Introduction
Gaston J.M. Kaboré and Michael T. Martin
"To make a film means to take a position."
-Sarah Maldoror, 1977
"African cinema quotes itself. This is a sign that it now has a history."
-Férid Boughedir, 1992
"Our continent, ridden with so many internal and external problems, is more alive than ever. We have to be daring and reconquer our cultural and cinematographic space." -Ousmane Sembène, 1995

The epoch and trauma of colonial rule and slavery in Africa, the Caribbean, and the Americas is arguably without precedent in the long history of western imperialism and ascendancy of capitalism. Africans and its descended peoples' resistance is no less a challenge today than it was during the period of conquest, settlement, and enslavement. Indeed, the legacy of this period and those defaced by it, the continuing struggle against its repressive cultural and systemic practices in the contemporary period constitutes an abiding summons to refute the denial, by design and ignorance, of Africa's contribution to world culture and civilization.
To this day, along with globalization's relentless homogenization of cultures and societies, corporate capitalism's project of accumulation sequesters and undermines humankind's capacity and will to "act" in solidarity against the pillaging of the natural world that sustains life and planet Earth.
In these relational historical determinations, consider the decolonizing mediation of the Pan-African Film & Television Festival of Ouagadougou (FESPACO), the world's most important, inclusive, and consequential cinematic convocation of its kind. Since its formation in 1969, FESPACO's mission is, in principle, remarkably unchanged, though organizationally distressed, undercapitalized, and dependent. In the long and fraught history of representation, FESPACO's defining mission is to unapologetically recover, chronicle, affirm, and reconstitute the representation of the African continent and its global diaspora of peoples, thereby enunciating in the cinematic, all manner of Pan-African identity, experience, and the futurity of the Black World in the project of world-making.
With this raison d'être of FESPACO in mind, the festival is to neither be mistaken for merely a site of exhibition, nor a venue for the display of African and Black artistic achievement, nor a modality for cultural performance and representation. FESPACO is a historical activity and intervention on behalf, and in the play, of culture, art, politics, modernity, and the development of nations on the African continent.
This collection then, of landmark and commissioned essays, commentaries, conversations, dossiers, and programmatic statements and manifestos, maps the key moments, historical determinations, and trajectories of the formation and evolution of FESPACO. Together, they document and commemorate twenty-six editions of this biennial festival's aesthetic and thematic concerns of African and African diasporic filmmaking-time enough to assess its practice, reception, efficacy, and challenges-past and forward. By examining its role as host to deliberations among filmmakers, film scholars, and critics alike in public conversation about the cultural politics and theory of cinema and its location and role in the development priorities of state governments, we are able to discern, particularly African cinema, as a national, continental, and increasingly, in its diasporic iterations, a global cultural formation.
Literature Review
The corpus of literature on FESPACO is comprised largely of essays and commentary in a variety of cinema and cultural studies journals and festival catalogs. More recently, FESPACO was the subject of a panel at the 2019 Society for Cinema and Media Studies conference held in Seattle, Washington and featured in a forthcoming issue of The Journal of African Cinemas.1 Among publications, consider Manthia Diawara's chapter on FESPACO in African Cinema: Politics & Culture,2 Teresa Hoefert de Turégano's African Cinema and Europe: Close-Up on Burkina Faso,3 and Lindiwe Dovey's Curating Africa in the Age of Film Festivals.4 Other substantial work on FESPACO appear in Mahir Şaul and Ralph A. Austen's Viewing African Cinema in the TwentyFirst Century,5 Férid Boughedir's, African Cinema from A to Z,6 and essays and documents in other publications, including ones in this journal, Black Camera: An International Film Journal, as well as Claire Andrade-Watkins's, "A Mirage in the Desert? African Women Directors at FESPACO"7 and Mustapha Ouedgraogo's, "Going to the Cinema in Burkina Faso."8 While these publications provide context and critically engage with aspects of FESPACO's activities, programs, and politics, absent is a comprehensive collection devoted to the study of this premier Pan-African cinema and cultural institution.

Organization of Contents

Co-Published by Black Camera and the General Delegation of FESPACO, this collection is organized in three parts. Part One, constituted in this issue of the journal, is devoted entirely to FESPACO. Part Two, on Colonial Antecedents, Constituents, Theory, and Articulations of African cinema will appear in Volume 12, Number 2 of the Spring 2021 issue of Black Camera; and Part Three, The Documentary Record: Statements, Declarations, Resolutions, Manifestos, Fall 2021.
Part One begins with an overview of the Sites and Contexts of Exhibition for African cinema, featuring essays by Lindiwe Dovey, Manthia Diawara, Beti Ellerson, Sambolgo Bangré, and Dorothee Wenner. Next, FESPACO: An Ever-Evolving Cinematic and Cultural Formation, engages with the fifty-year history of the festival itself. It comprises statements by Ousmane Sembène and Wole Soyinka; commissioned essays by Mbye Cham, Rod Stoneman, Claire Diao, and Shelia Petty; along with a lengthy interview with Gaston Kaboré and essays by Manthia Diawara, M. Africanus Aveh, Mahir Şaul, Aboubakar Sanogo, Teresa Hoefert de Turégano, Claire Andrade-Watkins, Beti Ellerson, Férid Boughedir, Michel Amarger, and Colin Dupré.
Five essays follow on the Conditionalities and Challenges to FESPACO, three commissioned for this publication by Imruh Bakari, June Givanni, and Rémi Abéga. Next in the line-up are over fifty commissioned short statements by filmmakers, film scholars, critics, and media professionals, among them Francoise Pfaff, Jean-Marie Téno, Danny Glover, Mansour Sora Wade, Bridgett Davis, Jane Bryce, et al. Lastly, two sections, one devoted to FESPACO documents, the other three dossiers on the Paul Robeson Award Initative (PRAI), and the film training institutes ISIS-SE and Institut IMAGINE.

