Vues d'Afrique, a digital first "very positive for African cinema"

Text by: Siegfried Forster

“We have already broken all media coverage records. The 36th Views of Africa Festival in Montreal, an unmissable event for African cinema in North America, is poised to succeed in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic. This Friday, April 17, for the first time, it opens its doors as a digital edition.

Publicity

“  In Quebec, people are confined. So there is really a whole audience available,  ”says Gérard Le Chêne, co-founder and president of Vues d'Afrique, a few hours before the opening of the festival. This year, it will not welcome its festival-goers in theaters in Montreal, but on the platform of TV5 Québec-Canada (www.tv5unis.ca), from April 17 to 26, free of charge, however limited to the Canadian public. Interview.

RFI : Practically all the festivals planned for these months are in the process of canceling their 2020 edition. Why did you decide to maintain Vues d'Afrique through a first digital edition ?

Gérard Le Chêne : We made a shift that we made thanks to the cooperation with TV5 Québec-Canada, the little brother of TV5 Monde. So, we're going to have a digital festival. And a good majority of rights holders, directors, distributors, have accepted that their films be shown on the platform. What is also interesting, an evil for a good, we really reach a new audience. We get a lot of interest. For us in Canada, the festival begins on the night of Wednesday through Thursday, at midnight. All films will be scheduled and broadcast for two days, that is, after 48 hours, there will be a new schedule. All this for ten days, the initial duration of the festival planned in theaters.

For the first time, you will award a Public Prize. Will the relationship with festival-goers change through this digital edition ?

Yes. There will always be jurors, classic prizes in the fiction, documentary categories, and a specific category made up of Quebec and Canadian films on Africa and Creole countries. But there will be for the first time this Audience Award, to further involve the new audience who will join us.

► Also read:  Tunisia: Gabès Cinéma Fen, the first online cinema festival in the Arab world

What new effect do you expect?

In Quebec, people are currently confined. So there is really a whole audience available and we also have films for the whole family, for young people. I think we will reach many more people. Many are already viewing the program on the Internet. This suggests a good attendance.

The Vues d'Afrique festival is the unmissable event for African cinema in North America. Do you hope for better visibility for films from 27 countries ?

There will be a geolocalized restriction, the films offered on the TV5 Québec-Canada platform will only be accessible in Canada. We had a lot of requests from different African countries and also from France. We really have excellent programming, with major films like Divan in Tunis , the Tunisian Manele Labidi, Notre-Dame du Nil , the Franco-Afghan Atiq Rahimi, Le Père de Nafi , the Senegalese Mamadou Dia ... The press was really enthusiastic. We have broken all media coverage records. I really think it will be positive for African cinema.

You received 1,600 films, selected 64 fictions and documentaries. What is for you the common thread of current African cinema ?

Among the privileged themes, there were often the rights of women, the situation of children ... There, especially for North African films, there is this omnipresence of the terrorist threat. Since the appearance of the coronavirus, we talk about it much less, but in the programming, we always feel, directly or indirectly, this threat in the background.

Originally, you had shown eight films in virtual reality (VR), including a Rwandan production : Kigali's First Women Moto Taxi Drivers , a story of female taxi-motorcycle drivers. Are these VR films maintained in digital publishing ?

Unfortunately not, because for virtual reality you need headsets, physical contact, a physical place to install the films. It's called virtual reality, but it doesn't go through digital broadcasting. Unfortunately, we had to abandon the Virtual Reality section, for now.

Gérard Le Chêne, president and co-founder of the international African film festival Vues d'Afrique, here in 2019. Siegfried Forster / RFI

Why did you finally select only 37 of the 64 films for digital publishing ?

As I said, the directors were very cooperative, the distributors a little less. They thought it might jeopardize their future, although since there is a 48 hour limit for each film, I think for major films it's more like a trailer and d 'a promotion that a real drawback ...

Your choice not to cancel the festival but to make it exist in digital form, will this inspire other cinematographic events such as the Cannes Festival, the Toronto International Film Festival or the Pan-African Fespaco Festival in Ouagadougou ?

We are in contact with all our colleagues, thanks to a kind of network with fifteen festivals which are either entirely devoted to African cinema or give it a very large place. Since they know what we have done, maybe they will be inspired by it. Unless a miraculous vaccine against the coronavirus has been discovered, things will start gradually, with mixed formulas. One of the most worrying things is the evolution of air transport. It will be difficult, and there may also be a lot of reluctance from an environmental point of view. So there are a lot of problems on the horizon, but we are working very hard, with a lot of imagination, to find alternatives. I think, ultimately, we will get out, which is the leitmotif in Quebec.

► Vues d'Afrique, the 36th edition of the Festival of African and Creole Cinema in Montreal takes place from April 17 to 26 on the TV5 Québec-Canada platform, only accessible in Canada.

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