MEDI1TV Afrique : Culture, Cinéma et Art avec Layla Triqui, Viviana Pâques, No Blabla et Omar Ba - 04/01/2025
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00:00It's with great pleasure that I meet you again for this new Escale Culture in the heart of Africa.
00:15In a few moments, we will talk about art with Omar Ba, who offers us a new exhibition in the heart of Paris.
00:23Otherwise, we will talk about series with No Bla Bla, an African series that is a buzz right now.
00:30But first of all, let's welcome our guest of the day.
00:39And today, we have the immense pleasure of welcoming the director Leila Teriki,
00:46who returns to us with a very long-awaited first feature film.
00:51Hello Leila.
00:54Hello, best wishes for this new year.
01:00Thank you, best wishes to you too.
01:02Health, happiness, abundance and lots of films to come, Inshallah.
01:08It's true that I had the opportunity to see your film in Tangier.
01:15By the way, it won an award at the National Film Festival.
01:20I would like to come back to the genesis of this film, Leila, since it has a somewhat particular story.
01:26Why this theme of this young girl who is looking for the true story of her mother, who she thought was dead?
01:36So, without going too far, why this theme that is particularly close to your heart?
01:42It's a theme that I was asked a lot when I was young, having had similar cases in the Luantan family.
01:55And I asked myself the question, how is it possible to live with these identity wounds, with these tears?
02:05Is there a way to build above or beyond the scars of time and all that?
02:15And so I wanted to do research in this direction to realize that there is a whole generation today in Europe,
02:26mainly children or young children, especially children of the generation between the 60s and 90s,
02:37of these waves of emigration that took place in Europe, mainly in France, Belgium, Sweden, Holland,
02:46where many children, in fact, in their thirties today, or at the end of their twenties,
02:52somehow ask themselves the same question as my main character.
02:57So it was important for me to draw attention to this subject,
03:04which is actually topical with regard to all these waves of refugees today in the world.
03:16And so this question of the identity composed or complex or fractured or fragmented,
03:24it is at the heart of the news today.
03:29And it's true that I imagine that the writing of the script was particular.
03:36How did the writing of the script go?
03:39Did you want to find out, especially on the ground, or is it totally fictional?
03:44How did you feed yourself and write?
03:50It was a lot of research on the ground, research that led me to realize
03:57that there were a lot of real cases, especially in Morocco.
04:02There are a lot of them.
04:04And then to really work with, through a certain number of research,
04:12PhD students, etc., who have, in particular, artists who have lived either a similar situation,
04:22or a refugee situation, where they have asked themselves the question of this identity
04:30that is somehow suspended between two grounds or two territories or two continents,
04:36and that somehow leads them, in large part, to try to create another space
04:43where they find this identity, where they can live this identity.
04:48And so it was really a journey, a progressive research, with my co-screenwriter Keith Cunningham.
04:59And that's what led us to work on all the elaborations of the story
05:08that happens on the character's screen, but also that happens off the screen,
05:13the backstories of all the characters, of the main character,
05:18like his father, like his mother, like this character
05:22that somehow sends a reflection of the same problem otherwise,
05:28which is that of Ryan, the Syrian refugee.
05:33And it's true that your film, Leila, raises a lot of questions,
05:38because beyond this young woman who is simply looking to put a face,
05:43a correct name on her mother's, her story, in fact, through her mother's story,
05:49there is also the theme of family secrets, there is also the question of refugees
05:57who themselves are looking for their story, perhaps in other countries,
06:01who are trying to get back on their feet to create their story
06:04and be able to give it to their children and grandchildren later on.
06:09And it's true that your film is out of date,
06:12these are questions that are there and that are on the front of the scene.
06:17Absolutely, absolutely.
06:19And I think it's important to be able to open the discussion,
06:25open the debate around this, because it's not...
06:28Of course, it's a topical subject, but it's a subject that existed at other times, in a different way.
06:37And it's important to be able to raise this subject,
06:43because it is a question today, for my part, it is a question of accepting the difference,
06:52it is a question of embracing these scars, embracing these fractures,
07:00embracing these fragments, to be able to live and live together, above all.
07:08And in relation to the work, we talked a lot about the theme of the script,
07:13but the work with the actors, since they are all, in quotation marks, main characters,
07:20they complete each other to finally tell the same story,
07:24they are all looking for something, at least an answer, a truth,
07:28or at least look at the truth face to face and name it,
07:32especially for the father to be at peace with himself.
07:35They are all looking for a kind of serenity in their own way.
07:39And how did you do with your actors?
07:42Was it different to work with each one of you?
07:44Or was there the same director?
07:49In fact, the discussions with the actors began very, very early,
07:54almost a year before the shooting, at a distance, because we were in the middle of the COVID period.
