ABSTRACT
In 1975, the African federation of filmmakers (FEPACI) produced the Algiers Charter, which (in)famously identified a shared ideological project for African cinema. The charter enjoined African filmmakers to be militant, creative, anti-imperialist, nationalist teachers for their respective peoples. Amongst the popular pioneers of early francophone West African filmmaking, Moustapha Alassane, from Niger, is perhaps the most important but also one of the most neglected figures. This chapter examines two of Alassane's most important works, the animation film Bon Voyage Sim and the parody western Le Retour d'un Aventurier, in order to trace the development of a playful, popular francophone African cinema in a period commonly perceived to have been dominated by serious, didactic, social realist productions. By the mid-1960s, Moustapha Alassane had produced two animation films: La Mort du Gandji and Bon Voyage Sim. Both were daring innovations in their time. As often happens, though, a critical and artistic 'establishment' reacted negatively to such innovations.
