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Poor organisation belies quality African cinema
by Aidan O'Donnell
Article published on the 2009-03-09 Latest update 2009-03-12 14:15 TU
Acrobats perform at the closing ceremonies.
(Photo: Reuters)
The 21st Fespaco concluded with an awards ceremony that was scheduled to last two hours but clocked in at almost five. The President of Burkina Faso, Blaise Compaoré, presided over musical interludes, choreographic spectacles and the thirty or so Fespaco awards and acknowledgements.
Several characters were notable by their absence, the Ouagadougou public to begin with. A few minutes in the sun-baked uncovered sections of the 4 August stadium would be enough to explain that however.
The major gong collectors were also elsewhere. Compaoré handed over the Golden Stallion of Yennenga to Haile Gerima’s sister (for Teza) while colleagues did the necessary for the silver statuette given to John Kani (for Nothing but the Truth) and for Lyes Salem (for Mascarades).
The jury's decisions gave rise to some pondering and discussion, although none on the subject of the main award to Gerima.
Jury President Gaston Kaboré pointed out that, while in terms of Best Film all the films are eligible as long as the director is African, when you move into the technical awards such as Best Music or Best Editing the musician or editor has to be African to qualify for that particular category. So some films weren’t actually in the running for the smaller awards even though the film was classed as an African film for the main award.
Beyond John Kani’s Silver trophy, South African films were on the podium for Jerusalema and for the TV series When we were black. Perhaps the most interesting film with a South African connection this year – apart from Michael Raeburn’s Triomf - is not actually from South Africa at all.
It’s the film that picked up second prize in the Documentary category – Behind the rainbow - and comes from the Egyptian filmmaker Jihan El-Tahri. Her film is a history of the ANC and features interviews with Jacob Zuma, Thabo Mbeki and all the people who might be able to answer her central question, “What becomes of a liberation group when it gets into power?”
The festival-goers seem generally unimpressed with the organisation this year, with copies of films not turning up at their respective cinemas, filmmakers left stranded without plane tickets and movies playing in cinemas where the lights don’t actually go down.
You do get the feeling something’s slightly amiss when an actress like Mali’s Maimouna Helène Diarra – known from films like Bamako and Sembène Ousmane’s Mooladé - is seeking out journalists rather than the other way round.
She was here this year with the Malian television series Duel a Dafa from director Ladji Diakité and described herself as “disgusted”. “The organisation is rubbish,” she said.
Although films are screened on national television, the free open-air screenings of previous year are gone, in a bid to get people inside the Ouagadougou cinemas. Diakité told me “this year is just not the same as previous years”.
Algerian filmmaker Lyes Salem, who brought the film Mascarades to Fespaco and picked up a Bronze Stallion for his troubles, left before the awards ceremony. Before he went he said, “it’s my first time in Burkina Faso and I don’t think I’ve ever seen poverty like this. And we’re at a festival that costs…”. He didn’t know how much but he guessed it cost a bit.
Malawi’s Shemu Joyah is also on his first visit with his television film Seasons of a life.
“It’s well below what I expected in terms of the organisation part of it,” he says. “I’ve been to Kenya, the International Film Festival, and I’ve been to Cairo and I can assure you that even though Kenya has only had three festivals they were much much better organised and Cairo is much much better organised than this. I don’t know why.”
Keith Shiri, of the London African Film Festival had only one word to describe his Fespaco 2009, “Bad”. He didn’t expand.
Another festival-goer, Julie, had only good things to say about the selection this year, noting the strength of the North African offering.
There’s been quite a bit of expansion this year, with live music on Ouagadougou’s Place de la Nation every night. Although whoever scheduled the music didn’t quite manage to keep to the themes that had been announced – whether it was Slam/Griot or Couper-Décaler. But it did bring the Burkinabe out in very big numbers.
The Documentary and Short Film competitions were also a welcome development with the latter dominated by North Africa and Algerian filmmakers taking the Gold and Silver Stallions.
Whether the festival is having teething problems as it expands or whether it’s lost the essential of what kept it going for the last 40 years remains to be seen. There was, however, no difficulty finding films that got people excited over the week, and not just those that featured in the awards.
Apart from the Best Poster award, Les feux du Mansaré from Senegal’s Mansour Sora Wade didn't collect a trophy while Le fauteuil from Burkina Faso’s Missa Hébié impressed enough people to win the RFI Audience Prize.
The Documentary category was one of the strongest at the festival and gave us Courting Justice from South Africa’s Jane Lipman. Her film charts the progress of several black women who have become part of the new democracy’s judiciary.
Tu n’as rien vu à Kinshasa from Congolese director Mwézé Ngangura also impressed audiences and Killer Necklace, from Kenya’s Judy Kibinge, competing in the television fiction category, was worth every one of its 40 minutes.
Outside the competition the one-hour film Behind the Roadblock from Rwanda’s Eric Kabera is extremely successful but probably wasn’t a particularly easy film to make. Kabera is Rwandan and he revisited the only footage of actual killings from the 1994 genocide in an attempt to identify the victims, witnesses and perpetrators of one killing session - captured by a cameraman in the wrong place at the right time.
Thierry Michel’s Katanga Business comes in a line of movies shot by the Belgian director in the DRC and looks at the mining sector in the DRC province. The film has the merit of meeting everyone from the illegal Chinese businessman to the Katanga administration at the highest levels and it moves from multi-billion deals to the subsistence mining of the “informal” solitary miner, all this while presenting everything in a cool non-partisan fashion.
And if nothing else, go and see La maison jaune.
