The 40-year-old FESPACO, Africa's biggest film fest, this year is aiming for a touch of glamour and a new momentum to draw in the crowds and money badly needed for Africa's ailing film industry.

For this year's 21st edition of the bi-annual Pan-African Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou (FESPACO) the open air screenings around the city have been abandoned in favour of more upmarket film halls complete with red carpets for stars and directors to make their grand entrance.

While old festival hands fondly recall the anarchist atmosphere of earlier years, festival director Michel Ouedraogo hopes to bring the artists back in the spotlight with the changes.

"We want the filmmakers to be at the centre of the events and we're giving them a red carpet which will be a space for them to show themselves: the African filmmakers, actors and artists that matter," Ouedraogo told AFP.

The organisers want a grown-up festival that is truly pan-African and can usher in a new era for African cinema, he explained.

For years the African film industry has been ailing with the current global economic downturn expected to deal another blow. In recent years movie theatres on the continent have closed down, pushed out by widely available pirated DVDs.

FESPACO's organisers lament that the best venues to see African films these days are the arthouse theatres in Europe and the United States. Still, for the 2009 edition of the festival, which opens Saturday, there was no shortage of films from all over the continent.

While some 300 films will be shown in all, 128 works are competing for the festival's 24 prizes including the top award, the Etalon d'Or de Yennenga (The Golden Stallion of Yennenga.)

Some of the 19 films competing for the Etalon d'Or have already won accolades abroad.

Ethiopian filmmaker Haile Gerima has already won a best screen play and special jury prize during the Venice film festival for his film "Teza".

The movie shows the return of a idealistic Ethiopian intellectual who returns from Europe to his home village under the brutal 1970s-1980s regime of Haile Mengistu Mariam.

"Les Jardins de Samira" (Samira's Garden) -- about a woman who falls for a young man after being disappointed in her elderly husband -- by Moroccan director Latif Lahlou won best screenplay at the Montreal World Film Festival in 2007.

A former winner of the golden stallion is back this year for another try. Nabil Ayou won in 2001 and is now hoping to become the first director to win the award twice with "Whatever Lola wants".

In all, the films selected show a varied picture of Africa with films from the Magreb, southern Africa and West Africa. Conspicuously absent from the competition is Nigeria whose Nollywood is the world's third biggest movie industry after the United States and India.

Organisers hope that the films in this year's FESPACO with its theme "African cinema, tourism and cultural heritage" will also show the diversity and beauty of the continent. While the theme has no impact on the films selected for the competition FESPACO hopes to raise awareness for the potential African films have for the promotion of tourism to the continent.

The festival has secured 13 screening rooms throughout Ouagadougou to show movies. The open air screenings that marked past editions of FESPACO have scrapped in an attempt to lure the public back to the movie theatres.

Instead of giving everybody who participates in the festival a badge that gives access to all the screenings, this year participants will have to buy separate tickets for the films they want to see. The organisers say this will free up more seats for the Burkinabe public who wants to see the films.

"The idea is that filmmakers make movies for the public and we want the public to come because we do not want a festival where you see only people with badges," Ouedraogo said.