FESPACO @ Fifty: Forms, Formats, Platforms, and African Screen Media Open Access
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Published:April 2025
Pier Paolo Frassinelli, 2025. "FESPACO @ Fifty: Forms, Formats, Platforms, and African Screen Media", Contemporary African Screen Worlds, Lindiwe Dovey, Añulika Agina, Michael W. Thomas
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This chapter analyzes the fiftieth anniversary of FESPACO (the Pan-African Film and TV Festival of Ouagadougou), which took place in 2019. It uses the anniversary as an opportunity to reflect on some of the most significant recent changes in African cinemas, which have to do with the political economy of content production, distribution, and consumption; with the different spaces and platforms—screens, cinemas, film festivals, websites, and other public and private spaces—where African films are screened; and with the new forms, genres, and trends these films represent. It discusses how the corporatization and “Netflixation” of African film production and distribution are bypassing and redefining old divisions between auteur and commercial cinema, and how these changes manifested at the 2019 edition of FESPACO, which has historically represented and promoted art house cinema.