Directors on Senegalese cinema: “Africa has enormous cinematic potential”

This weekend, the film publishing company “Taip pelda” will invite the audience to a program of Senegalese films, which will also be shown at “Romuva” in Kaunas. The four films in the program bring together different generations of the country where African cinema was born, and continue traditions older than cinema itself. These are films that stand out for their visual language and timeless stories.

“The program “So on: to Senegal” was born from the desire to give viewers a wider context from which comes the African cinema that is seen more and more clearly at film festivals today,” says one of its creators, Aistė Račaitytė. At the recently held Berlin Film Festival, the main prize went to Senegalese-French Mati Diop’s film “Dahomey”, and in 2019 she became the first black woman to have a film selected for competition at the Cannes Film Festival. Her metro debut “Atlantes” won the “Grand Prix” there. The film became one of the most important films of that year, but it was never shown in Lithuania because it was purchased by Netflix right after the premiere.

4 years later, another old-French actress Ramata-Toulaye Sy repeated Diop’s story – her debut film “Banelė ir Adama” was also selected for the Cannes competition, where, it is important to mention, debuts, especially from Africa, are extremely rare. These examples illustrate the emerging strong creative wave and, at the same time, the relevance of a perspective different from the Western one in the world cinema field. That is why the idea of ​​the program was born for the curators of “So on” talking to Ramata-Toulaye Sy, who is coming to Lithuania to present her film. “We wanted a concentrated program to capture the pulse of a new and energetic generation of African film directors, who often create and live between Senegal and France, and at the same time reveal a vivid synthesis not only of themes but also of form with the origins of Senegalese cinema, of which Djibril Diop Mambéty is considered one of the fathers .” – says Ramata-Toulaye Sy.

Along with Ousmane Sembène, considered the father of pan-African cinema, and the first female director, Senegalese Safi Faya, actor, orator, composer and poet Djibril Diop Mambéty was one of the first African filmmakers. Although he made only five full-length and medium-length films, he was praised worldwide for his original and experimental cinematic language and unconventional, non-linear storytelling style.

Despite the fact that cinema in Africa began to be created only in the 7th century, Djibril Diop Mambéty, considered one of its most important modernizers, said that the cinema language is close to cultures where oral stories are more important than writing. “Africa has tremendous cinematic potential. The fact that Africa exists is good news for the future of cinema. Cinema was born in Africa because the image itself was born in Africa. Yes, the tools are European, but the creative necessity and justification exists in our oral tradition. As I used to tell the kids, to make a movie, all you have to do is close your eyes and see the images, that’s how cinema is born. Africa is a land of images, not only because images of African masks have revolutionized art around the world, but also because of the oral tradition. Oral tradition is a visual tradition. What is said is stronger than what is written; -the word appeals to the imagination, not the ear. Imagination creates the image, and the image creates the cinema, so we are the direct parents of cinema.”

Mambéty’s debut film Touki Bouki (1973), shown in the program, turned 50 last year. and it is considered a masterpiece of world cinema, which still seems remarkably modern, as if speaking about today. The main themes of the film are youth, wealth and illusions, and it centers on a young fashionable Senegalese couple who run away from their families and dream of a life in Paris. The escape story revolves around their brazen and illegal attempts to forge money for ship tickets to Europe. “I’m interested in marginalized people, because I believe that it is they who contribute more to the evolution of the community than conformists. Marginalized people push the community into relation with the wider world. The characters in Touki Bouki are interesting to me because their dreams are not ordinary people’s dreams. Anta and Mory do not dream of building castles in Africa, they long to discover their Atlantis beyond the oceans. Pursuing their dream allowed me to pursue my own dreams, and my way of escaping those dreams was to laugh at them. Mory and Anta’s dreams made them feel like strangers in their own country,” Mambéty said about his heroes. The film deviated from the usual didactic template followed by such greats of African cinema as Ousmane Sembène, and showed Mambéty’s determination to pursue artistic freedom at a time when African cinema was still trying to establish itself in a post-colonial context. “In my mind, a director cannot limit himself to facts alone. You have to make a choice: either be popular and talk to people in a simplified way, or find an authentic African cinema language that does not contain chatter, but aims for the purposeful use of images and sounds.”

