The taxi, the cinema and me by Burkinabe director Salam Zampaligré received the documentary film prize at the 12th African Film Festival in Luxor, Egypt last week. This film will be screened at the Panorama of the Fespaco festival in Ouagadougou, which will take place from February 24.
The taxi, the cinema and me retraces the career of the filmmaker Drissa Touré, self-taught who was originally a taxi driver, as well as his meeting with the director Ousmane Sembène who changed his life. With this documentary, Salam Zampaligré wants to draw attention to the poor situation of cinema today. Interview.
RFI: Why did you want to make this documentary?
Salam Zampaligre: Drissa Touré, I first knew him through his works at film school, at the Higher Institute of Image and Sound and I was a little captivated by this gentleman who had created his own writing cinematographic.
The trigger also came after seeing a report where I saw the filmmaker living in the most total destitution and in great precariousness. As a result, as a young filmmaker out of film school, I also had this fear and I then wanted, through the portrait of this man who has not studied, to pose this theme of the precariousness of artists and filmmakers. I hope it will raise huge questions about the future of African cinema because the film is also a tribute to this cinema.
To talk about Idrissa Touré, you called on a slammer. This is Douslik. Why this choice ?
When I finished the pre-editing of my documentary, I was still not satisfied because I was only showing one layer, that is to say the portrait of Drissa Touré. However, Drissa Touré, for me, it is just a consequence of the situation of African cinema. So I tried to find another layer to say that if there is a consequence, somewhere, there is also the cause and it is this cause that I tried to show by inviting another artist to poetically tell the state of African cinema, of Burkinabe cinema. I think it was a very good collaboration with Doueslik who wrote a beautiful piece of writing, very poetic and which more or less sums up the life of the artists.
In your documentary, you mention the state of production in your country. Is there no more production aid in Burkina?
Making films in Africa and particularly in Burkina Faso is a real obstacle course. I think that our fight today consists in sensitizing the political power so that we have funds dedicated to the cinema. We will always forget that cinema is not a priority alongside health or education.
Burkina had a real film policy in the 1990s, but now, with everything we have known with the SAP (the Structural Adjustment Program), cinemas have been closed as well as film schools. I think that played a big part in film production in Burkina Faso.
I think that efforts are currently being made to support Burkinabè filmmakers, but the results are not yet there. In Senegal, for example, there is the promotion fund for the cinematographic and audiovisual industry (PICA) which supports the cinema and helps with training. Having a fund dedicated to production in Burkina Faso would help filmmakers express themselves much more.