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February 28 to March 7, 2009, Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso
Every other year, the Pan-African Film and Television Festival - Festival Panafricain du Cinéma de Ouagadougou (FESPACO) - takes place at the end of February and beginning of March in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. It is Africa's biggest film festival and one of the biggest in die world, a showcase for the continent's cinema. (In off years a somewhat smaller festival of African and Arab cinema is held in Carthage. Tunisia.) This year's event had a new director in Michel Ouédraogo, and a theme of African Cinema, Tourism, and Cultural Heritage. FESPACO 2009 was the twenty-first edition of the event, and, as usual, it presented a dizzying array of African features, documentaries, films from the African diaspora, retrospective screenings, and peripheral events. The screenings take place both in theaters scattered around the city many of which are open-air - and in assorted screening rooms in cultural institutes and television stations. I was attending for die first time, but had litde difficulty negotiating the event once I had been able to get my hands on a schedule the day before it started. I had arrived in Ouaga a couple of days early, wanting to explore FESPACO's building and to visit the Place des Cinéastes - a busy roundabout, on the central island of which stands a stylized sculpture of two huge reels of film (Figures 1- 2). I was thus able to witness the transformation of the city as festivalgoers Mowed in; I also observed die transformation of the central, indoor, well-equipped Burkina cinema - from its pre-festival guise, showing Big Mommas House 2 (John Whitesell, 2006) into the festival's premier screening facility, bedecked with red carpets for the opening screenings. These were preceded by a ceremonial opening event held at the city's sports stadium.
This year's jury was headed by Gaston Kaboré, perhaps the central figure in maintaining Burkina Faso as a center for African cinema over the last two decades. Kaboré is also a past winner of the Golden Stallion of Yennenga FESPACO's chief prize, awarded to die best narrative feature in competition - for Buud ihm (1997), a kind of sequel to his earlier, better-known WendKuuni (1982). Winning the Golden Stallion - or Etalon -...