08:03But it allowed me to do several exchanges, several work sessions,
08:11to dissect, to try to translate how I saw these characters,
08:19how I saw the composition of their psychology, their reactivity,
08:24how each of these characters actually had a rhythm to mourn these stories,
08:31to reconcile with these stories.
08:34The father is the one who has the slowest approach to accepting, to mourn,
08:41and somehow he is driven by the impulse of his daughter,
08:48who somehow pushes him to face it and finally mourn after several years.
08:55So it's really a collaborative work.
08:59We discuss, we debate, we exchange ideas.
09:02The actors also make their propositions.
09:05Of course, I had a vision of a work at the level of the interpretation,
09:13extremely pure, extremely interiorized,
09:18where there is not too much external expression, etc.
09:25So it was very important for me to balance all this at the level of each sequence,
09:30regardless of the characters,
09:33regardless of the difficulty of the sequence itself, dramatically.
09:38So it was really a work of complementarity and propositions on both sides
09:45that I oriented little by little over almost a year.
09:50And once on the set, we were able to make Italians, meet together,
09:55discuss all the elements,
09:57and then redo small, extremely precise directions on the set, in the middle of shooting.
10:06And for this first feature film, Leila Voila is finally ready.
10:11It was seen at the Tangier National Festival.
10:17Today, as a director, but also as a woman,
10:20how do you feel about the birth of this first feature film?
10:30I would say that it is a work that took a lot of years.
10:35It was a birth.
10:37It was a birth.
10:39It is the realization of a will of many, many years.
10:48And I am happy that it can finally be offered to the public's gaze,
10:56who will interact with this film.
11:00And they will read it, their own reading.
11:05And that is the most beautiful thing for a director.
11:09I think it is when his film no longer belongs to him,
11:12and that it is offered to the gaze of all those who will see it.
11:16But it is clear that it is a very special moment,
11:19because it is a first feature film that has been very, very, very much awaited.
11:24And on my part, and on the part of my colleagues and the public,
11:30who were wondering when Leïla Triggy was going to make her first feature film.
11:38So it's a made-up story.
11:41When can we see it?
11:43Is there a date for the release in theaters?
11:48In fact, it is very likely.
11:52Things are going in the direction of releasing it in the spring.
12:02After Ramadan, in the spring, beginning or end of spring,
12:06we will see the most suitable time for the public to go and discover it in theaters,
12:12en masse, God willing, I hope.
12:15In any case, we will meet.
12:17Thank you very much Leïla Triggy for being with us.
12:20And we hope that this year 2025 will be synonymous with success.
12:24We are sure of it. Thank you very much.
12:35And after talking about culture,
12:37we are talking about cinema, or rather documentary,
12:41with Viviana Pak, who died in 2007.
12:44But we must say that her gaze remains.
12:46She will be one of the first to be interested in the knowledge, culture and Moroccan tradition of Teghnaoui.
12:52The dance scenes, the importance of colors,
12:55or how much Kabbalistic to perfumes and trance.
12:58So it all starts in 1969 in Times Square.
13:00She will stay there until her death.
13:02Viviana Pak gives us an eye-catching research on the philosophy of the Gnawa,
13:07enlightened by the Mkhedem Shef, the religious brotherhood, the Hayashi.
13:11And in the seven colors of the universe,
13:13a unique documentary universe, a real archive and anthropological and cultural analysis,
13:17we meet the dialogue that has been established for no less than 20 years between the ethnologist and the Hayashi.
13:24And this color of the universe, realized between 1969 and 2004 by Jacques Villemont,
13:28under the scientific direction of Viviana Pak,
13:31gives us a piece of Morocco, its sacredness and its deeply African roots.
13:36When Viviana Pak came to Morocco to study the Teghnaoui brotherhood,
13:40she had already worked on several black slave brotherhoods.
13:43The Stambolis of Tunisia, the Stambanis of Libya, the Bilelis of Algeria,
13:47the Suleymias of Fezzan or Mali.
13:50Then in 1969, she decides to make a film on the Mussem of Times Square.
13:55Because, she says, from the moment we see it or people have not seen it, it does not exist.
14:01And they are right, because if we do not see it, it does not exist.
14:06And finally, it is only when we become aware of something that it exists.
14:10Let's take a look right now.
14:36With him fell the Zedra, this bush that the whole region of Marrakech worships.
14:42Likewise, the black slave Bilal, the Muad'Din of the Prophet,
14:47violated heaven when he climbed to the top of the minaret to launch the first call to prayer.
14:56Now, in everyday life, this myth is the model of the sacred gestures of existence.
15:03Thus, the black or white banner that the Muad'Din raises every day to the sky
15:08evokes these two mythical viols.
