Cinéma, poésie et peinture - 07/10/2023
MEDI1TV Afrique : Cinéma, poésie et peinture - 07/10/2023
Transcript
00:00 [Music]
00:09 It is with great pleasure that I meet you again on Medias for this new episode of Culture at the Heart of Africa.
00:17 In a few moments, we will be immersed in Omar Ba's artistic universe,
00:24 between oral tradition, poetry and abstract art. We will have the pleasure of discovering his universe.
00:31 We will also talk about cinema with a documentary on apartheid, a rare, catchy documentary,
00:38 Classified People, we will come back to this in more detail in a few moments.
00:41 And right now, we are still talking about cinema with our guest of the day, Kim Shapiro.
00:46 [Music]
00:51 And today, we have the immense pleasure of welcoming a young director who has already proven himself,
00:57 notably with Chetain, La Crème de la Crème, or Go Pound, Kim Shapiro,
01:02 who is in Morocco for his new film, Le Jeune Imam.
01:06 By the way, he is with us. Hello Kim!
01:08 Hello, happy to be with you and thank you for the invitation.
01:12 Thank you for answering our invitation.
01:16 We have a lot of questions to ask you, but before getting into the heart of the matter,
01:21 to talk about your tour in Morocco, but also about your new film,
01:24 I would like to ask you this question, how did you get into cinema?
01:29 What made you want to be a director?
01:33 Because we don't become a bit of a filmmaker by chance,
01:36 there is always this sensitivity that we end up expressing.
01:39 And how did it happen for you?
01:42 So how did it happen? I will immediately join the same dynamic that led me to make this film,
01:49 which takes place in a mosque, inside a popular neighborhood,
01:53 in Clichy, in the woods, in Montfermeil, in France,
01:56 for those who know, which was the theater of the riots in 2005.
02:00 So we had a lot of light, and then just after, Lajli, who did Les Misérables,
02:05 which had an international impact.
02:08 The same reason why I made my first film, Chez Tannes,
02:12 I would say, it is to highlight stories and faces that we are not used to seeing in the cinema.
02:18 There you can see the trailer of my film,
02:21 we dealt with a family of young Malians from immigration.
02:27 In France, we follow this trajectory of characters,
02:30 and what we wanted to do with Lajli, that's it.
02:34 We said to ourselves that if we didn't make this film, we would never be able to go see it in the cinema.
02:38 And I would say that this was my first impulse,
02:40 by making my first steps in this world.
02:43 And precisely with the young imam, your new film,
02:48 where did the idea come from?
02:51 How was this film born, its genesis?
02:55 So it's from a true story,
02:58 we were inspired by a young imam,
03:02 who was the most beloved person,
03:06 charismatic, eloquent, with a very, very strong performance,
03:10 who one day found himself in the diametrically opposite position,
03:14 that is to say, the most hated person for a story of a robbery at the pilgrimage,
03:18 in which he found himself totally, I would say, in this inextricable situation.
03:25 We talked to many victims.
03:29 Unfortunately, this happens a lot in France too.
03:32 We were able to realize this during the prospection and research,
03:35 both in the Muslim world and the pilgrimage to Lourdes,
03:39 as well as in other religions, and these are very strong subjects,
03:42 which, when we started to approach them,
03:44 allowed us to tell, I would say, many facets of the world in which we live today,
03:48 of the human complexity that mixes tradition and modernity.
03:52 And again, we thought that if we didn't take the time,
03:56 and we didn't take the delicacy, because it's a subject we live,
04:00 and it's a subject we want to tell in a different way,
04:04 when we started to observe all these real stories,
04:09 it was at that moment that we thought we were going to bring the real into the cinema.
04:13 And the second step was obviously the opposite,
04:16 which was to bring cinema into reality,
04:20 because this story is a fiction story.
04:22 And it's true that, as you just said, Kim, I'm following you,
04:26 there are many subjects that are addressed in your film.
04:32 The young imam, we talk about the love of a mother,
04:35 we talk about this scam, we talk about religion, we talk about youth.
04:41 And it's true that, weren't you a little afraid
04:43 to have to address everything without necessarily diluting one of the subjects?
04:48 How did you do that?
04:50 So, it's above all, for those who are going to discover the story of an injury,
04:56 because it's a son who is going to be forced to go to the country, to the village,
05:01 in the madrasa of his mother's village,
05:04 because you will see, after doing, I would say, some stupid things,
05:08 that all children, I would say, are unfortunately,
05:11 especially when you have a little difficult heritage of this mother,
05:16 all that, we imagine, of course, I really like to work off-screen,
05:19 she is a little overwhelmed by events,
05:21 her son is almost uncontrollable, and she says to herself,
05:23 I'm going to take him to the village, in his village,
05:26 because he never set foot there.
05:28 And this little boy there is going to have a kind of mystical, spiritual revelation.
05:35 Let's call it what we want, everyone is free to analyze this moment as they want,
05:41 and this little boy will end up having, I would say,
05:45 a gift of the very powerful Koranic recitation,
05:48 and when he comes back home, after in France,
05:50 everyone will look at him as someone who would have the right
05:55 to take the place of the spiritual leader of the community.
05:59 So that's why, I'm not going to spoil the movie,
06:01 but that's why my young imam is going to arrive,
06:04 and his community is going to ask more or less kindly
06:10 to the old imam to leave, to give way to this young imam,
06:14 who will arrive with all his lot of advantages,
06:19 which is linked to youth, inventiveness, creativity, courage,
06:24 and at the same time, everything that we can blame for youth,
06:28 his carelessness, his lack of knowledge, and this film talks about that.
06:31 It is at this moment, precisely to talk about one of the themes that I love,
06:35 that our young imam will have the idea of doing the Friday khutba on Instagram Live.
06:41 So, to bring back the digital world, which is, I would say,
06:44 the opposite of what could be precisely the relationship to faith that we can have,
06:49 and our young imam will propel this very small mosque
06:53 into a gigantic firework, and that's where we'll be wondering today
06:59 on this theme that I find quite incredible,
07:03 which is how the religious also does not escape technological mutations.
07:07 And today we see many superstar imams, influencers,
07:13 arriving on our networks, on our phones, and that's the world we live in.
07:18 So, us, dealing with this subject was obviously a strong subject,
07:22 and that we had never seen in the cinema, so we thought it would be interesting,
07:25 of course, to tell it in our own way, through an emotional trajectory.
07:30 This little boy who experienced this injury with his mother,
07:33 and this whole trajectory of healing, and how they will be able to meet again,
07:38 both of them, and of course we will wonder why this young imam
07:43 provoked all this fireworks, you will see it in the film.
07:48 Was it for him? Was it to save his community?
07:51 Was it to have the recognition of his mother?
07:53 And that's where we enter the human complexity,
07:55 and the film is primarily about characters.
07:58 And it's true that this is a film that we talk a lot about.
08:03 At the moment, you are in Morocco, Kim,
08:07 and did you have the chance to talk with the Moroccan public?
08:13 Is there a difference between how the Moroccan public perceives this film,
08:20 and in France, do you see any similarities or is it really very different?
08:25 It's very different. I worked a lot on this film with this writer,
08:31 a Hitler-Moroccan, who you know, of course, Rachid Benzin,
08:34 who helped me with all the questions that were about religion,
08:37 because he is a field that he masters,
08:40 and he also helped me with the narrative, dramaturgical side of the film.
08:44 And we were able to have a cross-debate, a debate,
08:46 and he just had to tell me, when we were shooting in France,
08:49 in the Albera, in Morocco, in Algeria, in Tunisia,
08:53 the report that the spectators will have on this type of subject
08:58 is totally different from what we can have in France.
09:00 And of course, the public is different.
09:03 In France, the report that we have on all this,
09:05 you see it through the media,
09:09 you receive reports that are a bit shocking,
09:13 one or two newspapers, all that,
09:14 and what we live, of course, is totally different.
09:18 In the same way, how would I say,
09:21 this film was a desire to just defuse all that,
09:26 to withdraw a little from this media saturation
09:29 that we can have on all these subjects, on the popular neighborhoods in France,
09:31 especially when it comes to Islam.
09:33 And Rachid Benzin told me,
09:35 "You'll see when you present all these characters in Morocco, in Algeria,
09:41 because I'm just coming back from Algeria too,
09:43 you're not going to get into the same debates."
09:45 And that's exactly what I was able to experience.
09:47 We're not going to call me an Islamist,
09:49 we're not going to call me a director in the service of any doctrine.
09:53 It's a trajectory of characters.
09:55 And so I would say that already,
09:57 it takes a lot of weight off my shoulders when I come here to Morocco,
09:59 because at no time are these characters
10:02 much more familiar to Moroccans.
10:04 So I'm going to be able to talk about cinema,
10:06 I'm going to be able to talk about what it is,
10:09 all these problems, precisely, related to immigration,
10:12 and how we, in France,
10:14 we have this enormous chance of being a carpool of so many nationalities
10:19 coming from all over the world.
10:20 And that's how a young Frenchman,
10:23 I would say, from Vietnamese immigration,
10:26 starts to treat himself as a Muslim in a community.
10:31 That is to say, it is our strength in France.
10:34 And I am very, very proud to be able to present it today in Morocco
10:37 and to be able to talk about all this.
10:39 So the tour has just begun.
10:41 It will then go to Canada,
10:43 we will go to the Antilles,
10:45 we will end up in Saudi Arabia.
10:47 And showing this face of France,
10:49 I would say, was very important to me.
10:51 And so you will be in Morocco until when,
10:53 if people want to come?
10:57 So we're going to continue this tour tonight.
11:00 I'm in Casa.
11:02 We did a master class at the French Institute,
11:04 which was a very, very strong moment for me
11:07 to show all this different way of telling stories
11:13 within the Kourt Rajmeh collective,
11:15 which I did with Romain Gavras and La Djili in the 90s.
11:18 It was my second master class.
11:20 The other one, as we had done previously in Rabat.
11:24 And tonight, it will be our projection.
11:27 It will end in Meknes tomorrow.
11:30 And then I'll go back to France.
11:32 In any case, thank you for being with us, Kim,
11:35 for telling us about this great film,
11:37 "The Young Imam".
11:39 Thank you again for being here.
11:41 Thank you for the invitation.
11:43 And I wish you, those who will see my film,
11:46 a lot of joy, because I had a great joy making this film
11:49 and I will continue during this great tour.
11:52 Thank you very much, Kim. Good luck.
11:54 Thank you.
11:56 And after talking about cinema with "The Young Imam",
12:03 we immediately talk about art with Omar Ba.
12:06 Between poetry, storytelling, painting,
12:09 Omar Ba is an exceptional Senegalese painter.
12:14 This artist was born in Senegal in 1977,
12:17 has lived and worked between Dakar, Geneva and New York
12:19 for several years.
12:21 His works, it must be admitted, are made
12:23 with the help of various techniques and materials.
12:25 Omar Ba takes an engaged art
12:27 that covers several political and social subjects
12:30 through personal metaphors, ancestral references
12:33 and hybrid figures.
12:35 Omar Ba expresses his poetry, his unconscious,
12:37 his symbolic apprehension of reality,
12:39 first formed in Senegal, then in Roman Swiss.
12:42 Omar Ba is above all a painter,
12:44 even if in his work, sculpture, drawing and photography
12:47 also find their place.
12:49 Of his paintings, we will first remember this black,
12:51 this intense, unique black,
12:53 that of the black backgrounds from which the colors
12:55 he gives to his scenes, a bit like the "Lunirism" bed.
12:58 We listen right now to Omar Ba.
13:00 I know I deal with very complicated, very hard subjects.
13:05 For me, it is important to be able to find a language
13:10 that will push the one who looks to observe me better
13:15 and then to spend time to look at my works.
13:19 That's why I've always worked on the aesthetic side,
13:24 with feathers, with a white that is very pleasant to see
13:30 and that gives the impression that everything is beautiful.
13:34 But in the middle of all this, I put a message
13:37 that can be hard, that can be violent.
13:39 That way, this duality makes the one who looks
13:43 not have the impression of being attacked.
13:49 In addition to that, I made a work, a city,
13:52 that I made here six days ago.
13:55 A piece that deals with the background of money
13:59 as a tool of development.
14:01 And in this painting, I also tried to show
14:05 that certain institutions that are located
14:09 have a lot of influence on certain areas of power
14:12 that represent these countries.
14:14 And that for there to be development as we wish,
14:17 these states should be able to have autonomy
14:21 and independence.
14:23 Omar Bach also invokes nature in his paintings.
14:42 Petals, feathers, leaves, stems
14:44 or other elements taken from nature, whatever.
14:47 Omar Bach plays with textures,
14:49 the artist continually reinvents the motifs of his palette.
14:52 Familiar with tales, with the art of reality,
14:54 Omar Bach adopts a construction of the image
14:56 faithful to the tradition of oral stories
14:59 and their symbolic and philosophical messages
15:01 that he carries.
15:02 Behind the splinters and fusions of colors,
15:04 the figures and scenes that he paints
15:06 are straight out of a story
15:08 with multiple political and social springs.
15:11 Each of these paintings embodies a contemporary, complex Africa.
15:15 And that's what makes his strength,
15:17 to bring African reality to everyone's eyes
15:20 through the allegory and metaphor of Omar Bach.
15:23 We are all linked to each other, to the past and the future.
15:26 And his painting has a kind of universal value.
15:29 We continue to listen to Omar Bach.
15:31 Yes, it's true that for two years now,
15:36 I've been working on other formats.
15:41 So we see that most of the works that are here
15:44 are formats that are 2.50 meters long.
15:46 And then I wanted to keep the paper support for this exhibition,
15:53 and also the canvas, because they are supports that I like a lot.
15:57 And I try not to give myself constraints and limits in my creation.
16:02 And then the characters too,
16:06 they are characters that perfectly match the greatness of the format.
16:09 Yes, I am very optimistic,
16:14 and I think I am very motivated at the level of my work.
16:17 I think I will try to go in this direction that I started,
16:22 that is to say, to work a lot,
16:25 and then make very large formats,
16:27 and then explore other mediums,
16:29 and then push the limits, in fact.
16:31 Because I see that through these exhibitions,
16:34 I can go much further.
16:36 I want to be much closer to my work.
16:40 Omar Bach is a kind of popular theater,
16:45 of enigmatic creatures, even hallucinated and profoundly poetic.
16:49 His work is inhabited by creatures,
16:51 with a head of ox, a belly, or of the Russian,
16:53 the Egyptian deity with a head of falcon.
16:55 These characters, half men, half animals,
16:57 are a nod to the nature of the human being,
16:59 who I think behaves like an animal in the jungle.
17:02 This is what he will say.
17:03 These characters embody the inherited traumas of colonialism,
17:06 tyranny, violence, North-South inequalities,
17:08 but also hope, make bestiaries, mobilize too.
17:11 There are personal metaphors,
17:13 only ancestral references,
17:14 all while questioning the place that Africa occupies today in the world.
17:18 The artist tells us about politics, the news of the world,
17:21 the exploitation of nature, the war, terrorism,
17:23 the men of state, and the relations of power and domination.
17:27 But beyond all this, Omar Bach's work is much more.
17:30 The global situation of the world,
17:33 I think there is something wrong,
17:35 something that is not in order,
17:38 something that is not on the right track.
17:42 What should be noted in this exhibition
17:44 is that it was not a very simple exhibition.
17:48 It was very difficult, very complicated.
17:50 It was also a way to make a nod
17:52 to all these countries that have constitutions,
17:56 that people who are in these states tend to modify these constitutions.
18:02 So for me, it's also a kind of anomaly.
18:04 It's a series of six paintings.
18:10 And on the six, there are three paintings
18:14 that speak of men of state,
18:16 with always a woman behind.
18:18 And then on the other three, we see characters,
18:22 like men of state,
18:24 but represented by Western society.
18:28 So in these six paintings,
18:30 I try to show that most of these heads of state,
18:34 who are elected,
18:36 they have speeches that people adhere to.
18:41 And once they come to power,
18:43 when they make their first stay in the West,
18:47 as soon as they come back, they change their speech.
18:49 In all societies, women occupy a very important place.
18:57 I wanted to represent these heads of state,
18:59 and every time I show a woman behind.
19:01 After talking about paintings with Omar,
19:08 we immediately talk about cinema with Classified People,
19:11 a documentary filmed in South Africa
19:14 during the apartheid regime.
19:16 A unique, striking film,
19:18 highlighting the policy of racial segregation.
19:21 A story that for 43 years has infiltrated
19:24 the most unsuspected corners of the world.
19:27 Classified People, racial segregation within families.
19:30 Let's watch the trailer.
19:33 [drumming]
19:35 You look like a lovely white person.
19:38 There's not a person to say that you're not white.
19:41 Doris is 71.
19:45 She's Robert's second wife.
19:47 Robert is 91.
19:49 In 1914, he joined the Coloured Battalion
19:51 and fought in France in the First World War.
19:54 Then apartheid came in.
19:56 They were white, and he was, I mean, classified, coloured.
20:00 [sobs]
20:02 His children didn't want to take him
20:06 because the government was against him.
20:08 Two of my brothers are white. I'm coloured.
20:15 He has the right to vote, and I haven't.
20:17 To have your race change from coloured to white,
20:20 you are subjected to a few tests.
20:23 I just cannot humanise myself with him.
20:28 He was a kaffir, he's a kaffir.
20:31 Schizophrenia becomes reality.
20:34 [chanting]
20:37 You might look white, and your nose is white,
20:41 and everything is white,
20:43 but they're going to fight that you're not white.
20:46 I chose to remain the way I am and to be rejected.
20:50 [chanting]
20:52 [screaming]
20:55 [sobs]
20:58 [chanting]
21:01 Like I said, it's such a wonderful thing to be a white person.
21:08 Classified People by Jolens Zoberman,
21:14 a unique, striking documentary.
21:16 It was shot in '48 and '91.
21:18 South African citizens were classified
21:20 according to a racial classification
21:22 that distinguished four categories.
21:24 Whites, Indians, mixed and blacks.
21:27 In Classified People, we follow Robert,
21:29 this non-engineer, who says that
21:31 when the law was introduced,
21:33 the administrative court judged him as mixed,
21:36 while his wife and children were considered white.
21:40 They ended up rejecting him.
21:42 For 25 years, he has lived in a modest house
21:45 in a poor neighbourhood,
21:47 sharing his life with Doris, a 70-year-old black woman,
21:50 a privileged witness to the humiliation of her husband,
21:54 who, unfortunately, had the misfortune
21:56 to voluntarily join a mixed-race regime
21:59 during the First World War.
22:01 Classified People, Jolens Zoberman's first documentary,
22:04 was shot in January '87.
22:06 The film was named César in '89,
22:08 in the "Best Documentary Short Film" category.
22:11 It is now released in a restored version.
22:14 The film follows Robert, this 91-year-old mixed-race man,
22:17 and Doris, his 71-year-old black wife.
22:19 The couple has been living together for 25 years.
22:21 They are married,
22:22 and they symbolize the absurdity of racial classification.
22:25 Before getting married, Robert was white,
22:27 married to a white woman,
22:29 with whom he had white children.
22:31 But since he had joined the mixed-race troops
22:33 during the First World War,
22:35 the former soldier was, I quote, "reclassified mixed-race".
22:38 His wife and children rejected him,
22:40 and his life changed.
22:42 And as she says in her note,
22:44 Jolens Zoberman, Classified People,
22:46 is above all a love film.
22:48 Robert and Doris embody a desire
22:50 greater than fear, greater than hatred.
22:52 There was apartheid,
22:54 and in its opposite,
22:56 the mad love between a man and a woman,
22:58 which I found the most perfect expression of its absurdity.
23:01 And that's also the uniqueness of Classified People.
23:05 And right away in African Culture,
23:11 we talk literature,
23:13 with the new novel by the Congolese writer
23:15 Alama Bonkou,
23:17 who remembers his career as a young poet,
23:20 self-published, and all the failures
23:22 or successes he had in his career.
23:25 With this novel,
23:27 "Lettre à un jeune romancien sénégalais",
23:29 Alama Bonkou offers
23:31 a kind of invitation to sharing.
23:34 He also talks about creating a catalogue,
23:36 which would be a kind of roadmap
23:38 for anyone aspiring to become a writer.
23:42 For the Congolese writer,
23:44 the idea is rather a fraternal exchange
23:46 with potential and desirous authors,
23:48 as he was accelerated
23:50 to access one day to publication.
23:52 Besides, with his new novel,
23:54 it starts with memories,
23:56 and in particular,
23:58 this very precious of his childhood,
24:00 marked by the orality of a community,
24:03 that of the Babembe in the south of the Congo,
24:06 where I quote,
24:08 "The word is never taken lightly,
24:10 it is above all."
24:12 The writer thus evokes two key figures
24:14 in the story,
24:16 Lisa Banquet, an old accountant
24:18 from her neighborhood,
24:20 and her own mother,
24:22 who later became an essential character
24:24 in the story.
24:26 We listen to Alama Bonkou.
24:28 I have always associated
24:30 a book entitled "Le livre de ma mère"
24:32 by Albert Cohen with my childhood.
24:34 Maybe also because during my childhood
24:36 there was this kind of loneliness,
24:38 this kind of deification of the mother.
24:40 However, the book "Le livre de ma mère"
24:42 by Albert Cohen
24:44 is perhaps the most successful poem
24:46 about the mother,
24:48 about motherhood.
24:50 And the reading of this book
24:52 is so easy and simple
24:54 that we have the impression
24:56 that the writer had practically dreamed
24:58 of the book to be read
25:00 by everyone, regardless of age.
25:02 So, as soon as I was little,
25:04 from time to time, I opened the book
25:06 and I read it.
25:08 There was a splendid beauty
25:10 of the text,
25:12 where we felt that this man,
25:14 this writer,
25:16 from his childhood,
25:18 was attached to his mother,
25:20 and that the mother was the beginning
25:22 and perhaps even the end,
25:24 but also the resurrection
25:26 of all things.
25:28 "L'être un jeune romancier sénégalais",
25:30 Alama Bonkou's latest book,
25:32 is a kind of guide,
25:34 an autobiographical story
25:36 in which the author tells us
25:38 about the self-publishing of Brazzaville
25:40 and the popular areas of Brazzaville,
25:42 the hermetic circle of the authors,
25:44 Parisian stars.
25:46 So, Alama Bonkou tells us a lot
25:48 about the writer, as much as a passion
25:50 is that of the letters.
25:52 And we are reaching the end
25:54 of African culture.
25:56 Thank you again for being with us
25:58 and we will meet again
26:00 next week, without fail.
26:02 (upbeat music)
26:04 (upbeat music)