Panel Discussion: FESPACO and the Archiving of African Cinema

Thu Jun 01 2023 at 07:00 pm to 09:00 pm

Raven Row | London

Raven Row
Publisher/HostRaven Row
Panel Discussion: FESPACO and the Archiving of African Cinema
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A panel discussion as part of 'PerAnkh: The June Givanni PanAfrican Cinema Archive'.
About this Event
FESPACO and the Archiving of African CinemaWith June Givanni (chair), Mohamed Challouf, Claire Diao, Jihan El-Tahri, Aboubakar Sanogo and Keith Shiri

Since its establishment in 1969, the Pan-African Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou (FESPACO) in Burkina Faso has been considered one of the most important festivals of the African, and later the African diaspora’s, filmic imagination. Chaired by June Givanni, this panel charts and explores FESPACO’s histories and legacies.

The discussion will take place in Raven Row's lower gallery space, which is wheelchair-accessible from Frying Pan Alley. Please contact Rhian Smith at [email protected] with any questions about event accessibility.



BiographiesJihan El-Tahri

Jihan El-Tahri is a Franco Egyptian award-winning film director, writer, visual artist and producer. She currently serves as the General Director of the Berlin based documentary support institution DOX BOX. El-Tahri has been a member of The Academy (Oscars) since 2017 and is currently on the selection committee of the Locarno International Film Festival. She has directed more than 15 films and her visual art exhibitions have travelled to museums and Biennales around the world. Her writings include Les Sept Vies de Yasser Arafat (Grasset, 1997) and Israel and the Arabs, The 50 Years war (Penguin, 1998). She continues to mentor and direct various documentary and filmmaking labs. El-Tahri has served on the boards of several African film organisations including the Federation of Pan African Cinema and The Guild of African Filmmakers in the Diaspora. El Tahri holds a BA and MA in Political Science from the American University in Cairo, Egypt (1984 and 1986 respectively).


June Givanni

June Givanni (Curator and Director, JGPACA) is a pioneering international film curator with over 30 years’ experience in film and broadcasting. Her work is principally concerned with the distribution and exhibition of African and African diasporic cinemas. She has worked independently and across a range of institutions and contexts, including the Greater London Council (GLC), the British Film Institute (BFI) – where she co-founded the Black Film Bulletin – and the Independent Television Commission (ITC). She has programmed for festivals including Images Caraïbes in Martinique, the Toronto International Film Festival’s Planet Africa strand, and the Africa International Film Festival (AFRIFF) in Nigeria; and has served on festival juries including the Pan-African Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou (FESPACO), the Zanzibar Festival of the Dhow Countries (ZIFF), and the African Movie Academy Awards (AMAA) in Nigeria.


Mohamed Challouf

Mohamed Challouf was born in Tunisia in 1957. In 1983, with some help from a group of friends, he created the Giornate del Cinema Africano di Perugia and attended to its artistic direction until 1994. In 1992, he finished his first photographic book, I Figli del Sud, and organised an exhibition dedicated to his childhood in Africa (exhibited in more than 30 African and European cities). He was the co-author and producer of Italiani dell’altra Riva, a documentary about the memory of the Italian community in Tunisia, and produced Anastasia di Bizerta, which was selected for the Venice Cinematographic Art Exhibition. In 2000, he produced and directed the documentary, Ouaga, capitale du cinéma, selected for the Venice Cinema Exhibition in the same year and broadcast in Italy by Tele +. Since 2005 he has organised Hergla’s Film Encounter (Tunisia), a new festival dedicated to African and Mediterranean short and documentary films.


Claire Diao

Claire Diao is a French-Burkinabè film critic and distributor. She founded the short film program Quartiers Lointains in 2013, co-founded the Pan-African film critic magazine AWOTELE in 2015, and has been the CEO of the Pan-African film distribution company Sudu Connexion since 2016. In 2018, Diao received the Beaumarchais Medal from the French Society of Dramatic Authors and Composers for her essay Double Vague, le nouveau souffle du cinéma français (Au Diable Vauvert, ed. 2017). As a TV host, she worked for Canal+ International and France O, and as a columnist for Canal+ and TV5 Monde. Claire Diao is a member of the African Film Critic Federation, the Burkinabè Film Critic organisation and has collaborated with the Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival and Durban Talents (South Africa). In 2018, she joined the Cannes Directors’ Fortnight official selection committee, and in 2023 the Lincoln Center programming team in New York.


Aboubakar Sanogo

Aboubakar Sanogo is an Associate Professor in Film Studies at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. His research interests include African cinema, Afro-diasporic cinema, documentary film and media, transnational and world cinema, film archiving and film heritage, colonial cinema, postcolonialism, race and cinema and the relationship between film form, history and theory. His writings have appeared in Cinema Journal, Framework, Moving Image Review & Art Journal, Rethinking History, Journal of Film Preservation, Film Quarterly, Sight and Sound, Film Comment and the Journal of African Cinemas. He is currently completing two manuscripts on the history of documentary in Africa and on the cinema of Med Hondo and an anthology on the legendary director. He has curated film programs at the Smithsonian Institution, The Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), the Il Cinema Ritrovato Film Festival in Bologna, and the Pan African Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou (FESPACO). He is the founder of the annual African Film Festival of Ottawa (AFFO), presented in partnership with the Canadian Film Institute (CFI). As the North American Regional Secretary for the Pan African Federation of Filmmakers (FEPACI), he initiated and oversees the FEPACI Archival Project. In that capacity, he was instrumental in establishing African Film Heritage Project (AFHP), a major film preservation and restoration initiative in partnership with Martin’s Scorsese’s The Film Foundation and UNESCO in collaboration with the Cineteca di Bologna.


Keith Shiri

Keith Shiri is an international film curator, programme advisor to various film festivals and founder director of Africa at the Pictures. He is currently an expert and consultant on Film Business Development for the International Trade Centre (ITC), an agency of the United Nations. He is the Regional Secretary (Europe) for the Federation of African Filmmakers (FEPACI) and a Visiting Research Fellow at the Centre for Research and Education in Arts and Media (CREAM) University of Westminster, London.

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Event Venue & Nearby Stays

Raven Row, 56 Artillery Lane, London, United Kingdom

Tickets

GBP 0.00

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