I am lucky enough to have been covering Fespaco for the BBC for some
time now – this will be my third Fespaco - but the excitement is still
there.

In fact, precisely because I know what an exhilarating
experience the festival is, I can hardly wait for it to get started.

BBC's Catherine Fellows

Let me paint a quick picture. The dusty, friendly, human-sized city of Ouagadougou is strewn with bunting and banners welcoming visitors to
the biggest arts event on the continent.

Film posters are going up on walls all over town; every flight into the small airport unloads an exotic cargo of film makers and festival goers .

Everyone from Moroccans to Ugandans, from Egyptians to South Africans from African Americans with impressive dreadlocks to Scandinavians turning pink in the heat.



At the Hotel Independence which is where most of the film makers stay,
and where the BBC is based during Fespaco, the reception is noisy with
languages from all over the world.

In the hotel garden and around the poolside, long-lost friends and collaborators meet and greet Catherine Fellows

Workmen are busy constructing stalls for the sale of local trinkets, not to mention the BBC stage, which is protected from the sun by local straw matting.

In the hotel garden and around the poolside, long-lost friends and collaborators meet and greet – which film shoot did we meet on? When is your film being screened? Don’t I remember you from Fespaco 2003?

This time around, there seem to be even more films, and a more diverse
selection than before.



The presence of South Africa this year is extraordinary: out of the twenty full length feature films in competition for the big prize, the Etalon de Yenenga, four are from South Africa, a number equalled only by the host nation, Burkina Faso.

And that is not to mention the many short films and documentaries that are being screened from South Africa. It will be interesting to see how this increased Anglo-phone presence changes the feel of what has traditionally been a Franco-phone dominated Festival.

There are also a noticeable number of women film makers represented
this Fespaco. Branwen Okpako from Nigeria has a long film in
competition, as do Appoline Traore and Fanta Regina Nacro, both from
Burkina.



Amongst the films I am most looking forward to seeing are Le Malentendu
Colonial and Tasuma, Le Feu. The first is a documentary which has somehow managed to slip into the main feature film competition, by Jean Marie Teno from Cameroon.

His films have a distinctive authored style, and tend to be lyrical and thought provoking. This one is likely to be particularly provocative, because, Teno says, it links German colonial exploits in Africa with the World War II concentration camps.

It will be interesting to see how this Anglo-phone presence changes the feel of a traditionally Franco-phone dominated Festival Catherine Fellows

Tasuma, Le Feu has been a long, long time in the making, for reasons
mostly financial, and as its Burkinabe director, Daniel Kollo Sanou,
told me, this saga of delay mirrors the story of the film itself.

The hero is a Burkinabe war veteran engaged in a long and frustrating
struggle to claim his pension from the French, for whom he fought.

Finally, The Governor’s New Clothes, by previous Fespaco winner, Mweze
Ngangura, has to be one to watch. An African take on the Hans
Christian Anderson fable about vanity and power, it is a musical
starring the ultimate sapeur, Papa Wemba.

As we know, Papa Wemba has been involved in a few dramas of his own lately, and his detention over illegal immigration issues delayed this film considerably . . .