Breaking the chains of Hollywood.

Paul Michaud, a lecturer for many years at Harvard University on both film and international affairs, attended Africa's paramount biennial film festival, Fespaco in Burkina Faso. Here he describes why the development of African cinema has been retarded.

Burkina Faso is probably the last place in the world where you would think of setting up a film production industry. The landlocked country is one of the poorest on earth. Yet, 30 years ago, Upper Volta, as Burkina Faso was then known, decided to set up an international film festival, Fespaco (Festival panafricain du cinema et de la television de Ouagadougou), which has gone on to become Sub-Saharan Africa's major film show-place.

Fespaco, a biannual event, brought to the attention of the world the work of such brilliant native sons as Gaston M Kabore, Idrissa Ouedraogo, Sanou Kollo and Pierre Yameogo.

By exporting their films - honoured with Fespaco's grand prizes - to festivals around the world, Kabore, Ouedraogo, Kollo and Yameogo managed in turn to transform Fespaco into a world-renowned centre for African cinema. Over the years, the influence of Fespaco has grown out of all recognition and it has now become a major showplace for films from all over the African diaspora. American actor, director and producer Spike Lee is a regular participant.

During the loth anniversary of the festival, in 1979, the organisers unveiled sub-Saharan Africa's first studio complex. The $3m studio, called Cinafric (Societe africaine du cinema) was funded, built, owned and operated by one of Burkina Faso's principal businessmen, Martial Ouedraogo, popularly known as 'Mr Maggi'. He had earned his nickname because he had been the exclusive importer of Maggi Cubes. Ouedraogo seemed to have a Midas touch - he made money on almost everything he touched, from paper matches and newspapers (he owns the Observateur, the prominent Burkinabe daily published by his younger brother Edouard) to construction and donkey-carts.

Word of the festival's importance reached the ears of my editors at Variety, then the Hollywood show-business bible, and I was sent out to cover the 10th anniversary festival. I came back with a seven-part series, in which I detailed Ouagadougou's 'ambitions to become a Black Hollywood' and unwittingly affixed to this country an label which it has never managed to shake off.

With a single sound stage that measures a mere 600 square meters, five editing rooms and the closest processing lab 3,000 miles away, Cinafric has never had an easy time adjusting to its reputation as the centerpiece of the Black Hollywood's film industry. Indeed, its demise is regularly announced, although to this day it is still very much alive and in search of clients, and hopes to interest an American producer or two one of these days.

A good location for Westerns?

A friend of Ouedraogo's maintains that Ouagadougou might be a good place for American producers to start shooting Westerns. As it happens, the vulture, a staple of the American Western, is Burkina Faso's unofficial national bird and Ouagadougou's skies are filled with hundreds of the circling birds - to the point where they have become a danger for planes.

The major danger these days, however, seems to be political interference with the film industry. This is one of the reasons why Chivalric has not been able to enjoy the financial success it deserves. Clients, willing and eager to make use of the facilities, are apparently plentiful, but getting through political hedges is putting them off.

The difficulties encountered recently by one of Burkina Faso's most promising young directors, Pierre Yameogo, provide a case in point. Yameogo's first three films, Dunia (1985), Laffi (1990) and Wendemi (1992) attracted much international attention. For his fourth film, Silmande, he decided to portray West Africa's economically significant Lebanese community, and the important role it has played in countries like Burkina Faso and Cote d'Ivoire since African independence in the early 1960s.

But the portrayal has not been to everybody's liking, and Yameogo, who produces out of Paris from his own company Afix Production, says the film was almost never made because of political interference. Just to obtain authorisation to make the film in Burkina Faso, took him all of four years. The wait might have been much longer had he not been able to obtain, although belatedly, the personal support of Head of State Blaise Compaore.

The film was eventually completed in Ouagadougou, although on a shoestring budget of FFr7m ($1.25m). The government provided one fifth of the total cost and also allowed Yameogo to use of country's armed forces. Finally released in Burkina Faso in July 1998, Silmande attracted 5,000 spectators over the first three days after release. However, when it was exported to Cote d'Ivoire the film remained largely invisible as unlike Burkina Faso, the country's movie houses are largely controlled from outside the country. In addition, Cote d'Ivoire's important Lebanese community was able to exert pressure on the small number of cinemas which were showing the film to remove if from their screens.

This was one reason why this year's Fespaco has chosen as its theme the distribution and exhibition of films in Africa. Distribution is inextricably intertwined with production as a producer first has to prove to potential backers that the film he wants to make will be distributed. This becomes particularly important for markets in West Africa's most prosperous economies, those of Cote d'Ivoire, Senegal and Cameroon.

The major problem is that cinemas in these countries are monopolised by a distribution group located in Luxembourg which has a tendency to flood the screens with US-made products. The company has an exclusive contract with the Hollywood majors to distribute their films throughout Africa, and, through another distribution agency, blocks out films made by Africans. Without distribution rights, filmmakers find it next to impossible to raise the money with which to make films in the first place.

The question whether Africa should continue to allow outsiders to control its screens is increasingly being raised at such international fora as Fespaco and the recently held Festival International Ducourt-Metrage d'Abidjan.

It seems certain that sooner or later, African cinemas will be able to break away from the Hollywood stranglehold and show African films which while winning awards at international festivals such as Cannes, Berlin and Venice are hardly known to African audiences. Only then, say film directors like Yameogo or Gaston M Kabore - one of the pioneers of Africa's New Wave, who singlehandedly changed the face of African cinema with his masterwork Wend Kuuni in 1983 and has been honoured at Cannes - will African filmmakers be able to take control of producing their own films.

This in turn will give a new lease on life to facilities such as Cinafric. Despite the financial difficulties it has endured over the years, Cinafric had the courage to give concrete form to what had been for many years simply an idea that nobody else had dared to develop. More impressively, the studio had been built without government subsidies, a staple of such institutions in Africa. Hopefully Fespaco will see fit to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Cinafric and give credit to those private investors like Mr Ouedraogo who are rarely cited for their all-important contributions to African cinema.

Fespaco (Festival Panafricain du Cinema et de la Television de Ouagadougou), 01 BP 2505, Ouagadougou 01 Burkina Faso. Tel [phone] or (226) 332066, Fax [phone], Email [e-mail], Web site http://www.fespaco.bf. The 16th edition of one of the continent's historic and major international film venues, the African equivalent of Cannes, was held this year from February 27- March 6 and focuses on the distribution of films and TV programmes in Africa. The 17th Fespaco, which promises to be even bigger and better will be held February-March 2001.