Acknowledgements

To realize a project of this scope, scale, and moving parts depends upon the active participation of individuals and cooperation of institutions. We want to recognize and thank our collaborators and, particularly the good work of the staffs of Black Camera and Institut IMAGINE, Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso:

- Advising Consultants
Erna Beumers, Museum Curator, Africa, Utrecht, Netherlands
June Givanni, Curator & Director, Pan African Cinema Archives (JGPACA), London, UK
Eileen Julien, Professor, Department of Comparative Literature, Indiana University, USA
Ron Stoneman, Prof. Emeritus & former Director, Huston School of Film & Digital Media, National University of Ireland, Galway, Ireland
Emma Sandon, Senior Lecturer, Dept. of Film, Media and Cultural Studies, School of Arts Birbeck, University of London, UK
Olivier Barlet, Film critic and scholar, former Director of Africultures, France
Justin Ouoro, Professor of Film, University of Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso
Somet Yoporeka, Marc Block University of Strasbourg, France, Burkina Faso
- Institut IMAGINE (Burkina Faso)
Edith Kaboré
Catherine Compaore, Administrative Assistant
Edmond Sawodogo, Research Associate
Camille Varenne, Artist, filmmaker, Research Associate
Toussaint Zongo, Filmmaker and Director of Administration
- FESPACO (Burkina Faso)
Ardiouma Soma, General Delegate, Pan-African Festival of Film &
Television of Ouagadougou (FESPACO), 2014-2020
The staff of FESPACO9
- FEPACI (Burkina Faso)
Dramane Deme, Executive Director, Pan-African Federation of
Filmmakers (FEPACI)
- Black Camera (USA)
Katherine Johnson, (former) Editorial/Production Manager
Megan Connor, Editorial/Production Manager
Samuel Smucker, Editorial Assistant
Yalie Kamara, Translator, Editorial Assistant
Cole Nelson, Editorial Assistant
Richard Jermain, Additional Staff
Pallavi Rao, Additional Staff
Andre Seewood, Additional Staff
Gaston J.M. Kaboré and Michael T. Martin / Introduction 9
- Indiana University Press (USA)
Sherondra Thedford, Manager, Journals Production
Michael Regoli, Director, Publishing Operations
- Other
Julie Hagaret, Translator, Indiana University, USA, France
Bernard Boucher, Former Secretary General, Institut Québécois du Cinéma, Canada
Catherine Ruelle, Journalist and Film Critic, France
Daouda Sanguisso, Interpreter/Translator, Burkina Faso

Notes

1. See "FESPACO @ 50: Celebrating the 50th Anniversary of Africa's Most Important Film Festival and Cultural Event," SCMS 2019 Conference Program, session Q, March 16, Seattle, WA.
2. Manthia Diawara, African Cinema: Plitics & Culture (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992), 128-39.
3. Teresa Hoefert de Turégano, African Cinema and Europe: Close-Up on Burkina Faso, (Florence: European Press Academic Publishing, 2004), 60-74.
4. Lindiwe Dovey, Curating Africa in the Age of Film Festivals (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 87-109.
5. Mahir Şaul and Ralph A. Austen, Viewing African Cinema in the Twenty-First Century: Art Films and the Nollywood Video Revolution (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2010), 145-48.
6. Ferid Boughedir, African Cinema from A to Z (OCIC, 1992), 181-85.
7. See Cinemas of the Black Diaspora: Diversity, Dependence, and Oppositionality, Michael T. Martin, ed. (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1995), 145-52.
8. Teaching African Cinema, Roy Ashbury, W. Helsby, and M. O'Brien, eds. (London: British Film Institute, 1998), 58-61.
9. The staff of FESPACO includes: Adèle Zerbo-Nanema, Guy Désiré Yameogo, Aboubacar Ouango, Marc Placide Sanou, Irène Traore-Yaro, Evelyne Bance, Amina Traore, Mamadou Traore, Moise Sondo, Oumarou Compaore, Hamadou Sonde, Christiane Badolo, Alain Danhoue, Sidiki Ouedraogo, Saïdou Sawadogo, Oumar Ouedraogo, Issa Sawadogo, Boubakar P. Diallo, Youssoufou Ouedraogo, Daouda Traore, Aimée Bado, Prosper Bationo, Rodrigue Parfait Tassembedo, Lucie Tiendrebeogo, San Traore, Gervais Hien, Youl Bahisimine, Constant Bazie, Wilfried Zango, Abdoulaye Sanfo, Suzanne Kourouma, Orokiatou Baro, François Adianaga, Jean Delaru Kambire, Jean Yves Nana, B. Patrice Napon, Serge Alain Kahoun, Idrissa Sourwema, Bassirou Zoundi, Dieudonné Ouedraogo, and Bernard Constant Conombo.