Professor Aboubakar Sanogo recently attended the 50th anniversary of the Journées Cinématographiques de Carthage (JCC)/ Carthage Film Festival in Tunisia held from October 28th to November 5, 2016. The JCC are the very first film festival on the African continent and were co-founded by such pioneering figures in African cinema as Tahar Cheriaa and Ousmane Sembène in 1966.
On the occasion of this celebration, Professor Sanogo co-organized, moderated and presented a paper during a two-day (October 29-30) International Symposium entitled “Film Heritage at Risk”, under the aegis of the Tunisian Ministry of Culture, the Tunisian Academy of Sciences, Letters and Arts and the Pan African Federation for Filmmakers (FEPACI). Participants in the symposium included Christophe Dupin, Senior Administrator of the International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF), Nicola Mazzanti, Curator of the Royal Belgian Cinématek and Director of the Association of European Cinémathèques, world-renowned Cambodian documentary filmmaker, Rithy Panh (S21, The Missing Picture), Ahmed Bedjaoui, Professor at the University of Algiers and pioneer of the Algerian Cinémathèque, Cecilia Cenciarelli, Head of Research and Special Projects of the Cineteca di Bologna, Hedi Jallab, Director of the National Archives of Tunisia, Gahité Fofana, Head of the Audiovisual Resource Center in Guinea, Khaled Abdeljelil, Professor at the Higher Institute of Cinema and Advisor at the Egyptian Ministry of Culture, Khadija Habashneh, Project Coordinator for the Preservation of the ancient fund of Palestinian Films, Lea Morin of the Cinémathèque de Tanger (Morocco), Jose Manuel Costa, Director of the Portuguese Cinémathèque, Hichem Ben Ammar, Tunisian documentary film director and Mohamed Challouf, Artistic Director of the 50th anniversary of the Carthage Film Festival.
The symposium offered participants the opportunity to discuss and take stock of the state of film archiving in various countries and regions in Africa and the Global South (Tunisia, Guinea, Palestine, Cambodia, Cameroon, Algeria, Morocco, and Egypt) as well as explore strategies toward the creation and strengthening of film archival institutions in these countries and regions. This is the first of many such initiatives to come. Please Stay tuned.
Photo Credits: Courtesy Aboubakar Sanogo
Left to right: Christophe Dupin (FIAF), Jose Manuel Costa (Portuguese Cinematheque), Nicola Mazzanti (Royal Belgian Cinematek, Association of European Archives), Hedi Jallab (National Archives of Tunisia), Aboubakar Sanogo (Carleton University).