It's The 40th Anniversary of Africa's Oldest Film Festival,FESPACO!

FESPACO is known as the African version of the Oscars.It is the oldest Pan-African festival which has been around for 40 yrs.now!Here's a clip from a documentary called "FESPACO".It talks about African-American filmmaker's entries into this festival.Here's more about FESPACO from artmatters.info:

"The bi-annual Pan-African Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou (FESPACO) runs February 28-March 7, 2009 for the 40th time since its inception in 1969 as a shop window for African cinema. It is hoped that the 40th FESPACO will cease being viewed merely as “a place for FESPACO civil service organisers to invite government ministers with their women to socialise at the expense of filmmakers”, to use Moroccan film director Nabil Ayouch’s words. OGOVA ONDEGO reports in retrospective on his way to Ouagadougou.

Over the four decades of its existence, FESPACO has been plagued with various ‘political’, ‘bureaucratic’ and ‘organisational’ challenges. Many players in the African audiovisual media sector, for whom the festival is meant, have over the years appeared to be getting more and more disillusioned with this festival that is billed as Africa’s largest film festival. Many of them have chosen to keep their distance from where they have thrown barbs at the festival organisers, accusing them of not just ineptitude but also of lack of respect for filmmakers.

Though having won FESPACO’s highest prize—the Yennenga Stallion—in 2001, Moroccan Nabil Ayouch kept away from the festival in 2003 as a form of protest.

Saying FESPACO was ‘disorganised’, he accused its organisers of ‘lack of respect for filmmakers’.

He was angry, he told BBC, about the treatment given to film directors by the organisers, drawn from the governnment.

He said organisers show films late—even for as late as three hours—and change screening venues without informing film directors who are expected to present their films. He said civil servant bureaucracy was spoiling FESPACO.

He had failed to collect the Yennenga Stallion for his film, ALI ZOUA, in 2001 as FESPACO failed to send him a flight ticket though having selected and put his film in competition. The organisers only realised their gaffe when Ayouch failed to collect his award.
He refused to excuse FESPACO organisers on what he termed inefficiency saying the festival was a great event 20 years earlier as “a shop window for African and Arabic cinema.”

Sometime back, I listened to various criticism of FESPACO from filmmakers drawn from across Africa and the world. They included Mahmood Ali-Balogun of Nigeria, Judy Kibinge of Kenya, Rahamatou Keita of Niger and Frances Ann Solomon of Canada.

“FESPACO organisers behave as if we don’t count,” Ali-Balogun commented. “We go to a conference and they conduct it in French while fully aware we don’t speak French. They should take cognisance of the fact that we use our own money to come here .They should translate proceedings of meetings in English besides sub-titling films in English.”

Ali-Balogun, on his third attendance at FESPACO, said the number of participants was declining instead of growing due to what he termed as ‘disorganisation’.

“FESPACO does not seem to be doing any assessment of what happens at their festivals in order to improve subsequent events. All they seem to be concerned with is that they host a festival and then go to sleep until the next one,” Ali-Balogun said.

Solomon, on her part, was disappointed that FESPACO does not readily avail information on events to festival-goers. She also expressed concern that FESPACO appears to be a mere cultural festival and not a market for selling and buying films: “Of the more than 5000 participants at FESPACO, only 23 were distributors of films,” she observed in 2003."(END OF EXCERPT)Read the rest here.

The World Wide Economic Downturn Will Greatly Affect The Progression Of Africa!

The global credit crunch is causing some pretty dire predictions for the future state of affairs in Africa.The poverty rate is already the highest in the world in Africa.How will the land of my ancestors weather this evolving economic storm? Here's more from BBC News:

"The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has warned that Africa's economic growth will be affected by the continuing world downturn.

It predicts that growth in sub-Saharan Africa will slow to 3.25% in 2009, half the growth rate it previously thought.

The slump in commodity prices and the credit squeeze are the main culprits, the IMF said.

The report comes ahead of a major IMF conference on Tuesday in Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania, to discuss how to respond.

The conference will discuss what external support the IMF and other Western donors may be able to provide to help mitigate the impact of the crisis on Africa, which has the highest poverty rate of any region in the world.

The IMF's managing director, Dominique Strauss Kahn, told the BBC that the conference would be a "milestone" and that he wanted to build a different kind of partnership with Africa, as well as providing additional funds.

In recent years, many African countries have enjoyed strong growth rates, boosted by rising commodity prices, including oil.

"The gains of the past decade, during which many countries in sub-Saharan Africa saw sustained high rates of economic growth and rising income levels, are at risk," said Antoinette Sayeh, the IMF's African department director.

Less than a year ago, the IMF's forecast for sub-Saharan Africa was economic growth of 6.7% in 2009, an increase on the 5% growth enjoyed in 2008.

Now the low growth forecast means that many African countries are likely to see very little increase in living standards, and could fall further behind in meeting poverty targets.

It says that 15 of the 21 countries which it judges most vulnerable to the crisis are in Africa."(END OF EXCERPT)Read the rest here.

The Wife Of Zimbabwe's Prime Minister Was Killed In A Car Crash! May She Rest In Peace!

Susan Tsvangirai was the beautiful wife of the prime minister of Zimbabwe.She was a woman of great strength & courage who worked tirelessly for the poor.She was a true humanitarian.Tragically,she was killed in a car crash on March 6,2009.Here's more on her life from The Guardian:

"Susan Tsvangirai, the wife of Zimbabwe's prime minister, Morgan Tsvangirai, was killed on Friday, at the age of 50, when a seven-ton aid truck hammered into their four-wheel-drive. It was part of a convoy of three vehicles passing along potholed roads. Morgan went into hospital in Harare with head and neck injuries before being flown out to Botswana.

Parallels were drawn between this new but shortlived figure in the senior echelons of Zimbabwe's government, and the country's first lady, President Robert Mugabe's wife, Grace - the "queen of consumers", whose spending habits have contributed to the collapse of morale in the country. The wife of the new premier - he was sworn in on 11 February - had run a sewing and catering business before her husband went into politics. She made her own alterations to clothes she had bought from discount stores.

Susan was born in Buhera, as was Morgan, about 50 km south of Harare, the country's capital; the convoy in which the fatal accident happened was heading there so that Morgan could address a rally in his home region the following day. The couple met in 1978, when Morgan was foreman of a local nickel mine. They married later that year, and had three daughters and three sons together.

An unquestioning supporter of her husband, she said of him in an interview shortly before her death: "He is a good man, husband and a loving father. Once he sets his eyes on a target he never takes his eyes off the target until he has achieved it.

"He is a man of great determination, and above all a man of great courage. I think he has proved his courage to the world. He has fought Mugabe for 10 years and is still fighting. We all know that Mugabe's tactics are not always above board, but that didn't faze my Morgan."

In 2003, she was very distressed to see him in prison, and sat in court to hear the treason proceedings against him. She visited him in prison and saw the gashes in his head after he was arrested and assaulted in March 2007. As she put it: "I would be lying if I said it has been easy. There were times when I so feared for my husband's life that sleeping was no longer part of my life, I just prayed. As a mother, I feared for my children. I felt that they were so vulnerable. But at the end off the day I had to support my husband, that is the role of a wife, a good wife at least."

A deeply religious woman committed to the alleviation of poverty and HIV/Aids, she ran a soup kitchen from her own home in Harare. Though she often accompanied her husband to political events, she rarely spoke publicly: when she did, her personal charm proved very effective."(END OF EXCERPT)Read the rest here.