Jul 21, 1969 - Aug 1, 1969
Algiers, Algeria
On July 21, 1969 men, women, and children crowded the streets of Algiers to inaugurate the First Pan-African Festival (PANAF), a ten-day-long celebration of African culture through music, art exhibits, theater, poetry readings and dance. State officials, writers, and artists representing nearly every African country gathered at the Pan-African Festival’s official Symposium, at the fancy Club des Pins in the outskirts of Algiers, to discuss the role of culture in the recently decolonized continent. At the same time, artists and militants from across the world flocked to the café and bars of downtown Algiers to have similar conversations on the role of culture in Africa, but in less official quarters. Of those that sat on the café terrasses some were part of the Festival’s official guests, but many weren’t. Those that weren’t made their way to Algiers independently, by car, train, or plane, spending the week in small hotels, sleeping on friends’ couches, or even setting up camp beneath bridges. Because many of these militant-artists were suspicious of the official delegations and their political designs, they often chose to forego the Festival’s official programming and spent much of their time in Algiers on the margins of the Festival at the exhibits and events of the Off-PANAF, the series of parties, small exhibits, public poetry readings, and café conversations, that occurred alongside the Pan-African Festival and in defiance of the very officials that had organized the Festival
