The year 2019 will mark the golden jubilee or fiftieth (50th) anniversary of the founding of the festival that later become the Pan African Film Festival of Ouagadougou (FESPACO), the most important film and cultural event on the African continent.

Over the years, the festival has, in addition to being a genuinely indispensable biennial exhibition space, become a “locus classicus” of artistic and cultural legitimation; a place of encounter between filmmakers and their audiences; an inspiring lighthouse for cinephilia in Africa; a space for the reinvention of the world according to a principle of proximity irreducible to the play of geopolitics. Indeed, FESPACO is nothing short of a unique laboratory of ideas, where the cultural, the political, the economic and the social find unique modes of mutual articulation and partake in the production of thought and affects about the place of Africa in the world, the ways she sees herself and wishes to project herself.

In an effort to evaluate this major institution, celebrate its uncommon journey and critically examine the festival’s successes and limitations, proposals are now being accepted to create discussions promoting retrospection, stocktaking and future visions by examining, inter alia, the evolving identities of the festival, its role in shaping the destiny of African cinema, its standing relative to the global sphere of film festivals, and indeed, its place in the emerging field of film festival studies.

Proposals are thus sought that might include the following issues:

A. IDENTITY

  1. FESPACO as the home of African cinema (is it still the home of African cinema?
  2. FESPACO between continentalism and Pan Africanism
  3. FESPACO as a mecca of African cinephilia
  4. FESPACO and the diaspora: the place of African-American, Afro-Caribbean, Afro-European cinemas at FESPACO
  5. FESPACO and the language question: Multilingualism or the legacy of colonial linguistic divide? (Francophones, Anglophones. Lusophones, Arabophones and Africaphones).
  6. FESPACO and the politics of gender
  7. FESPACO and 20th century history: decolonization; the Cold War; the challenges of post-independent Africa; globalization; apartheid; etc.
  8. FESPACO and host country politics

B. SHAPING AFRICAN CINEMA AND MEDIA

  1. FESPACO as a “factory” of auteurism in Africa cinema: what kind of auteurism for African cinema? Has FESPACO helped push the boundaries of auteurism, redefined auteurism?
  2. The status of popular cinema at FESPACO: Nollywood and its progenies at FESPACO
  3. The politics of programming at FESPACO
  4. FESPACO and the political economy of African cinema
  5. Awards and prizes at FESPACO and the afterlives of African films
  6. FESPACO and the emergence and strengthening of national cinemas in Africa
  7. The status of television at FESPACO
  8. The status of video at FESPACO

C. RELATIONSHIP TO OTHER FESTIVALS AND TO FILM FESTIVAL STUDIES

  1. FESPACO in the ecology of African film festivals
  2. FESPACO in the global ecology of film festivals (A list film festivals Cannes, Berlinale, Venice, Toronto, etc.)
  3. FESPACO as event and the event-ness of FESPACO
  4. FESPACO in the political economy of world cinema
  5. FESPACO and film markets
  6. FESPACO in the age of new and digital technologies and social media: challenges and opportunities?
  7. FESPACO and the world of streaming.

Please submit a 200 word abstract, 5 bibliographic sources, 5 keywords, a short professional biography via email to Aboubakar S. Sanogo by August 10, 2018.

Email: aboubakar.sanogo@carleton.ca

Thursday, August 9, 2018  |  Categories: Call for Papers
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