Who is Paulin Vieyra? Paulin Soumanou Vieyra was a pioneer of African cinemas during the decolonization era of the 1960s. Born in Benin, he is best known as a Senegalese producer, filmmaker, and historian as well as Ousmane Sembène’s production manager. See an overview of Vieyra’s career with film clips in the above video. Courtesy… Read more »
When I first started working here, I knew I would be working primarily with the FESPACO poster collection. I naively assumed that they would all be made out of some sort of paper product and likely be mass-produced. Well, that turned out to be quite wrong since the BFC/A also has a small collection of… Read more »
As in other industries, there are people who chose to work in film because their family members have had successful careers as actors, directors, or producers. The United States has the Barrymore and Huston families; France the Depardieus; and Italy has the Rossellinis. Africa has its own version of a successful filmmaking family: the Ouedraogos…. Read more »
Film festivals are important events for cinema since they bring exposure to filmmakers, support the local industry and community, and allow people in cinema to network with other professionals. There are a small number of film festivals in Africa such as those in Durban, Carthage, and Cairo. Part 3 will focus on the Panafrican Film… Read more »
Hello there! My name is Sarah Mayersohn and I am interning at the BFC/A as part of my coursework for my master’s in library science at the School of Library and Information Science, Indiana University-Bloomington. One of my primary duties is processing African movie posters into the archive’s FESPACO collection, and I’ve noticed that there… Read more »
In partnership with IU Press, Black Camera Volume 3, Issue 1 has arrived! Featuring the provocative art work of Adele Stephenson on the front and back cover as well as the poster gallery, the latest edition to the journal includes an interview with Stanley Nelson on the occasion of the screening of Freedom Riders at… Read more »
“It is late afternoon in Ouagadougou, a landlocked city in one of the world’s poorest countries. Forty thousand people are packed tightly into a vast stadium, originally built to celebrate the renaming of Upper Volta as Burkina Faso, “the land of upright people”. A thermometer shows that it is 100˚ in the shade. A posse… Read more »
The Panafrican Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou (Festival panafricain du cinéma et de la télévision de Ouagadougou or FESPACO) is the largest African film festival, held biennially in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. The festival is the biggest regular cultural event on the African continent and it mostly focuses on the African film and African filmmakers…. Read more »