don't like to criticize it under the assumption that it is so fragile that criticism would cause its collapse. In this logic, the mere fact that the festival exists is already a major accomplishment, more than can be reasonably expected. However, no one gains from this attitude. FESPACO has already proven its legitimacy, but as with all festivals some years are better than others. So what can we expect from FESPACO, and what do we really get? Why is there so much talk about change in FWA cinema and so little action? FESPACO 1999 was not as successful as other editions for reasons linked to the same complications that have shadowed francophone West African film since its beginnings. Those familiar with FWA cinema already know about the difficulties of production, so tied to Europe; they are aware of the consistently unresolved problems of distribution, and the battle to have African governments coherently legislate and act on the behalf of cinema, [End Page 184] nationally and regionally. In 1999, the consequences of those problems were magnified. Not until the filmmakers themselves begin to look honestly and critically at their own position within the world of FWA cinema and of cinema on an international scale, will their cinema move forward. In the first part of the article, I look at some of the weaknesses of FESPACO 1999, and in the second part, I show their links to the major problems that continue to impede the development of FWA cinema. FESPACO 1999 What makes a successful film festival? Let's say it is a combination of the quality of films programmed, the deals made, the people encountered, and the discovery of new films and talent, all of which come together to create the excitement of a good festival. The first problem with FESPACO 1999 was in the overall lack of African, and in particular francophone West African, feature film production. Many FWA films are made with public funding from European countries, from within a sector that has suffered considerable cuts. The European Union (EU), the largest financial supporter of FWA film since the early 1990s (a role that had always been held by France), had a roughly two-year freeze on its funding for African cinema, until recently, when the Eighth European Development Fund was finally approved. Some filmmakers who had applied for financing and even received approval from the EU were not given funds. Production of FWA cinema has been down, largely because of the EU standstill. This situation exemplifies the close affiliation between Europe and FWA in matters of production. Many established filmmakers did not have films to enter the competition, again attesting to a malaise of FWA production. In addition, the official competition of feature length films seemed uneven in quality. Few new films premiered at the festival, one exception being opening night's La Genèse / Genesis (1999, Mali)2 by Cheikh Oumar Sissoko, a beautifully filmed adaptation of the Biblical book of Genesis. Although...