Every two years an event happens in Burkina-Faso that is eagerly anticipated by many, but still remains under the mainstream radar: The Pan African Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou (FESPACO). And organizers are still accepting entries from filmmakers seeking an intenational audience. Taking place in Ouagadougo, Burkina-Faso from February 24 through March 3, 2007, a new complement to the festival, Guild Week, will expand the scope of the festival with fresh perspectives.
Established in 2005 by the Guild of African Film Directors and Producers, Guild Week highlights and emphasizes new orientations and approaches to cinema in Africa, and how the African continent is viewed through cinema.
Headed by Aboubakar Sanogo, Delegate General for Guild Week, The Guild of African Film Directors and Producers is accepting submissions for the 2007 Biennial until December 15. A full list of categories after the jump.
The Guild is seeking films for submissions in the following categories:
1. Exploration-Innovation. This category will foreground the Guild Week's commitment to spearheading and institutionalizing thematic and formal exploration in cinema. The Guild is calling for avant-garde films, films that push the envelope, advance the discourse, the iconography and sonography of how Africa is represented on film.
2. Dissidence. The African Film Directors and Producers Guild sees this as the ideological credo of the Guild Week. The African film guild seeks to encourage a cinema of attitude, both political and aesthetic, the cinematic and audiovisual translation of the duty to dissent. They are calling for films that express defiance and rebelliousness vis-à-vis the current state and image of Africa, films that best express the notion, feeling, and act of disagreement with and opposition to the status quo.
3. Women in Cinema. The Guild believes that women must be adequately represented in their approach to the cinema. They are looking for films that expand, enrich and complicate their understanding and relationship to questions of women, womanhood, femininity or feminism. The judges seek films that address these questions in an original, urgent, compelling, and daring manner.
4. The Popular. In this category, the Guild seeks to engage what's popular. They think that for cinema to be self-sustaining in Africa, it must engage with the popular and have a resolutely popular dimension. The judges are looking for films that best explore this notion of the popular or have had some form of popular reception. Films from newer (e.g., Nollywood) and older (e.g., Egypt) popular cinematic traditions on the continent are encouraged.
5. Rosebud. In this category, they seek to encourage works by new and young filmmakers who are still in or have recently graduated from film schools. The section will showcase their best films. It will also serve as a clearing house for reading scripts and providing funding information.
6. Africa From Without. They are looking for films made by non-African filmmakers about Africa. The films must shed new light and increase knowledge and understanding of the complexities of the continent. They may also be films that have had significant media and public resonance and played a role in the perception of Africa.
The films may be shorts or features, fiction or documentary, but must be sent in DVD format.
To be considered for the 2007 Guild Week, submissions are mailed to Paris, France. More information is available from aboubakar dot sanogo at gmail dot com.
