In the now notorious interview with French reporters, renowned Senegalese filmmaker Ousmane Sembene leans towards us, pipe clasped in hand. “Europe is not my center. Europe is on the outskirts. After 100 years, did they speak my language?” He goes on to describe how combining the landmass of America and Europe, it could not even stretch out to cover Africa. The multitudes of the largest continent on Earth could not be contained within the walls of the Western imaginary. He finishes his response, “Why be a sunflower, and turn towards the sun, when I myself am the sun?”

The hegemony of Western power over the material aspects of film still haunts our contemporary moment, with filmmakers across the Global South suffering lack of funds, distribution, and infrastructure to truly serve the sociocultural needs of the people as outlined by the political artists of Sembene’s era. Most discourse around Africa as a “new” continent for the film canon focuses on its private potential, quoting the growing youth population and possible profit centers. Is this all one can imagine, pandering to global streaming behemoths and audiences looking to break into the Western mainstream? History offers other narratives and displays the continual pitfalls of reliance on the framework of neocolonial-backed institutions. 

For some time in Burkina Faso, a vision of an independent, radical, pan-African cinema was realized in the culmination of the Pan-African Festival of Cinema and Television in Ouagadougou (FESPACO 85’). The festival sought to dismantle the colonial distribution and creation of cinema, and the ideals expressed at the event embody the intimate relationship between economic development and expansion of cultural form. As Senegalese filmmaker and writer Paulin Samanou Vieyra stated at the 1959 Second Congress of Black Writers and Artists, “There must be economic development. At the very least in the vital sectors, cinema is one of them.”

The early history of cinema across the continent largely reproduces colonial logics. LA Notcutt, a British plantation manager, founded one of the early colonial cinema projects in Kenya called the Bantu Educational Kinema Experiment. In his reflections on the role of Europe in African cinema, he said: “With backwards peoples unable to distinguish between truth and falsehood, it is surely in our wisdom, if not our obvious duty, to prevent as far as possible the dissemination of wrong ideas.

When faced with the issue of undoing years of colonial dehumanization and paternalism toward African peoples, the camera would need to be liberated and taken hold of by the oppressed peoples to construct a vision of the future. 

Even after settler forces pulled out from their occupied regions in the decolonial period, new methods of colonial practices sprung to the forefront of foreign aid and loan programs. In the case of Burkina Faso, the stranglehold of the CFA Franc—assisted by policies of the IMF and World Bank—centralizes the process of foreign exchange to the hands of the French treasury and tightens around the emancipatory attempts of the nation.

Cinema reflected this continuing colonial attitude and practice. In the aftermath of independence in Francophone nations, Compagnie Africaine Cinématographique Industrielle et Commerciale (COMACICO) and Société d’Exploitation Cinématographique Africaine (SECMA) held an iron grip on West African film distribution. As of 1969, Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso) had only six cinemas, and the films on display were primarily French, and aligned with the cinematic colonial project.

Under the guise of supporting cultural development, the French Ministére de coopération also provided filmmakers with postproduction houses and funding opportunities in coalition with COMACICO and SECMA. This French monopoly meant that the language and content of West African cinema would have to pass through the censorship of tastes, politics, and aesthetics of French financiers. For example, Ousmane Sembene ran into many issues with his French producers during the making of Mandabi, the first film in the Wolof language. Producers gawked at his script, telling him that it needed erotic scenes and to be produced in French. Sembene refused, filming with primarily non-actors and delivering on his anti-colonial vision. Sembene could understand their language, but could they speak his?

The private distributors paralleled the practices of their state counterparts. In 1960, for example, Mali attempted to move off the CFA Franc and was struck with severe sanctions by the French government. Reflecting this in the realm of cinema, Upper Volta in 1969 attempted to nationalize their cinema industry. COMACICO and SECMA responded by pulling distribution and boycotting the nation from its distribution line. While the country may have had control of the screens, they had no films to fill them. 

It is within this backdrop that African filmmakers, inspired by the revolutionary rhetoric of figures such as Franz Fanon and Amilcar Cabral, sought to build a new infrastructure for the creation and distribution of cinema. Shortly after the country nationalized its cinema industry, Upper Volta hosted the initial biennial Pan-African Festival of Cinema and Television in Ouagadougou and became the headquarters of the Pan-African Federation of Filmmakers (FESPACI). Founded during the height of pan-African excitement and discourse in Algiers, the festival sought to showcase and support the respective national cinema projects of the neighboring countries. Upper Volta subsequently became a focal point of cinema for Africa through the continental celebration, even if it still had to contend with the duopoly of French distributors.

