Mobile Digital Cinema

MOBILE DIGITAL CINEMA - 

Access to Culture and Human Development

Countries: Benin, Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger

Project initiated in: 2001

Presented by: the European Commission

Partners: European Union, French Cooperation, Swiss Cooperation, International Organisation of La Francophonie, CulturesFrance, Africalia, various local partners and private sponsors

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// Context

Mobile Digital Cinema (Cinéma Numérique Ambulant – CNA) is an international network of associations, working under the coordination of European partners and local teams in Benin, Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger. This network organises cultural evenings in rural areas, where cinemas do not exist, with open-air screenings and discussions. CNA schedules a series of between five to ten evenings in each beneficiary village.

This network is aimed at a general audience which is unable to gain access to culture due to their geographic and social isolation. Evenings organised by the CNA are above all an area for socialising, where residents meet in the village square so as to enjoy a festive moment as one.

A typical CNA evening will involve a cultural show, the screening of a work of fiction or a documentary raising awareness on a particular social issue, followed by a discussion, and then an African feature-length production, using digital technologies.

Each CNA team, well accustomed to social communication on sensitive issues such as eradicating AIDS, coordinates and leads discussions, so as to enable viewers to be informed and to express themselves on issues which directly affect them.

// Project objectives

CNA, through the broadcast of African films and programmes which raise social awareness in rural areas and in working class urban districts, allows geographically or socially isolated populations to:

• access a new form of artistic expression and to enjoy participating in a cultural event;
• discover big-screen, digital and high-quality cinema;
• approach sensitive social issues, express themselves and participate in discussions.

The objective is to enrich the cultural level of rural populations and to create a platform for dialogue and exchange with a view to promoting positive social changes.

// Action and impact

The CNA today employs 40 people and has a network of members and partners who work towards ensuring its sustainability.

In nine years of existence, the CNA has visited 2 500 villages in West Africa and has been attended by approximately 7 million viewers.

During CNA evenings, network coordinators almost always note that the overwhelming majority of villagers attend screenings and discussions.

The CNA provides wide-scale visibility for African films, thereby contributing towards the defence of cultural diversity and the growth of a local audience for African visual creation. It has a significant impact in terms of enabling rural and socially underprivileged populations to access culture.

Social awareness-raising activities on issues of public health, environment, violence, corruption and so on, undertaken by the CNA have enabled information to be communicated to thousands of people who do not have access to other forms of social communication and have had an impact in terms of raising awareness and instigating changes in behaviour. Following this campaign, two villages, through the village heads, have undertaken to definitively eradicate female circumcision. Other villages have additionally initiated discussions in this direction. Admittedly, this numerically limited impact compared with the fifty villages covered in total, reveals the potential of visual creation in leading to positive changes in those areas which are difficult to approach via other methods.

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