15:10But also the Sutra, the veil of seven colors, which extends above the earth
15:16after the dunya had penetrated firmly.
15:25On the other hand, the viol of heaven prefigures the rituals of marriage
15:29and the sacrifice of the dunya, that of circumcision.
15:34Finally, this sacrifice gives birth to the seven corporations of Marrakech.
15:39Then, at the Mouloud, which commemorates the birth of the Prophet,
15:43the Tanners will offer, in the name of the seven corporations, a camel, which will be beheaded.
15:51Through his work as an anthropologist and ethnologist, Viviana Pak has shown
15:55that Africans first of all possessed a liberated knowledge of all the liberal categories
16:01in which we are locked in our reality.
16:03Through the verb, Viviana Pak has shown that African culture was above all an oral knowledge
16:09which was transmitted through an immaterial knowledge, the abstract, the metaphor,
16:14what is not seen but which is read.
16:17Moreover, she will say that the Gnawa symbolize energies by colors,
16:21what is less material than a color?
16:23In the end, these are people who manipulate abstraction better than any philosopher,
16:28our philosophers.
16:29They are as comfortable in the abstract world as in the concrete world
16:33because the two join each other, penetrate each other and vice versa.
16:39The blacksmiths who run the religious confrérie of the Aïssaouas
16:43are the body of the beheaded serpent.
16:46The anvil on which they hit represents the severed head.
16:55The second confrérie, that of the Aïssaouas,
16:59is the head of the serpent.
17:03The second confrérie, that of the Gnawa,
17:07the former black slaves, the sons of Bilal,
17:11symbolize the head of the dunia which opens the door of heaven.
17:25As these slaves were once sold at the wool market,
17:30this became for them the symbol of the Zedra,
17:34this bush that fell from the sky.
17:38The religious confréries Aïssaouas and Gnawa
17:41will relive this great mythical sacrifice
17:44during the seven days of the Mouloud festival,
17:46during the Moussem,
17:47the pilgrimage to the tombs of the seven saints of Marrakech,
17:50then to Tam Slot, in the plain,
17:52and to Moulay Ibrahim, in the mountain.
18:00Each year, they come from all over Morocco,
18:04and even from abroad.
18:06The departure for Tam Slot and Moulay Ibrahim
18:09is made in a solemn procession from Marrakech.
18:17The confréries and corporations
18:19gather to accompany the animals they offer in sacrifice.
18:23With them goes the camel of the Tanners,
18:26which will be slaughtered at Moulay Ibrahim.
18:29Viviane Apac, through her scientific and anthropological research,
18:32but also her cultural approach of the confréries in Africa,
18:36and in particular of the Gnawa confréries,
18:38to which she will dedicate herself until her death.
18:40Viviane Apac will come to the conclusion
18:42that it is a question of a metalanguage.
18:45It is not conceptualization that is at stake,
18:47but how it is experienced.
18:49Anthropology is an art that tells us that, in principle,
18:52women who accompany the drums outside the place
18:55where it is held, the lilac should be in the number of 10,
18:58like the 10 stars of Orion,
19:00and who also told us that,
19:02in the hands of the hymns,
19:04the cross between life and the afterlife.
19:06Because the right hand is the living, the world of life,
19:08the manifested world,
19:10and the left hand is the world of the afterlife.
19:12To stay alive, the intangible heritage
19:14must preserve its relevance for culture
19:17and be regularly practiced and learned
19:19within communities and from one generation to the next.
19:23It must be said that the communities and groups
19:25that practice these traditions and customs
19:27all over the world,
19:29have their own system of transmission,
19:31of knowledge and know-how,
19:33which generally rests on the oral,
19:35rather than on the written.
19:37The activities of preservation must therefore
19:39always involve communities, groups,
19:41and, in the event of a failure,
19:43the individuals who bear such a heritage.
19:45It is the very memory of the country
19:47that must be preserved.
19:49And that's why we particularly like
19:51the works of Viviana Paca.
19:55The Gnawa dance the great whirlwind,
19:57the hajaj,
19:59which made the geniuses descend
20:01from time to time
20:03with the blood of the sacrifice.
20:07This sacrifice,
20:09prelude to marriage and circumcision,
20:11will be symbolically represented
20:13on the last day, in the kushina,
20:15the old kitchen of Moulay Abdelhassen.
20:21The Gnawa,
20:23sitting in front of the door,
20:25open the way to the genius
20:27present at the sacrifice.
20:29Inside the kitchen,
20:31Deshle,
20:33the Ouled Gita,
20:35prepare a salt-free broth
20:37of barley and oil.
20:39It is in their family
20:41that the founder took his first wife.
