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Baker Center
Ohio University
Athens, Ohio
Thursday, April 14th 2011
The following interview with the celebrated filmmaker Haile Gerima took place during the 37th Annual Conference of the African Literature Association. He was asked to speak about his involvement with FESPACO and the Paul Robeson Prize.
Boyd: How did you become involved with FESPACO?
Gerima: Mme. Alimata Salambéré, one of the founders of the Ouagadougou film festival, came to Howard University. There were a lot of filmmakers, teachers and community people who came to hear her. She wanted the participation of African-Americans in the Pan-African Film Festival of Ouagadougou. She also asked me to be on a jury that year, which is how I went for the first time. When I became recognized as an artist I was invited to the festival but I never got the ticket to travel so I never went. I ended up in Ouagadougou for the first time when Mme Salambéré invited me to serve on a jury. And once I was there, I met Ousmane Sembène who also asked me how we could get African-American film practitioners, scholars, and historians to become part of FESPACO.
Boyd:That was in what year?
Gerima: It was the very early 80s. I can't remember the actual year but it was the year that I was a jury member. Sembène was the president of the jury and I said to him that it would be fantastic for African-Americans to come to the festival. The problem after that time has been that the participation was limited to Africans from the continent and even if it was from the continent, it was primarily francophone Africans who attended the Ouagadougou film festival. Then Thomas Sankara also made it be known that he wanted African-American participation. At that time Sankara was Minister of Information and that's why he was pushing this agenda.
Boyd: So he wasn't president yet?
Gerima: No, he was not yet president. And so after my return to the US from Ouagadougou, I along with my wife Shirikiana and two other advisors (even though it was for the most part Shirkiana and me); we worked out a panel discussion dealing with production, exhibition, distribution and the kind of collaboration that could result from African diaspora...