Our trip to Ouaga conincides with the 20th biannual Festival of Pan African Cinema of Ouagadougou– the West African version of Cannes. I’ve never seen so many Europeans in my life, the place is full of them. And Americans! Walking down the streets of Ouaga!
This morning, sitting at the table next to us, while Camille slurped her mango, was an obvious french-style african-hollywood director: the shoes, the watch, everyone wanting to shake his hand, a skinny french woman at his table dripping with Jean Paul Gaultier.
Of course the front desk of the hotel doesn’t have a schedule or a poster or anything, even though the hotel is packed with the aforementioned Europeans, Americans and director-types. We asked where we could find information and they pointed us to the streets of Ouaga in the most general way. We walked in the hot sun, kids complaining every step, motos wizzing by, deep open holes in the sidewalk, not finding anything except an african guy with a FESPACO badge looking for the same office we are. After talking to a couple of guys in front of the building where the office is not, (we had been directed to the same building) he confidently takes off down the street. We follow him for a few sweaty blocks. Some people are following us, and this is annoying me. I turn around to get a good look at them, and they look like us, except they have FESPACO badges. “Anglais ou Français?” I ask, and she is American, with a Dutch boyfriend, and a map and knows where the FESPACO press office is–it’s the opposite direction from where are heading.
The press office is literally around the corner from our hotel. Being a film-maker myself, I feel I have every right to go in press office and am graciously handed a schedule and discriptions of all the movies, post cards and flyers.
We would love to be spending all day watching movies, but we have kids and therefore, a babysitting issue, so I read all discriptions of the movies and and try to find one I think kids could watch.
The beauty and the difficulty with the movies shown is that they are about Africa. I sort of forgot this crucial aspect of the festival. Therefore, the movie discriptions start like this: “a young former Sierra Leonean fighter stuggles to find his bearings between his rehabilation center and a national reconciliation tribunal…” or “After a jail sentence, a young man with a cruel past and an uncertain future is realeased…” Hmm, not so much good for kids. “Marion, a young prostitute from the outskirts of the city decides to move downtown…” Uh, no. “Mustapha has spent the past five years of his life in prison for drug trafficking…” “Making Off is set around a shooting scene and tells the tragedy of the three characters involved…” “Marjolie sleeps with a dignitary of the Presidency of the Republic, he dies in the course of the action…”
I finally found a short film I thought kids could handle, about a boy whose family lives at the garbage dump in Burundi. It was fun to go the theater, camera crews outside, everyone wearing a FESPACO badge. The directrice of the film came out and spoke to an audience that might as well have been the United Nations, followed by much applause.The theater was nicely air conditioned, but they had light trouble, are they on? Are they off? The film began. Camille immediatly hid her face in her lap and kept it there the whole time–she says she just didn’t want to watch the movie– and Stefan promptly fell asleep.
Peter and I liked it though.
Tonight we will go see another short film, this one about a guy who has collected bottles on the beach in Tunisia for 30 years. At FESPACO, the only kid-appropriate films are about, as Pippi Longstocking calls them, Thingfinders.
twenty-something years of "what have you been up to?" 