Boukary Sawadogo Discusses His Research: Three Marginal Figures in the Cinemas of Francophone West Africa—the Mad Person, the Homosexual, and the Woman
- Boukary Sawadogo Discusses His Research:Three Marginal Figures in the Cinemas of Francophone West Africa—the Mad Person, the Homosexual, and the Woman
Editor’s note: Beginning with this issue, Black Camera introduces a new feature, the African Women in Cinema Dossier, authored by Beti Ellerson, director of the Centre for the Study and Research of African Women in Cinema and creator of the African Women in Cinema blog. We at Black Camera wanted to expand the reach of Ellerson’s important work, feeling that she is writing and conducting research in a vital yet still under-recognized and under-analyzed aspect of global culture, feminist issues, and dynamic artistry. Ellerson’s critical inquiries into African women’s experiences encompass historiography and spectatorship as well as the hands-on work of advocacy and production. Moving images are a particularly compelling component of these inquiries, she writes, because of cinema’s capacity to address complex social issues within specific cultural contexts, as well as its value as a pedagogical tool and a means of building audiences’ awareness of the lives and circumstances of others.
Such concerns are discussed in this first installment of the African Women in Cinema Dossier, in which Ellerson interviews film scholar Boukary Sawadogo, professor of French at Marlboro College and author of Les cinémas francophones ouest-africains (Editions L’Harmattan, 2013). Sawadogo’s work focuses on the ways recent francophone African cinema explores alterity, and the consideration of gender and sexuality in Sawadogo and Ellerson’s dialogue complements this issue’s Close-Up on Sexuality, Eroticism, and Gender in Black Films and New Media.
Boukary, congratulations on the publication of your book, Les cinemas francophones ouest-africains, which in fact is adapted from your doctoral thesis entitled L’Altérité dérangeante et innovante dans les cinémas francophones [End Page 229] ouest- africains de 1990 à 2005” [“Disturbing and Innovative Alterity in Francophone West African Cinemas from 1990 to 2005”]. Why this subject for research?
Through this work I wanted to examine the changes that have taken place in African cinema since the 1990s, as are evident in the aesthetic and thematic treatment, as well as modes of production and distribution. To deal with these mutations through an analysis of the representation of characters at the “margin” provides not only a better understanding of the “center,” or the social norms that constitute dominant discourse, but also to see in what ways the treatment of marginal figures translates a certain evolution in post-1990 cinemas, characterized by the passage from collective to individual, the individual’s confrontation with the preeminence of her/his community, and the female heroism of everyday life.
According to the Dictionnaire Le Robert, “alterity” is a philosophical concept signifying “the characteristic of that which is other.” Through the use of cinema your study highlights three figures of alterity: the mad person, the homosexual, the woman. Talk about your approach as well as your choice of films and the characters.
My approach was primarily deconstructionist and feminist, based on the notion of taking voice. The analysis of each marginal character was structured around three films. For the homosexual, the selected films were Dakan / Destiny (1997), by Mohamed Camara, Woubi chéri / Darling Woubi (1998), by Philip Brooks and Laurent Bocahut, and Karmen Geï (2001), by Joseph Gaï Ramaka. Dakan, whose focus is on two high school students, Sori and Manga, is the first francophone African homosexual film. By its documentary nature, Woubi chéri gives voice to homosexuals of Abidjan, thus offering a different perspective. Like Dakan, Karmen Geï is also a pioneering film in its treatment of a lesbian relationship between Karmen and Angélique.
In terms of madness, I chose Sia, le rêve du python / Sia, the Dream of the Python (2001), by Dani Kouyaté, Tasuma / Tasuma, the Fighter (2004), by Kollo Sanou, and Une fenêtre ouverte / An Open Window (2005), by Khady Sylla. The characters of Kerfa and Soba in the first two films contrast well with that of Aminta Ngom in the latter film—a contrast that brings...