There were many attempts to articulate the vision of an anticolonial, independent cinema from African cineastes and filmmakers. From the Algiers Manifesto in 1970 to the Niamey Charter in 1982, those working within the continent’s industry expressed the need for a liberatory film. However, their respective state’s answers to their calls were lackluster until the installation of the Sankara government.

In 1983, pan-Africanist and Marxist leader Thomas Sankara came to power in the Upper Volta, which he quickly renamed Burkina Faso. Alongside large infrastructural and economic projects, Sankara recognized the emancipatory potential of cinema and began to lay the frameworks of supporting Burkinabé filmmakers with funding and distribution. Seeking to build national sovereignty within cultural and economic arenas, Sankara also poured funds into the FESPACO and decided, along with the guiding congress FESPACI, on the theme “Cinema and the Liberation of Peoples” for the 1985 iteration of the festival.

1985 also saw the nationwide “Battle of the Rails” take place, in which citizens from around the country would compete as squads in clearing land for a railway to the largest manganese deposit in Burkina Faso. FESPACO, in an act of solidarity with the people’s mission, took to the countryside, hammer in hand, and joined the workers on the site of their act of emancipation from neocolonial hegemony.

The image of the filmmakers from across the continent shoulder to shoulder with the workers and volunteers set the scene for the festival and highlighted the momentous occasion for not only cinema but anticolonial movements across the globe. Sankara told journalists prior to the festival, “The purification of the cinema is a requirement of our struggle, we must conquer our screens, reconquer our culture, to spread the messages that are going to serve the people’s interests. Cultural achievement is part of the overall strategy of the Revolution.”

In the midst of the festival, liberation became the center point of all filmic activity. The cinema halls, hotels, and streets of Ouagadougou were adorned with decorations and posters calling out “Free the African Screens!” and “FESPACO 85, weapon of the liberation for peoples.” The films on display stretched beyond just the continent of Africa, with Cuban and other Latin American countries sending delegations and screening their own films on national liberation. Filmmakers of the African diaspora held seminars and discussions in Africa’s first and only international film school.

Sankara took a leading role in the festival, speaking at and hosting the opening and closing ceremonies. He also took personal care to meet with African filmmakers and offer support in funding and production. Med Hondo was one of the directors who had been abused by French production monopolies in the pre-production of his epic Sarraounia. Sankara invited Hondo for a drink during the festival and promised him funding and support from the Burkinabé government. The film was entirely shot in Burkina Faso, premiering at the following FESPACO 87’.

The festival was a rousing success, with Brahim Tsaki’s “Tale of an Encounter” winning the Étalon de Yennenga (first prize) award and Euzhan Palcy’s “Sugar Cane Alley” winning the Audience Award. Two years later, Sankara would be assassinated, and his national liberation project would be quashed by a French and American-backed coup headed by his former compatriot Blaise Compraoré. FESPACO would continue, however its anticolonial character and revolutionary expressions of solidarity would be rolled back under the French-backed regime. The material gains of the country would be revoked as well, returning to dependence on Europe for its economic livelihood.

The flow of history is not a totalizing force, however. Thirty-seven years after the death of Sankara, the anti-colonial rhetoric of those four years has returned in the form of the Alliance of Sahel States (AES). Burkina Faso’s military leader, Ibrahim Traore, left the imperialist-controlled Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and formed the new AES coalition, which includes Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso. There is also a strong movement to abandon the CFA Franc as currency, although there are attempts to maintain oversight by reforming it. The movement for a truly post-imperial Africa continues.

Film distributed for and by Africans across the continent maintains its kinetic potential for articulating the struggles, vision, and hopes of ordinary people. The US and European powers still pursue power over Africa’s resources, and thus seek to undermine their attempts at all aspects of sovereignty. Domestic film distribution of local artists has not been fully supported as access to cultural institutions remains an issue. As of 2019, there are only around 1,650 cinema screens on the entire continent, which equates to one per seven hundred thousand. For reference, France has about eleven thousand people per cinema screen, and in the US seven thousand per screen. Pushing for foreign private investment toward development in cinema does not equate to increased popular expression. Even if new theaters and screens are made available, what will fill their screens? 

Moments like FESPACO 85’ offer a history to lean upon. By listening to artists who express solidarity with the masses, states, and organizations can push forward cultural ideals that counter the imperialist hegemony that still seeks to subjugate and exploit the Global South. In the words of Amilcar Cabral, “it may be seen that if imperialist domination has the vital need to practice cultural oppression, national liberation is necessarily an act of culture.”