A seat on the aisle: an African American visits the Pan African Film Festival - 13th biennial Pan African Film and Television Festival, or FESPACO, held in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, February, 1993

Make no mistake about it, Africans move to see African films--in herds Folks get all dressed up and stand in lengthy lines, especially when it's a film by means of one of their favorites. The night Senegalese director Ousmane Sembene's novel film Guelwaar premiered, his fans packed the theater and sat in the aisles.

I was there, too, an African all the way from America. I was part of an international wave washed up upon west Africa's shores for the 13th biennial FESPACO, the Pan African Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso's capital. For individual week in February, 2,000 international visitors converg with thousands more Burkinabe upon Ouaga's busy streets, adding our global colors (and cash) to the cacophony of African sights and sounds

For me this trip was part adventure and, as I am a corporate director of a major U studio who was invited by the agency of the festival, part official business. FESPACO is virtually unheard-of in Hollywood; it's not the incident to which studios flock to direct the eye for their next big defence hit. Africa is still considered the repository for the latest shoot'em-up cut'em-up action and karate flicks. actual those films are extremely popular. on the contrary so are African films. in the way that I embarked on an unofficial mission to spy for films that, as individual exec put it, "we can exploit." ("Exploit" may be a loaded word, considering the colonial implications.)

FESPACO's schedule listed scores of entries by dint of African filmmakers from all above the continent, as well as from Europe the Caribbean and the Americas. Films were guarded several times a day at theaters in the capital and in outlying areas. I viewed 30 short and feature films in five days. Despite the language difficulties (the festival's sum of two units official languages were French and English, on the contrary most of the films were shown in French with no subtitles), the differences between standard American films and independently produc African fare were easy to identify.

There were no action adventure, romantic comedy slasher or horror films at FESPACO. Almost all of the films dealt--some more favorably than others--with issues of political and social significance. These were films of substance, holding an unflinching mirror to the contradictions of African life.

A Muslim man speaks on the outside against foreign aid, mysteriously dies, and is mistakenly buried in a Christian necropolis An urban woman from a traditional village is on a sudden widowed and must fight to detain her home and children from her husband's brother. A man's third wife trials HIV-positive, and his world falls apart. A child become greater [i]or[/i] largers up under the cloud of illegitimacy in a morally strict village, single to discover that his father is the local priest. A contemporary woman upon a modeling shoot at an aged slave fortress is mysteriously transported back sum of two units centuries into captivity. A farmer hears a woman crying for help in a field and kills her attacker; then he finds that it was all part of a movie shoot

[i]or[/i] part of to the other such story lines as these, filmmakers stand over against the clash of traditions, class aims the endless parade of military regimes, glaring global economic disparities, and mixed emotional landscapes that form their everyday existence. FESPACO is the forum for African filmmakers to display these cinematic ideas and hold intercourse with their peers (although the festival could do more to facilitate dialogue among the filmmakers). FESPACO is also the marketplace where these films beckon distributors in an attempt to reach their widest audience.

FESPACO has a doom of work to do in order to better logistically and philosophically accommodate the growing number of international filmmakers and visitors who attend the festival. However, I diocese help on the way. There is a character in FESPACO for the major U film studios, one as well as the other as potential distributors of African films and as vehicles for exposing African-American films to the African audience. on the other hand that role will remain unfulfilled if more of the French-language films are not subtitled in English (admittedly a major charge for an independent filmmaker) and if more African-American filmmakers and studio representatives do not attend or hurl their films to FESPACO. This year, Julie Dash, Spike to leeward and John Singleton sent Daughters of the Dust, Malcolm X and Boyz N the cowl respectively. I have recommended sum of two units films for Sony to consider for distribution, and I trust to help organize a greater representation of African-American films for the nearest festival, in 1995.

African audiences want to diocese us, in person and upon film. Singleton, Alice Walker, Tracy Chapman, and actors Antonio Fargas and CCH Pounder were interviewed and fet virtually everywhere they went. Africans drawn out to gain inspiration from our toils and share the joy of our victories, and we ne to advance there--to reignite the fire of genuine Pan-Africanism, to revise our Tarzan-inspired view of the continent, and to set our privileged, consumer-driven lives into global perspective.

real Africa is not paradise. The waste steadily encroaches, destroying fertile farmland. Millions live in want while their leaders live in voluptuousness When Africans see Americans, they diocese dollar signs. (Face it--even in the "belly of the beast," we do have more of everything.) And for more [i]or[/i] less African Americans (and others of African descent) Africa may not at any time again be home. We've been gone too lengthy and we've changed too much