The Diop family is known in Senegal as a family of talented creators. The daughter of Djibril Diop Mambéty’s brother, the musician Wasis Diop, Mati Diop inherited from her uncle a talent for directing and a non-conformist approach to creative freedom. “I am very aware of the privilege of my heritage, but it is not something I carry on my shoulders. The fact that I am the niece of a great artist does not mean anything. What matters is what you do with your inheritance. I even made a film about it.” – about the 2013 program “So on: to Senegal”. the film “A Thousand Suns” was narrated by Diop.

After starting her film career as an actress, Mati Diop turned to directing after returning to Senegal, where she continued the themes and even the stories of her uncle’s films. In “A Thousand Suns”, Diop travels in search of her origins 30 years ago. in the footsteps of “Touki Bouki” and meets the main actor of the film, who, like the hero of the film, never managed to leave Senegal. Touki Bouki both highlights and combats Senegal’s hybridization—the blending of pre-colonial African and colonial Western elements—by combining complex formalism with humor. According to Diop, this is a film where her uncle’s influence is particularly felt on her work, and remains her most personal work. “A Thousand Suns is very much about exploring my African and Senegalese identity,” said the director, who lives in France but works in Africa.

Mati Diop’s Atlantes is based on her short film of the same name, which captures several Senegalese friends’ reflections on the cost of the European dream, a life-threatening boat trip across the ocean. The melancholic film elegantly speaks about the harsh reality of illegal migration and the dangers that it faced back in 1973. aptly captured by Mambéty himself. Mati Diop says the Chinese have a moral duty to create visibility: “When I returned to Senegal to revive and explore my African origins and heritage, I learned that the younger generation is fleeing the country en masse to Europe by boat in search of a better future.” The fact that so many young people died at sea was very disturbing to me and it was difficult to see how the media misinterpreted their stories.”

Seeing that there is a lack of critical discourse on emigration in public and too little talk about the motivations that lead to migration, which include not only economic hardship but also political persecution or value conflicts, Diop felt she had more to say and wanted to reach a wider audience, so she took the long subway of the film: “These people’s lives should not be wasted, migration affects everyone.” “Atlantes” was born even before migration began to be talked about in crisis terms. “I personally think that there is not a migration crisis, but a moral and political crisis. As the daughter of an immigrant, migration is part of my history and identity, so I see it as a complex and existential reality rather than a theme.”

In “Atlantes” skillfully weaving together different stories and magical elements, the director managed to create a deeply moving ghostly love story. The film begins with how the construction worker Suleiman and his colleagues, deceived by corrupt contractors, feel that they have no other option than to look for a better life abroad. After Suleiman leaves Dakar and his beloved Ada, news soon reaches the shore that the ship has sunk. It follows the story of Ada and the others who were left behind by young men who set off on a boat out into the ocean in the dead of night, laced with supernatural motifs.

“Cinema can help bring people closer together and help them talk about topics they mistakenly think they have nothing to do with.” It is a powerful tool that can bring concern to a human level and connect. Let us remember the great importance of the Greek tragedy in the society of that time. I think we should trust the cinema in the same way as the Greeks trusted the theater,” says Diop.

Sometimes called the Senegalese tragedy of Romeo and Juliet, Ramata-Toulaye Sy’s film “Banelle and Adama” resists the question: how to live an individual life without rejecting the community? For the director, this is closely related to feminist criticism, because the action takes place in a pious Islamic community, where women have a very strictly defined role. “She is searching but not finding a way to live in the community as a woman. She does not want to be like others, but it is impossible to be, and what she wants to be. She is a tragic character whose existence lacks the freedom to fully experience love, to be herself, to accept love, passion, and also madness,” says director Ramata-Toulaye Sy. Banela wants to get away, not across the ocean, but at least beyond the village, which turns out to be just as difficult. Like all the films of the “So on to Senegal” program, “Banelė and Adama” speaks in the language of images – the tragedy of the story dictates the tone of the film – from the sun-drenched idyllic romance to the psychological horror of the desert dust. It is a film about impossible love right before the end of the world, which also elegantly weaves in ecological themes.

The program “So on to Senegal” will be shown at “Skalvija” cinema center in Vilnius and “Romuva” cinema center in Kaunas, May 3-4. And the movie “Banelė and Adama” is shown in cinemas all over Lithuania from Friday. Director Ramata-Toulaye Sy, who is coming to Vilnius, will present all the films of the program. More information on the website.