20:47Further on,
20:49a Gnawa priestess
20:51literally washes the old wooden dish
20:53of Moulay Abdelhassen.
20:55This dish is called Lala Freya,
20:57Madame La Joie.
20:59At the other end of the city,
21:01two processions are organized
21:03to accompany two camels
21:05that symbolize the two women
21:07of the sacrificer.
21:09They leave the Zedra
21:11to go around the city,
21:13in the opposite direction,
21:15like the whirlwind
21:17of the Ouled Tamslot to the left
21:19and of the Ouled Gita to the right.
21:21Both of them go
21:23to the kushina.
21:29And right now,
21:31we talk series
21:33with our blabla,
21:35the result of a collaboration
21:37between Burkina Faso and France
21:39and Senegal.
21:41This series, 10 episodes,
21:43created and directed by François Bergeron,
21:45was written in collaboration
21:47with Basile Yahianke.
21:49This series of anticipations,
21:51both burlesque, realistic and poetic,
21:53in a totally innovative genre,
21:55shot mainly in Burkina Faso,
21:57became in a few months
21:59an essential part
22:01of the African audiovisual landscape.
22:03Let's watch an excerpt
22:05from the trailer.
22:15...
22:19...
22:29...
22:41...
22:45...
22:53...
23:05The series, our blabla,
23:07is a 21st century tale
23:09told by a mystical and ironic griot
23:11who tells the story of blabla,
23:13an African migrant
23:15who wanted to flee his condition
23:17to try his chance clandestinely
23:19in a more comfortable world.
23:21But on the road,
23:23blabla falls in love
23:25and despite all the dangers,
23:27he decides to stay
23:29to live a totally forbidden love.
23:31Blabla is above all
23:33the invention of an emblematic
23:35African burlesque hero
23:37played by the Togolese actor
23:39Basile Yahianke,
23:41a counter-Islamic artist.
23:43K.P.G.
23:45Forced marriage,
23:47stigmatization of the disabled,
23:49environmental problems,
23:51spoliation of universal goods,
23:53traceability of individuals,
23:55prostitution, poverty,
23:57lack of justice and corruption
23:59are so many serious and universal themes
24:01that are addressed in the tone
24:03always of irony in this series.
24:05Our blabla can be found
24:07on the TV5MONDE platform
24:09available in Ripley.
24:19And before we leave,
24:21I propose to you
24:23to go to the meeting
24:25of the universe
24:27of the artist Omar Ba
24:29who is right now
24:31in Paris for an exhibition
24:33between invisible poetry, metaphors and mysteries.
24:35Omar Ba is an artist,
24:37his work expresses first of all
24:39the subtleties and complexities
24:41of his subconscious and his symbolic interpretation
24:43of reality.
24:45The artist deals with themes
24:47such as chaos, destruction, dictatorship
24:49and uses a pictorial language
24:51of a formidable force
24:53but which is simply entirely clean.
24:55At the same time ferocious and delicate,
24:57Omar Ba lives and works between
24:59Dakar, Geneva, Brussels, Paris and New York
25:01and he also develops a reflection,
25:03a perpetual movement mixed
25:05with stereotypes linked to his African roots,
25:07a path that he shares
25:09with us in particular in Paris.
25:11Let's listen to Omar Ba.
25:27The love of painting,
25:29of spending time on a support,
25:31of spending nights on a support,
25:33of working until I get a result
25:35that I like,
25:37that I find
25:39at the aesthetic level,
25:41it's beautiful to see.
25:43The fact of mixing
25:45the political side
25:47with the beauty of painting
25:49and the love of painting
25:51for me, it's worth it.
25:53I worked hard
25:55to be able to show my works here today.
25:57It would be unfair of me
25:59to have the possibility
26:01to communicate with people
26:03and not to speak
26:05of my sufferings,
26:07of my way of seeing the world.
26:09When I look at the world,
26:11I find that injustice
26:13is visible everywhere.
26:15The black people of African origin
26:17need more respect.
26:19Today, the work that needs to be done
26:21is to be able
26:23to give this courage
26:25and this strength to this people
26:27that they had since ancient Egypt,
26:29and I think that it could contribute
26:31to change their mentality,
26:33to give the desire to these young people
26:35to believe in themselves
26:37and to be able to live decently
26:39like all the other peoples of the world
26:41and to try to make better
26:43this continent that is so beautiful.
26:45He will say,
26:47an African artist should not be
26:49unaware of what is happening on this continent.
26:51This is what Omar Bach declares,
26:53who is a huge success at the Templon Gallery
26:55in Paris right now.
26:57We are at the end of African culture.
26:59Thank you for being with us
27:01and we will see you
27:03next week.
27:05Until then, take care.