Africultures Dossier: Report from FESPACO 2013: Renewal or Demise(?)

“Saved by the bell!” The awards ceremony came in extremis to save this bland thirteenth meeting of FESPACO. An awards list that consecrated true cinema made up for the overall weakness of the selections, the fact that only seven of the old fifteen movie theaters now remain open and are frequented predominantly by white faces, a festive mood limited to the crafts fairs alone, the absence of a central meeting place for festival goers, and the Burkinabé public’s general desertion. What follows is a critical look at the festival and its feature film competition. As the role of the critic is to criticize, I write in the hope of helping things improve and out of a profound solidarity with a festival whose role has historically been to provide the best showcase possible for African film.

That Same Old Tune: FESPACO at Risk

In awarding Alain Gomis’s Tey / Today the Golden Stallion, and Djamila Sahraoui’s Yema the Silver (see film reviews at end of article), the Feature Film jury presided over by Euzhan Palcy displayed lucidity and courage: these were the most original cinematic submissions in the competition. Alain Gomis’s beautiful film¹ surprises and destabilizes spectators used to more conventional narratives, inviting them to embark on a reflection on the present in a world aware of its possible demise. As for Djamila Sahraoui’s film, it plays magnificently on minimalism and simplicity to tackle the pain of Algerian history and the conditions of reconciliation.²

Of note too was Newton Aduaka’s One Man’s Show,³ another intensely original selection, which won the African Critics’ Paulin Soumanou Vieyra Award.⁴

Although this was a top-quality awards list, it was nonetheless truncated: just as at every FESPACO, and despite pressure from the profession, the jury was unable to judge a series of films in competition due to the regulation stipulating that films must be screened in 35mm. The pointlessness of this at a time when digital is being imposed everywhere both for shooting and screening sparked numerous protests and a petition on the part of filmmakers. In light of these attacks, at the end of the festival FESPACO director general Michel Ouedraogo announced the end of this rule. In 2011 he had told us that he was waiting for FEPACI (Pan-African Federation of Filmmakers) to make a decision on the matter, as it was FEPACI that historically introduced this rule—while at the same time recognizing FEPACI’s present incapacity to make any such decision.⁵ With the exception of Moussa Touré’s The Pirogue, which won the Bronze Stallion⁶ in 2013, most of the other films that had to be blown up to 35mm just for FESPACO were kinescoped more cheaply in Morocco, and in the process lost some of their luminosity. FESPACO’s still underfunded technical team hadn’t changed the projector lamps before the festival, which didn’t help improve luminosity either, to the extent that the light and colors of a number of films were totally washed out on the screen.

Unless plans are made in advance for the screening of digital films at the new movie theater being built near the festival headquarters, Michel Ouedraogo’s announcement means that FESPACO’s next budget will need to include equipping Ouaga’s cinemas with digital, plus the services of a competent operator. This would have the advantage of overcoming certain technical failings, such as, for example, the right third of the Neerwaya’s screen being out of focus for a number of screenings, or the fact that the projectionist did not always remove the leader tape when assembling the reels to screen the features, thereby interrupting the films for several seconds. It wouldn’t, however, put pay to the Neerwaya’s holiday-camp-type emcee prattling inanely into the microphone while the projector stopped you from reading the film credits, in any case more often than not switched off by the projectionist, who considered the film over. Nor, undoubtedly, the letting in of audience members through...