The New Nation - Internet Edition

Staff Reporter

The Francophone Festival is an annual occasion to celebrate the extensive network of sixty-eight States (member, associates and observers) that use French as a common language. In Bangladesh, a large community of people speaks or uses French to varying degrees.

Like the previous years, a weeklong "Francophone festival" will be celebrated in the city from yesterday, which will continue up to March 15.

Shows, exhibitions, film screenings and other activities will bring together the whole French-speaking community of all nationalities in the capital Dhaka.

As part of the programme, a francophone film festival at the Gallery of Alliance Française,

began from yesterday which will continue till March 15. A French photographer will exhibit his works 'spirit of the city' at the café of Alliance Française during the festival. A theatre festival will begin on March 13 at Shilpakala Academy.

Léopard Sédar Senghor, the founding father of Francophone, was born in 1906 in Senegal. He went to Paris in 1928 with a scholarship to join an University, from which he graduated as an "agrégé" of grammar, which is the highest qualification available for teachers in France, equivalent to Phd. He was the first ever African to be awarded such a diploma. After teaching a few years in France, he fought in the French Army during the second world war, and was held as a prisoner of war from 1940 to 1942.

In the year 1946, he contributed to the drafting of the French Constitution and was elected member of France's national Assembly, as an MP for Senegal, which was then a French Colony; he was also elected Secretary of State of the French government to the French Presidency Council in 1955. During the same period, he was mayor of small town in Normandy, where he married a French woman.

In 1960, after the independence of Senegal, he became the first President of the Republic of this country, position that he occupied for the next 20 years. His last Prime Minister, Abdou Diouf, who succeeded him as President of Senegal, and is still holding the position of Secretary General of the International Organisation of the Francophonia.

In 1983, he was elected member of the prestigious Académie Française in Paris and in 1990, the International University of the French Language "Léopold Sédar Senghor" was inaugurated in Alexandria (Egypt).

He died in France in 2001, having dedicated his life to France and Senegal, to concept of African unity and to Francophonia.

It is in the early '60s that Senghor gave to this word and notion-"Franophonia"-its international audience. Francopohonia, according to Senghor, and all Francophones agree with his definition, is the "feeling of belonging to the same intellectual or spiritual community, the language of which is French".

"Francophonia is first of all a poetics of the world," viewed to the former French Minister of Foreign Affairs Douste-Blazy.

On the occasion of the festival, a joint press conference was held yesterday at Alliance Française, 2008, with the participation of all the member countries. The schedule of the week-long Francophone Festival celebration starting from the same day was disclosed at the joint press conference.

The press conference was addressed, among others, by High Commissioner of Canada Ms Barbara Richardson, Ambassador of France Charley Causeret, Ambassador of Vietnam Nguyan Van That, Deputy Head of Switzerland Embassy Ms. Elisabeth Malinen, Deputy Chief of the Embassy of Egypt Karim Hegazy, and the First Secretary of the Embassy of Morocco Driss Hachaq and other top officials from the participating countries, and a representative from the Ministry of Culture, Government of Bangladesh.