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We extend our appreciation to Vues d’Afrique, one of the most significant African film festivals globally and a key participant in this research trial. With a history spanning 40 years the festival holds a distinctive position as part of a non-profit association dedicated to promoting African arts in Canada, with a particular emphasis on Creole and Afrodiasporic cultures.
According to the festival’s mission, Vues d’Afrique aims to raise awareness of the realities and cultures of African countries, especially French-speaking ones, and to foster exchanges with local audiovisual professionals. The festival contributes to the discovery of lesser-known aspects of French-language cinema and promotes understanding between communities.
Vues d’Afrique boasts an extensive program, featuring a diverse range of audiovisual works, including movies, TV series, and TV films, spanning feature-length, medium-length, and short films. The festival’s team curates a selection of titles, and the festival also opens an annual call for submissions across all categories. Submissions are primarily received from French-speaking African countries, as it is a requirement that all films are either spoken in French or subtitled in the language. Additionally, Vues d’Afrique is a competitive festival, offering various awards each year, with certain categories tied to the support of sponsors.
A notable aspect of the festival is its practice of inviting filmmakers and actors from across the African continent to present their films to the audience. Each edition of Vues d’Afrique features a marraine (godmother) or parrain (godfather), an individual notably engaged in African arts and cinema, contributing to the festival’s cultural richness and diversity.
We are grateful to Vues d’Afrique for the access provided to trial this methodology, being available to us for the implementation of the Decolonial Test and follow-up focus group, and for the range of spaces and resources shared with us for the purposes of this project. Special thanks to Gérard Le Chêne, Président, Directeur Général International, who was our main festival contact when we sent the invitation letter to be a festival partner.
We selected Vues d’Afrique as part of our research sample taking into account the short length of this research project and our previous knowledge and involvement in this festival. Sheila Petty has been involved with the festival since the late 1980s, either as a conference participant, jury member, or film pre-selection committee member.
Gérard Le Chêne is also a collaborator and Vues d’Afrique is a partner in Sheila Petty’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Partnership Development Grant project, “Film festivals and transnational flows of living cultural heritage: Africa in the world.”
Gérard Le Chêne was invited to participate on the festivals and industry representatives panel at the June 24-26, 2021 virtual symposium: Transnational Screen Media Practices: Safeguarding Cultural Heritage, at the University of Regina; co-organized by Sheila Petty with Dr. Charity Marsh, Director, Humanities Research Institute. This symposium and film screenings brought together scholars, media artists, cultural practitioners, industry funders and policy makers from different areas of the world grappling with common issues around the safeguarding, presentation, and documentation of living cultural heritage in the domain of screen media. The HRI Barbara Powell Lecture and keynote address, “Revitalisation de la langue Amazighe/ Revitalization of the Amazigh Language” was presented LIVE in French via Zoom by the distinguished professor, Dr. Ahmed Boukouss, Recteur at Institut Royal de la Culture Amazighe, Rabat, Morocco, on Thursday, June 24th at 10am (CST).
This close relationship with Vues d’Afrique allowed us to partner with them in 2023 not only for testing our methodology, but also to have our team meeting as part of the festival’s programme on the same year. Along with the University of Toronto, the McMaster University, and the University of Victoria, we – as University of Regina and King’s College London – took part in the international conference held at the festival in Montreal, where all our collaborators met for a first joint evaluation on the first phase of the research project. The conference took place between the 26th and the 28th of April, and the specific event regarding the project was on the 28th of April – “Decolonizing film festival research in a post-pandemic world”, with the presence of Dr Sheila Petty, Dr Estrella Sendra, Dr Ben Akoh, Dr Ana Camila Esteves, Dr Gabriela Almeida, Dr Robin Steedman, Laura Feal, and Dr Rachel Johnson.
Bellow, there is a chart outlining the researchers involved in the pilot implementation of this test in Vues d’Afrique 2023.
Researcher: Sheila Petty
Participants: Gérard Le Chêne (founder), Louise Gagné (festival board of directors), Kotimi Guira (festival programmer)
30 May 2023
