FILM SCREENING: OUAGA, THE CAPITAL OF CINEMA

Join us for the screening of OUAGA, the Capital of Cinema,(OUAGA, capitale du cinéma),Tunisia, 2000, 63 minutes, colour, French with English subtitles; by Mohamed Challouf. This screening is programmed and presented by artist and filmmaker Helena Gouveia Monteiro, who will moderate a post-screening conversation. Free, booking on Eventbrite or come on the day subject to availability.

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FESPACO in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, was one of the most important Pan-African film festivals in the world and the scene of a ground-breaking and radical cinema community in the 1980’s. With the support of the young president Thomas Sankara, the festival became a symbol of resistance and cultural renaissance of a new african cinema deeply connected to anti-colonial independence movements. Providing an essential platform for showcasing and supporting new films, the festival contributed to an ecology of cinema production, distribution, and exhibition that challenged the domination of western cinema in the African continent.

Mohamed Challouf attended the festival for the first time in 1985, two years before Sankara’s political assassination, and collected testimonies from writers, directors, actors, and journalists, such as Fanta Nacro, Idrissa Ouédraogo, Gaston Kaboré, Ousmane Sembène, Djibril Diop Mambéty, Med Hondo, Ola Balogun, Férid Boughedir, and Ateyyat Al Abnoudy.

Challouf’s approach clearly reveals his own engagement in the festival, reinforcing its relevance as a collective space of cultural and political exchange, where ideas around identity and representation, women’s rights, ecology, land reform, emancipation, independence, and education can be debated through and around cinema.

Mohamed Challouf was born in Tunisia in 1957. While studying at l’Università Italiana per Stranieri, he co-founded the Giornate del Cinema Africano di Perugia in 1983, the first Italian festival dedicated to African cinema, and continued to attend to its artistic direction until 1994.

He initiated and collaborated in numerous film festivals and events showcasing and supporting pan-African cinema on both sides of the Mediterranean, such as the Journées Cinématographiques de Carthage, the Festival del Cinéma Africano, d’Asia e d’America Latina di Milano, the Rencontres Cinématographiques de Hergla, and the Association Ciné-Sud Patrimoine, an organisation supporting the preservation of african cinema, having recently completed the restoration of «Camp de Thiaroye» by Ousmane Sembène and Thierno Faty Sow, co produced in 1988 between Tunisia, Sénégal, and Algeria.

Challouf directed “Ouaga, capitale du cinéma” in 2000 and “Tahar Cheriaa : L’Ombre du Baobab” in 2014, portraying the Tunisian filmmaker and founder of Journées Cinématographiques de Carthage, the first Pan-African and Pan-Arab film festival.

In 2023, he received the Vittorio Boarini prize from the Bologna Film archive for his invaluable contributions to the preservation of cinema heritage and is currently engaged in a documentary project about the Cameroonian film pioneer Jean-Pierre Dikongué Pipa.

Free, book or come on the day subject to availability.

Host or Publisher Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane