“The cinemas of Africa, it is a missing image”

Tigritudes, this cycle of cinema in chronological order and of crazy ambition brings together Arabic-speaking, French-speaking, English-speaking and Portuguese-speaking cinematographies of the African continent, without forgetting the filmmakers of the African diaspora. Interview with Franco-Senegalese director Dyana Gaye, co-organizer of this unique event.

RFI : You yourself are a director of films like Deweneti (2006), Public transport (2009) or Stars (2013). As a Franco-Senegalese filmmaker born in Paris in 1975, when did your first encounter with cinema date? pan-african “ ?

Dyana gaye : I was a very young cinephile. I grew up in France and in my adolescence there were no places of identification possible in France. I grew up in Paris in the 1980s and French cinema was rarely seen by black characters. Films from Africa very rarely arrived on cinema screens. I started my apprenticeship through African-American cinema and I discovered African cinema much later, during my years of university studies where I did this work a bit on my own. Anyway, there was still no real access for this African cinema in theaters. So, I discovered this in film libraries, then festivals, but it’s a cinephilia that I forged very late and in a rather solitary way.

Tigritudes displays 125 films, from 40 countries, and covers 66 years of Pan-African cinema history. Can we say that the magnitude, scope and ambition of this cycle are unprecedented in the field of pan-African cinema? ?

The singularity of Tigritudes is his chronological proposition. There have been film retrospectives in Africa, but Tigritudes is precisely not a retrospective. I am a director, Valérie Osouf with whom I am co-programming this cycle, is herself a director. We like to call Tigritudes a subjective, two-headed anthology, which would be the fruit of crossed looks, of Valérie and myself. In this regard, it is unprecedented. We are not programmers or academics, our job is to make films. This brings a singularity to the cycle.

The African continent consists of 54 countries. In France, we often have the habit of dividing up and compartmentalizing the cinema of the African continent. We often have access to it through French colonial history, to Maghreb cinema, films that are often separated from the rest of Africa. From sub-Saharan cinema, we mainly know the cinematographies of Senegal, Mali, Burkina Faso …

This cycle proposes to widen the field and to mix in the same program the Arabic-speaking, English-speaking, French-speaking and Portuguese-speaking cinemas which are all the richness and the singularity of the African continent. All this echoed with sessions from the Afro-descendant diaspora, since we decided to make the films dialogue with works from the Caribbean diaspora, England, works from the United States, Cuba, Tahiti, etc.

In your cycle Tigritudes, why does the history of Pan-African cinema begin in 1956 ?

1956 is the start of the great wave of independence and the date of independence for Sudan. We were also inspired by a collective audiovisual work that was conducted at INHA by art historian and writer Zahia Rahmani, Seismography of struggles, which was exhibited last year notably at the Center Pompidou. Since the beginning of the 19th century, it has been interested in listing non-European journals by representing them, again, in chronological order. This is what inspired us to Tigritudes. To observe, from 1956, how on the continent and in its diaspora, forms and issues coexist, aesthetics develop, become free, also leaning against this wave of independence in which the continent is taking hold of its own image and of the cinematographic tool, even if there are stories prior to 1956. Egypt, for example, has a particular history of independence and its very strong film industry was developed long before 1956. But, we had to start somewhere and, with the number of sessions given, it was the best time for us.

In your cycle, the year 1956 rhymes with the release of Black water by Youssef Chahine. What impressed you about this Egyptian movie with Omar Sharif ?

It’s a pretty classic movie. A love story that unfolds in the working class. These are themes specific to Youssef Chahine. It is the great social fresco and one of the themes that draw the beginning of the cycle. Opening up with Chahine was symbolically very strong. He is a huge filmmaker, certainly one of the greatest filmmakers on the African continent. Black water is a rarer film, it is more of a film library, presented here in a restored copy version.

You show a lot of films by award-winning filmmakers in the biggest festivals, for example the Mauritanian Abderrahmane Sissako, the Malian Souleymane Cissé, the Senegalese Sembène Ousmane, the Nigerian Aduaka Newton or the Belgian of Ghanaian origin Anthony Nti … or not known in France, could you share with us one of your discoveries? ?

O Canto Do Ossobo (“The Song of Ossobo”, 2018), scheduled for Friday February 25 at 4 pm, was a real discovery for us. A film from São Tomé and Príncipe, a territory that for us was totally untouched by cinema. A documentary directed by Silas Tiny who comes from São Tomé e Príncipe and who lives in Portugal. A very beautiful documentary, quite arid, very powerful, on the vestiges and the history of the slave trade and slavery in São Tomé through agricultural history. Another filmmaker to discover, Jeremiah Mosese which we present on February 26 at 3:30 p.m. Mother, I’m Suffocating. This Is My Last Film About You (2019). A magnificent black and white poem by a filmmaker from Lesotho, an absolutely rare country in the cinema, a small enclave of South Africa of which we see, so far, very few images. I would highlight these two films for their rarity.

For you, Pan-African cinema remains cinematography “ largely unknown “. In the field of literature, one can get the impression that the glass ceiling has recently been shattered, with African authors winning in 2021 the Nobel Prize for Literature (the Tanzanian Abdulrazak Gurnah), the Goncourt Prize (the Senegalese Mohamed Mbougar Sarr), the Booker Prize (the Franco-Senegalese David Diop)… In the field of cinema too, in recent years, many films by filmmakers of African origin have made their mark: in 2019 Talking about trees of Sudanese Suhaib Gasmelbari at the Berlinale and Mati Diop with the Grand Prix of the Festival de Cannes for Atlantic, in 2020, Dieudo Hamadi was part of the official selection of Cannes with On the way to the billion, and in 2021, the films of Mahamat-Saleh Haroun and Nabil Ayouch were selected for the official competition on the Croisette. Do you have the impression that the glass ceiling for filmmakers of African descent is blowing up ?

Yes, there are places and festivals where African directors are spotlighted. But, it’s so punctual. I want to be optimistic. There is a new generation unfolding with formidable works. And I hope they will be disseminated as widely as possible. But, there is always this ignorance and this fracture and division which divides the distribution of films. There are a few festivals like the Berlinale or the Locarno festival that do a clearing job, but these are still quite rare windows. Then, festivals are good, but what is important is the venue, the spectators. The problem is how do these films get to theaters and not just to festivals.

Tigritudes starts this Wednesday January 12 and lasts until February 27. What hope do you associate with these six weeks of this never-before-seen cinematic anthology ?

It is the hope of sharing these cinemas which are dear to us and indispensable to the broadest image of the understanding of cinema and the construction of a cinephilia. Africa’s cinemas are a missing image. I hope this cycle will arouse the curiosity of a large audience.

►Tigritudes, 66 years of Pan-African cinema in 125 films from 40 countries, from January 12 to February 27, 2022 at the Forum des Images, in Paris.