Dates: February 27-28, 2011
Venue: Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso

African Film, Video & the Social Impact of New Technologies

The Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA), in partnership with the Pan African Film and Television Festival (FESPACO), is pleased to announce a two day workshop on " African Film, Video & the Social Impact of New Technologies that it is organising in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, on 27th-28th March 2011. FESPACO is a biannual event which was founded in 1969 to promote the development of the African cinema industry by providing a venue to reflect on, showcase and celebrate achievements in the industry. FESPACO seeks to contribute African voices and perspectives to the global cinema movement. The 2011 edition of FESPACO will begin in Ouagadougou on 26th February, and will end on 5th March 2011.

The theme for the 2011 FESPACO, which is the 22nd edition of the festival, is "African Cinema and markets". The festival features a wide range of activities to celebrate the anniversaries including itinerant exhibitions on the years of FESPACO and African cinema, film screenings, conferences on FESPACO and the FESPACO Foundation.

The CODESRIA WORKSHOP

The swift growth of Nigerian and Ghanaian video-movies in this decade presents film and media scholars with several opportunities for innovative research. First, at the level of production, we'd want to know if there are significant social and ideological differences, beside the costs of equipment and labor, between video and the celluloid apparatuses of movie-making. In other words, why have video-movies succeeded in Nigeria and Ghana, and failed to achieve similar commercial inroads in the Francophone African countries? Ideologically, it may be interesting to look at differences in training in film schools in Nigeria and Ghana as opposed to Senegal and Burkina Faso. Sociologically, one could also point to the presence of movie stars, urban popular culture and modern consumer objects in videos from Nigeria, Kenya and Ghana, in contrast to the "auteur" cinema style preferred by Francophone filmmakers. There is also the very significant development of increasing collaboration between Nigerian and Ghanaian video productions, with directors, producers and actors/ actresses from both countries working together on co-productions that target audiences in both countries. One could also learn a few things about film reception and aesthetics by looking at Egyption "soap operas," which are popular and influential, not only in North Africa, the Maghreb and the Middle East, but also in West Africa. This is an important pan-African project that needs to be studied closely.

Some scholars are already using the term national cinemas to refer to the video activities in Ghana (see Vitus Nnambigne) and Nigeria (see Onokome Okome), because of the commercial success of well structured production, distribution and exhibition systems. Does success in these areas alone determine the "nationality" or "nationhood" of these cinemas? What about other positive impacts of these new developments on the imagination and creativity of African young people? For instance, is there a new generation of film directors, actors, costume and set designers with more professional production?

Clearly, all is not well with the so-called Nollywood, Kaniawood and Ghanawood (also known as Gollywood) video industries. Some scholars fault the system for its poor quality narratives and its dissemination of negative stereotypes (witchcraft, drug dealers, violence, etc.). Recently, Egyptian soaps were boycotted in Algeria, because they were accused of introducing negative stereotypes of Algerians, after the 2010 African cup soccer matches between the two countries. How are these stereotypes influencing the behavior, lifestyles and ideas of those who watch these movies? To what extent do they influence the ideals of the new generation, for instance? And vice-versa, how do the lifestyle and serotypes of the globalised youth influence the themes that are depicted in these films? Scholars and artists, such as Femi Osofisan, have gone as far as to state that Nollywood videos amount to the revival of a new "Tarzanism" in African cinema, just to bring about those complex connection between filmmaking and social behaviors.

We propose a two-day workshop during the next FESPACO in February-March 2011, to discuss and analyze the economic, aesthetic and social impacts of the video-movie-phenomenon in Africa. We would also look at the relationship between the new technologies and contemporary African literature and film in order to determine what the video-makers could learn from their predecessors in literature and film, and vice versa. For example, could the narrative structure of the video-movies be aesthetically and thematically improved through some help from African writers and "auteurist" filmmakers? Conversely, could Francophone directors learn anything from the star-systems of Nollywood and Gollywood? Finally, we will look at African audiences' reception of video-movies as constitutive of new democratic sites, new subjective formations, and social and economic desires that have so far been unavailable in film and literature.

The primary intention behind this workshop and programming of African films at FESPACO is to draw attention to new directions and creative visions in contemporary African cinema. CODESRIA is of the view that there are new, contending and often conflicting film languages and critical stances coming out of Africa today that have remained invisible largely because of a monolithic and politically correct definition of African cinema by Western art houses and festivals.

Special invitations will be extended to various film training schools, such as NAFTI [Ghana], etc, to sponsor a number of their faculty and students to participate in the workshop. The CODESRIA workshop will be held at the Splendide Hotel in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. In order to allow for participants to have a larger look at the different aspects of the thematic, the workshop will be structured around four panel discussions on the following themes:

Part One: Video and Film Production and Distribution in Africa

Panel I: Video and Film Production and Distribution in Africa

Panel II: Video & the Training of a New Generation of Video Filmmakers

Part Two: Some Aesthetic Considerations in African Literature, Film and Video

Panel I: Teshome Gabriel and Critical Paradigms in African Film and Video

Panel II: New Theories of Production, Distribution and Reception

Part Three: Narrative and Popular Culture: Representations of Religion, Myth and the Star System in African Film and Video

The Workshop will be coordinated by Prof. Manthia Diawara, New York University, and Prof. Kofi Anyidoh, Kwame N'Krumah Chair in African Studies and Convenor of the CODESRIA Pan African Humanities Institute Programme at the University of Ghana, Legon.

For further information, please contact:

CODESRIA Pan African Humanities Institute Programme
University of Ghana Legon, Accra
UNIVERSITY OF GHANA
E-mail: k-anyi@ug.edu.gh
k.anyidoho@gmail.com

Or

CODESRIA Secretariat
BP 3304, CP 18524, Dakar, Senegal
Tel: +221 33 825 98 22/23
Fax: +221 33 824 12 89
E-mail: humanities.programme@codesria.org
Website: http://www.codesria.org/