Communication in any worthy festival is crucial for image selling. This is treated as a key issue at IFFR. Be it television, radio, printing press or the Internet, all the media sections are mobilized for a thorough coverage of the Rotterdam 2008 major film event. FACC's cyber-journalism captured the attention of our reporter at Rotterdam.

The younger shall grow. Africa's reactivity has caught IFFR off-guard. The daily contributions of the African Federation of Films Critics (AFFC), best known by its French acronym, FACC, Fédération Africaine de la Critique Cinématographique, have been making an impact in Rotterdam since the start of the whole business. People have been queueing to read Africa at the 37th International Film Festival Rotterdam, Rotterdam 2008: Victoire de l'originalité sur la popularité, and 37è IFFR : Place de la critique cinématographique are the papers that IFFR has been pasting up on the Press desk board at Floor no 3 in the de Doelen building Rotterdam as they are released from the www.africine.org 's web site. Contributions from other continents or countries are given prominence as well. The decision by IFFR to grant wide publicity to these papers from Africa should not be taken for granted. The Festival's team are aiming at breaking new grounds. Such an initiative will pave the way for a quantitative and qualitative programming of African short and feature films focusing on independent cinema in the years to come. However, Africine's papers have limited audience as most are written in French. In order to fill the language gap, priority is henceforth given to English contributions. Results are immediate. The readership for contributions on the Queen's language outnumbers its French counterpart. In fact, the language does not matter. What matter are the target and public.

Could Do Better
Improvisations have been limiting the promotion of the good name of FACC at IFFR. No media kit, no brochures, no leaflets… capable of selling Africa's lone continental gathering of rather talented film critics, apart from cyber-contributions. This is the major criticism we got from interviews and ordinary chatting we had with some festival goers or attendants selected at random. Such random selection of people has enabled us to have an overview of the opinion that a cross-section of the world makes of FACC in Rotterdam. According to the man on the street, coming up with a data base of images, reports, films, goals, objectives… and presenting them at festivals should be treated as a matter of emergency. Therefore, any national association that assembles to make up FACC should own communication equipments such as digital cameras, mini-disc, microphones… to be handed over to any film critic who is supposed to attend a festival.

The Pride of Africa
Zimbabwe has turned out to be Africa's best representative film at IFFR. Screened yesterday for the second time, reports say people had to seat on the floor as there was no empty space left. Cuban film critic and FIPRESCI jury member Alberto Ramos is among those who crowded the theatre. The film is simple of its kind, he claims. He confesses that he mostly enjoyed the metaphor of poverty. In the end, this film is not a Zimbabwean and South-African affair. It reflects the Cuban-American type of relationship.

Télesphore MBA BIZO
at Rotterdam