Remembering Djibril Diop Mambéty on the 20th Anniversary of His Death

I met Djibril Diop Mambéty during his visit to the United States in April 1997 where he was invited to the annual African Literature Association Conference hosted by Michigan State University; African cinema was the focus of the conference. I had my video camera and asked Mambéty if I could interview him. I was again struck by his approachable manner and laid-back demeanor; I had met him before at FESPACO in Burkina Faso, however, during this encounter we made an even deeper connection. We chatted, I asked him about his cinematic experiences, and we literally “hung out” together during the conference, attending several panels, one that was dedicated to his work and another where I was a panelist. Spontaneously, I asked him if I could I interview him. On a beautiful, cool, spring day, I set up the camera outside near the lake as he waited patiently, regal, and princely. Though I am not fluent in Wolof, I asked him in French to recount in Wolof how he came to cinema and to talk about his films. Witnessing this great griot, while behind the camera, was an awesome experience. For seventeen minutes Djibril Diop Mambéty—the actor, the storyteller, the filmmaker—recounted a poetic and metaphorical tale of his voyage, weaving his life and films together as he described how he came to cinema and the evolution of his films. With a bit of allegory, Mambéty relates the films Touki Bouki (1973) and Hyenas (1992) as one continuous story about the dreams of Africans; and the emblematic hyena that weaves in and out of their lives—symbolic of the problems, aspirations and contradictions of Africa.

The interview is republished here as a tribute to Djibril Diop Mambéty, who passed in 1998.

________

Ah cinema!

How did I come to cinema? As youngsters, we used to make a screen out of a white cloth and put it in the middle of the house. We lit a candle and put it behind the screen where people would sit on both sides. We cut out pictures to make characters, and the horses would make the sound “ture-runturenkungkungkung.” We made this into a story, and it became our film.

Then we went to the Western school. But it came to a point when I realized that this school was not for me. I thought back to the pictures that I used to make when I was younger. The idea came and left, came and left. Yet it never stopped. In the middle of the school term, I thought: “No, this is not for me, this is not my way. Getting diplomas won’t be productive for me. My future is not sitting in an office saying that I am working. I belong in the streets, this is what is good for me.”

Fed up with school, I left all my belongings there and went to the street. I told people that I was an actor in the theater.

But after a time, even that became too small. There was not enough room. At that point, I thought, maybe I need to return to those things that I used to do when I was a kid, those pictures.

Well, I got into it, yet I wasn’t really in it. It was all just talk, just to show off. People started saying, “He’s crazy! Look at him, now he is saying that he is in the cinema! Why did he leave the Western school where everybody is fighting to get into but there is no space? He left school and now he is saying he is going to do cinema! But he has never gone anywhere! He has never been to France, to America. He’s crazy!”

I followed that craziness and it lead me to my first film, Badou Boy [1970]. Yet, I had never left Africa. What they say about dreams: dreams that meet with daylight are dreams that are meant to happen, and dreams still happen, even today.

That is why when young people ask...