Nairobi — This year's edition of Fespaco African film festival in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, runs from February 24 to March 6, and is expected to be the biggest ever of this bi-annual event.
It will include entries from Africa and the diaspora. Twenty films are entered in the main competition for full feature movies and a similar number in the short films category.
This year, South Africa and host country Burkina Faso have eight entries in the two main categories - the highest this year. There are none from East Africa which would seem unusual considering the increased productions in the region over the last five years.
Admittedly, Kenyan films have not done well at the festival, which is dominated by better quality movies from other African countries. The host country is particularly noted in this field and has had a booming film-making culture for over two decades.
In the previous event, Dangerous Affairs was screened, and won special mention for production values but the big winner was the documentary on Lamu by KIMC filmmaker Susan Wambui Mwamburi. It won two main awards, one from its featured category and also the chairman's award. It has been widely screened on KBC television.
Last year was a particularly busy one for filmmakers in East Africa and notably from Uganda whose film Full of Energy received good commendation at last year's Zanzibar International Film Festival. Among interesting African directors entered this year is DRC filmmaker Mweze Ngangura whose satirical movie, Pieces of Identity, was a major success in overseas African film circles. Elsewhere after winning this year's Directors Guild Award, director Clint Eastwood appears on strong ground for this year's Oscar award which would be his third.
Sign up for free AllAfrica Newsletters
Get the latest in African news delivered straight to your inbox
His two others are for The Unforgiven (1992) and The Bridge Over Madison County (1995). He was a strong contender with last year's movie Mystic River which won the actor's Oscar for maverick actor Sean Penn but not for the director.
This week's DGA award is the second for the movie which won a Golden Globe for Eastwood two weeks ago. But the two previous awards still have him in major league as a director and more so given that he started out as an actor. On video games, actors James Caan and Robert Duvall have signed for their voices and likeness to be used in a forthcoming video game based on Francis Coppola's movie The Godfather , which won several Oscars in 1972, including one for Marlon Brando.
This becomes one of the several hit movies to be made into video games. Marlon had signed for the same video game shortly before he died last year. The actor had also agreed to do a documentary on his career by Tony Kaye (American History X) but later changed his mind after watching the preliminary footage.
The genre of movies to video games has also had a reverse situation with video games being made to movies. Notable is Tomb Raider which first made it as a video game before being adapted for the big screen.
