Nigerian filmmaker Mustapha Alassane was made Knight of the Legion of Honour during the 2007 Cannes Festival. Véronique Cayla, director of the CNC (Editor’s Note: French film institute) made the traditional tribute speech, below, that was followed by the filmmaker’s reply.

After Africa, I will fleece you and A trip to the country, Jean-Marie Teno wanted to pursue his reflection upon the common History between Europe and Africa. The Colonial Misunderstanding (initially entitled Allez dans le monde entier/ Go Forth in the world when first broadcast on Arte in its more condensed 68-minute long version) seeks to understand the reasoning of Europeans as regards to their relation to Africa. It thus focuses on the German missionaries in Namibia, where the Herero Genocide took place in 1904-1907, for which Germany has just officially apologized. Teno does not reconstitute: he questions those still…

There is something deeply moving about the last work of this filmmaker, sadly deceased in 2006: conscious of his illness but never letting it show during the shooting, Henri Duparc made Caramel in guise of a farewell. He did make it like a pompous and pretentious testament for all that, quite the opposite: once more, he contents himself with zooming, like in the opening shot, in Abidjan, the city that became the home of this mixed-race Guinean man who found roots and success there. Anxious to maintain a direct relation with the public and conscious of the changes in distribution…

The film opens with 60s, James-Bond style credits. The enigmatic contract killer played by the director is more like Goldfinger than some character out of a Moroccan film. The film alternates a multitude of key film references from global cinema and modernistic imagery. But contrary to music videos or advertising, the latter never reveals mercantile intentions. It is readily inscribed in a system of references whose codes are recognizable to those who live in the cities of Morocco or elsewhere. In this respect, WWW- What a Wonderful World is a topical manifesto that usefully challenges those who have specific expectations…

Hosted by Jean-Pierre Garcia, Director of the Amiens International Film Festival, Gaston Kaboré’s Cinema Lesson was organized at the’Cinemas of the South’ pavilion by the French Foreign Ministry. You will find its exact transcription down bellow. Gaston Kaboré is at the head of Imagine in Burkina-Faso, a regional production and professional training structure.

A hawker walks into the village. At once, the camera reveals its desire to show the social geography: a high angle shot on the entire village focuses progressively on the women at work – it is they who assure the village livelihood. The beginning of the film is, then, a geography of relations, exchanges and powers. This hawker nicknamed « Mercenary » (Dominique T. Zeïda) is at the centre of a circulation that goes beyond the simple objects he supplies the village: not only does he fix the prize of the stale bread bought on the cheap in the city, but he…

Under the presidency of Cameroonian film-maker Bassek Ba Kobhio, the jury of the 20th edition of the Fespaco that was held from the 26th of February to the 3rd of March 2007 in Ouagadougou (Burkina-Faso) was audacious while also awarding the main prize to the most obvious film. If one trend were to be identified, it would be the attempts to develop a relation with the public while preserving the films’ substance. A difficult alchemy that we examine here only from the angle of the feature films in competition, our work on the Africiné bulletin preventing us from seeing the…

« The goat has its ideas but so does the hen ». The Malian peasant who says this is at the witness stand of a court set up in a courtyard in a popular neighborhood of Bamako, for a trial which opposes civil society and globalization’s international institutions, the IMF and the World Bank first and foremost. During these lively debates broadcast through an outside loudspeaker, life goes on in the courtyard: women dye batiks, a couple is wed while another separates, children come and go. It’s in his recently deceased father’s courtyard that Abderrahmane Sissako wanted to shoot because it was…

At first glance, one might well wonder if Les saignantes is a pedantic fantasy or if it really carries meaning. But, looking closer, its originality explodes. Beyond appearances, Les saignantes isn’t the result of an imagery that can be reproduced endlessly, whose mercantile intentions the video clip and advertizing reveal. On the contrary, this astonishing, provocative, impertinent, fun and perfectly paranoiac film develops a real poetry using codes that can be recognized by the very enthusiasts of imagery: young people. Poetry because it is a rewriting of it, not only in its aesthetics but in the way it renews and…

Following in the footsteps of world famous filmmakers, the eldest of the elders was solicited by the Cannes Festival to teach the traditional Cinema Lesson, an event of the festival. In front of the packed and attentive Salle Buñuel at the festival’s Palace, the father of African film spoke for an hour and a half about his approach to cinema, answering Jean-Pierre Garcia, director of the Amiens Film Festival, who opened the lesson by portraying Sembène as a « the pioneer and the witness ».

Animée par Jean-Pierre Garcia, directeur du Festival international du film d’Amiens, la leçon de cinéma de Gaston Kaboré était organisée au Pavillon des cinémas du Sud par le ministère français des Affaires étrangères. On en trouvera ci-dessous l’exacte transcription. Gaston Kaboré dirige au Burkina-Faso le centre Imagine, structure de production et de formations professionnelles à dimension régionale.

The Elephant had a toothache, as they would say in the Ivory Coast: the « Father of African film » left us during the night of the 9th of June 2007, aged 84, as a result of a long illness that prevented him from attending the 2007 Fespaco. Tribute-portrait of a man who called himself a non-believer, a ceddo.