World Festival of Black Arts and Culture

World Festival of Black Arts
World Festival of Black Arts (FESMAN)
Genre	Pan-African
Dates	December
Location(s)	Dakar, Senegal; Lagos, Nigeria
Years active	1966, 1977, 2009/2010
Founded by	Leopold Senghor
Website
http://blackworldfestival.com

The World Festival of Black Arts (French: ), also known as FESMAN, is a month-long culture and arts festival that takes place in Africa. The festival features poetry, sculpture, painting, music, cinema, theatre, fashion, architecture, design and dance from artists and performers from around the African Diaspora.

The festivals were planned as Pan-African celebrations, and ranged in content from debate to performance — particularly dance and theatre.

The First World Festival of Black Arts or World Festival of Negro Arts was held in Dakar, Senegal, 1–24 April 1966, initiated by former President Leopold Senghor, under the auspices of UNESCO, with the participation of 45 African, European, Caribbean, and North and South African countries, and featuring black literature, music, theater, visual arts, film and dance. It was first state-sponsored festival to showcase the work of African and African diasporic artists, musicians and writers to a global audience. Participants included historian Cheikh Anta Diop; dancers Arthur Mitchell and Alvin Ailey; Mestre Pastinha, a Capoeira troupe from Bahia; Duke Ellington; Marion Williams; singers Julie Akofa Akoussah and Bella Bellow; writers Aimé Césaire, Langston Hughes, Wole Soyinka, Amiri Baraka, and Nelson Mandela. The filmmaker William Greaves made a 40-minute documentary of the event entitled The First World Festival of Negro Arts (1968). Italian journalist Sergio Borelli produced "Il Festival de Dakar (1966)"a 50-minute documentary for RAI.