Burkina Faso
- works
- 23
- 15 books · 8 films
- period covered
- 1962–1999
- language of writing
- French
Since 1969, the capital of African cinema has been a city with no sea, no forest and no industry. Every two years Ouagadougou hosts a pan-African festival whose grand prize is awarded under the name of the Stallion of Yennenga, after a Mossi princess whose ride founds the dynasty. Directors from all over the continent have been coming there for more than half a century, and the country equipped itself with schools, laboratories and a film library, in material conditions that predisposed it to none of that.
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That decision is consistent with the country's history. The Mossi kingdoms held for four centuries without letting themselves be Islamised or conquered, with a dense political organisation, land chiefs distinct from political chiefs and a recited dynastic memory. Burkina moreover went through, between 1983 and 1987, a political experiment that made culture an instrument of government, and the festival gained from it means and a visibility it has never lost since. One has to picture full cinemas in a city where the electricity was intermittent.
What Burkinabe cinema invented is a form without effects: wide shot, real time, the village filmed without music or exoticism. Gaston Kaboré showed in 1988 a Mossi village swallowed by the city. Idrissa Ouédraogo filmed in 1989 a child and an old woman accused of sorcery, and the film was seen all over the world. Fanta Régina Nacro shot in 1998 a ten-minute comedy about a husband who refuses the condoms his wife brings back from the city. The price was dependence: these films are made with European money and are little seen in the country they show.
What awaits the viewer is a slowness that is not contemplation but attention, and a trust in faces. The novel that opens this page chronicles a Bwa village before and during the colonial conquest, and it was written by a man who was also a deputy.
A way to begin
Crépuscule des temps anciens
Nazi Boni · 1962
The first novel from Upper Volta: the chronicle of a Bwa village, between novel and fireside tale.
In Bwa country, the narrative opens on a golden age of nearly three centuries. In Bwan, Térhé, a young man of strength and beauty, gradually eclipses the glory of Kya, a warrior who kills out of vanity. He loves Hakanni, whom he cannot marry, custom invoking a distant kinship. Around them, feasts, rites, hunts and labours set the rhythm of village life.
Timeline
- 1961–1962First textsOuédraogo in the theatre; Nazi Boni writes the country's first novel.
- 1971–1984Novel and poetryNikiéma, Coulibaly, Bazié, and Pacéré, who invents bendrology.
- 1972–1982Birth of cinemaDjim Kola makes the first feature; Fespaco settles in Ouagadougou.
- 1986–1989Kaboré and OuédraogoZan Boko, then Yaaba. Burkinabè cinema becomes a reference.
- 1998A new generationRoamba, Yaméogo, and Fanta Régina Nacro, the country's first woman director.
Reading keys
- Names indicate the group: Ouédraogo, Kaboré, Compaoré are Mossi, Coulibaly and Traoré refer to the Mandinka area, Hien and Somé to the Lobi and Dagara country.
- The name Ouédraogo means "male stallion" and refers to the son of Yennenga, ancestor of the Mossi dynasty.
- Among the Mossi, the political chief, the naaba, and the land chief, the tengsoba, are two distinct authorities that a narrative never confuses.
- The sinankunya, joking kinship between groups, authorises ritual insult and prevents conflict.
- The assassination of Thomas Sankara in 1987 and the years that followed are a subject whose treatment places an author politically.
- The accusation of sorcery against elderly women, which leads to real expulsions from villages, is a subject addressed head-on by the cinema.
- Excision is approached by several film-makers, which brought their films difficulties.
- The respect due to the elders organises speech, and one does not interrupt; the palabre takes the necessary time.
- A Muslim majority, an important Christianity, ancestral cults everywhere beneath them, often among the same people.
- The tengsoba, land chief, manages relations with the powers of the soil, distinct from political power.
- The masks of the Bwa and Bobo country, made of leaves or of painted planks, come out on ritual dates and embody spirits.
- Sorcerers and soul-eaters are an accusation with real social consequences.
- Funerals take place in two stages, with a deferred and costly second ceremony that releases the dead person.
- The mask of leaves, worn at Bwa funerals, marks the passage between worlds.
- Dolo, millet beer, is shared during palabres and rites, and the cabaret where it is drunk is a social place.
- The Ouagadougou film festival, every two years, has become a national gathering as much as a continental one.
- Yennenga, the Mossi princess who fled on horseback and whose son founds the dynasty, is the emblem of the country and the name of the festival trophy.
- The Mossi and Bwa tales, with the hare and the hyena, form the domestic narrative stock.
- The naaba and his court, with their protocol and their spokesmen, are a constant political referent.
- Thomas Sankara and his speeches have become a reference quoted well beyond the country.
- Burkina is nothing like a desert: the south is watered and cultivated, and most of the population lives there.
- Burkinabe cinema is not an auteur cinema detached from its audience: it was conceived as a tool of education and debate.
- The tengsoba is not a sorcerer but a land authority with a recognised ritual competence.
- The country's name dates from 1984: for earlier works it is necessary to search under the name Upper Volta.
Tales and mythologies 2
- TaleContes de jadis, récits de naguèreÉtienne Sawadogo · 1982not translated into EnglishLegends, tales and stories from Upper Volta, published in Dakar in the early eighties.Literature
- NarrativeHistoire et coutumes royales des Mossi de OuagadougouYamba Tiendrébéogo · 1964not translated into EnglishThe history and rites of the Mossi court, told by one of its dignitaries.Literature
A selection to begin with 10 / 23
- CinemaBlood of the PariahsLe Sang des pariasMamadou Djim Kola · 1973A love thwarted by caste, in a family that thinks itself modern.Cinema
- Feature filmPaweogoSanou Kollo · 1983The first feature of an Upper Voltan filmmaker, on the temptation of exile in neighbouring Côte d'Ivoire.Cinema
- PoetryOrphelin des collines ancestralesJacques-Prosper Bazié · 1984not translated into EnglishThe first book of a poet and journalist from Ouagadougou.Literature
- PoetryParturitionBernadette Dao · 1986not translated into EnglishThe verse of a Burkinabe woman author, published in a collective collection under the revolution.Literature
- CinemaZan BokoGaston Kaboré · 1988A Mossi village devoured by the city, and a peasant who refuses to leave.Cinema
- CinemaYaabaIdrissa Ouédraogo · 1989The friendship between a child and an old woman held to be a witch, filmed in Mooré with the people of a village.Cinema
- Feature filmKeita! The Heritage of the GriotKeïta ! L'Héritage du griotDani Kouyaté · 1995The first feature of a Burkinabè filmmaker from a line of griots, between Western schooling and the word of the elders.Cinema
- CinemaLe Truc de KonatéFanta Régina Nacro · 1998A village comedy about the condom, shot by a Burkinabè woman director.Cinema
- CinemaSilmandéS. Pierre Yaméogo · 1998A family of Lebanese traders in Ouagadougou caught up in the turmoil of power.Cinema
- CinemaGarbaAdama Roamba · 1999Children who have run away from a Koranic school, left to themselves in a Burkinabè city.Cinema