Award-winning filmmaker dies in Burkina Faso
BURKINABE filmmaker Idrissa Ouedraogo, a towering figure in African cinema, died yesterday at the age of 64, the national filmmakers guild said.
Ouedraogo produced or directed about 40 films from the 1980s to the 2000s, set in Africa and often exploring the strains between modern urban and traditional rural lifestyles.
In 1990, he won the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival for Tilai, an African version of a Greek tragedy about family dishonour.
“Burkina Faso has lost a filmmaker of immense talent,” President Roch Marc Christian Kabore said.
“Ouedraogo worked hard to raise the profile of Burkinabe and African cinema outside our borders,” he said.
He died of an unspecified illness in a hospital in the capital Ouagadougou, the union of filmmakers said.
Ouedraogo began his career as a cinematographer on the 1981 movie Poko, which won the best short film award at Fespaco, Africa’s biggest film festival.
After completing his film studies at the prestigious Sorbonne in Paris, he created his first feature-length film, Yam daabo (The Choice), about poverty-stricken villagers in the Sahel.
As well as winning at Cannes, Tilai went on to win the Golden Stallion of Yennenga, the top prize at Fespaco, in 1991.
He headed the Fespaco jury in 2003. – AFP