African films

The Ouagadougou Oscars

Mar 1st 2007 | OUAGADOUGOU
From The Economist print edition

Africa's answer to Hollywood

 

AFRICA is suddenly big in Tinseltown. Forest Whittaker has just won an Oscar for his portrayal of the Ugandan dictator, Idi Amin, in “The Last King of Scotland”. “Blood Diamond”, a film about the precious stones that fuelled a civil war in Sierra Leone , picked up several nominations. Meanwhile Africa's own film festival, Fespaco, got under way this week in Burkina Faso , in west Africa. Though Ouagadougou , the capital, is richer in dust than glitz, it put on a flamboyant opening ceremony that featured displays of horsemanship and mime. Hundreds of films made by Africans and people of African descent competed for the Yennenga Stallion, a golden statue of a prancing horse and the nearest thing Africa has to an Oscar.

And the Stallion goes to...

African cinema needs a showcase. Few films are widely distributed, and Fespaco is a chance to win bigger audiences not only among the film buffs of Ouagadougou but also through the distributors and television firms that attend. Fespaco also lets African directors promote a vision of Africa that contrasts with its portrayal by Hollywood . “ Hollywood has not been fair to Africa ,” says a Nigerian director, Mahmoud Ali Balogun. Most American films set in Africa , he says, accentuate the negative. “I want Hollywood to talk about the beautiful things in Africa , and to use our way of telling the story,” says Moussa Sene Absa, a Senegalese director.

Money can be hard to raise. Mr Sene Absa has been trying for ten years to make a film about his compatriot, Battling Siki, the first African-born world light-heavyweight boxing champion. No one is interested in this uplifting story, he says. But in Ouagadougou he did screen his film “Teranga Blues”, about a young illegal immigrant expelled from Europe and forced, back home in Senegal , to live up to the tall stories he told about having made it big in the West.

Relations with the West are a recurring theme. “Africa Paradis”, by Benin 's Sylvestre Amoussou, is set in a future in which Africa has become a paradise and Westerners are desperate to immigrate. Abderamane Sissako's “ Bamako ” has Africa as a plaintiff in a court in which the World Bank and IMF are being tried.

One boost for African film is the advent of digital technology, which is far cheaper than filming in 35mm. A Moroccan project makes 30 films a year, spending no more than 12 days on each one. The results are impressive: one such film, “La Vague Blanche” by Ali El Majboud, was in the running for the Stallion.