Renowned African Filmmakers, actors and stakeholders in the African film industry who have congregated at the on-going 21st Pan African Film Festival are using the stage offered by the organisers to show case the rich heritage of African culture.

The centre stage is the cinema halls which continue to attract hundreds of film enthusiasts to watch discuss and interact with filmmakers who are given the platform to discuss the film with the audience.
Once again African film is finding its lost image and voice in the international circle as leading film-makers turn to the past to explore the continent's own history by getting closer to historical truth in the films.

Most film-makers in Africa and across the African Diaspora who are participating in the festival seem to send one message to the rest of the world, to rescue black history for modern times.

Most films at the festival are preoccupied with setting the record straight, but the task is not taken lightly. "We are taking on responsibility for telling our own stories and own history", Boubakar Diallo, a renowned Burkinabe Journalist and filmmaker stated.
He said it's not just for the benefit of Africans. "Many people in the world haven't seen African history, the Diaspora are part of that because they need our stories for their cultural diet, and we need their know-how and potential capital."
"Even in our countries we are multicultural", he says, recognising the extraordinary diversity of indigenous African cultures and the long history of contact with Europeans. "You take the best from wherever you can get it", he explains.
"At film school they said every film has a beginning, middle and an end but not necessarily in that order. Our stories don't necessarily fit into that Western model", he says.

In the past "African cinema" usually referred to the thriving cinema of Francophone Africa. Their film industry grew out of continued close cultural relationships with France in the post-colonial era, but now the rest of the continent is beginning to catch up.
The biannual Pan African film festival, Fespaco, hosted by the capital of Burkina Faso, Ouagadougou, has seen ever greater entries from around the continent.

The one-week festival on the general theme: "African Cinema, Tourism and Cultural Heritage" seeks to challenge all stakeholders in the African film industry to get more involved in the conservation and enhancement of the African cultural tourist heritage through the power of film.

Francis Ameyibor