Pan African Federation of Filmmakers

The Pan African Federation of Filmmakers (Fédération Panafricaine des Cinéastes, or FEPACI), formed in 1969 and inaugurated in 1970, is "the continental voice of filmmakers from various regions of Africa and the Diaspora", focusing attention on the promotion of African film industries in terms of production, distribution and exhibition.

At the forefront of the creation of FEPACI were individual film practitioners who were passionate about the African cinema. In 1952, Paulin Vieyra and his friends formed a group called African Cinema, an informal body that had no legal status at the time. At the birth of the African Cinema it was evident that the commitment from filmmakers to produce films was mainly for ideological, economic and cultural development. Film-makers and other African intellectuals also organized themselves through unions, political parties, associations of writers were participating in a civil movement aimed at the emancipation of African Cinema and other artistic formations from colonial dominated structures. The era played an important role introducing film as a medium of expression and a transformational tool for achieving not only political freedom but cultural and ideological freedom as well.

In 1955, black Africa was still largely under European colonial domination. The fight for independence by colonized peoples took a new turn and tone, a new lexicon and vocabulary of intellectual thought was found in the speech against colonialism delivered in the 1950s by Aimé Césaire, Discours sur le colonialisme (Discourse on Colonialism), subsequently published in 1956 by Présence Africaine. Ideas expressed by African and Caribbean intellectuals about the role of the colonial enterprise in the disruption of African societies and the negation of their indigenous cultures became more succinct and radical. The Bandung conference held in Indonesia in 1955 allowed for the first time the peoples of Africa and Asia, to raise their voices farther and beyond their continents to demand the right to equal emancipation and freedom of their Continents.

It was in the Second Congress of Black Writers and Artists, held in Rome in 1959, that a group led by Paulin Vieyra called for a resolution to develop art in Africa. The resolution stressed the need for African ownership of the means of expression, control of production and strategic proprietorship of public platforms that disseminated the African story and its imagery. The resolution also requested that future congresses be accompanied by an African Art Festival. The resolution was implemented in April 1966 in Dakar, where the first World Festival of Black Arts was hosted. 26 films from 16 African countries were screened at this festival. At the end of the festival a resolution for the creation of an inter-African body of cinematography was made and this was led by the African Cinema group. The headquarters of this body was to be in Dakar and the office’s mandate was to organize meetings of African cinema professionals, film directors, technicians, actors, students from all over Africa to ensure a strong activist movement set to work collectively in the development and advancement of the audiovisual film industry. Creating the FEPACI

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