Thierno Souleymane Diallo travels through Guinea in search of “Mouramani”, the very first film directed by a West African filmmaker. A lesson in cinema and humanism.
The context is Guinean, the subject universal. Thierno Souleymane Diallo is like the archaeologist who, convinced of a lost civilization, looks for traces in the vestiges of the past. Above all, he dreams of a glorious past that ends up like a waking nightmare. Awakened, Thierno Souleymane Diallo is. Gifted, too. It takes a good dose of empathy, tons of generosity and a lot of audacity to awaken the demons of a broken past.
His artistic approach is original. Barefoot, an important detail, armed with a camera and a pole, he travels through his country with this question: does anyone know where Mouramani by Mamadou Touré, the very first film made in 1953 by a filmmaker from black French-speaking Africa? Strange question in the age of search engines and artificial intelligences that have answers to everything. However, this question is not trivial. It raises the question of memory, memories, political and cultural choices, the status and place of art and cinema.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FoJsQf3bMUY
Here lies the cinematheque
By meeting witnesses, officials, spectators, students, Thierno Souleymane Diallo did he expect to find a cemetery of the seventh art? But first, let’s clear up his bare feet. “I don’t wear shoes because I live in a country where you don’t have a franc to make films. You will continue to film with your eyes and edit with your head”, he confides to motivated but destitute students. This is the strongest consequence of the film: students filming with fake cardboard cameras and imagining the editing of their “works”. The absurd is a response to an insane, illogical present.
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“Dark Cells”
How did Guinea end up without a cinema? At independence, the country sent students abroad to train them in cinema. The authorities especially wanted documentary filmmakers to raise public awareness of social issues. Subsequently, the political upheavals completely dynamited the cinema. Filmmakers are thrown in prison, “in black cells to punish them”, says the film, one of them will lose his sight there.
The cinematheque is closed, cinemas privatized before being closed when the video arrives, and the reels are burned. “A crime”, a witness chokes. “We must not destroy the archives, it is our history. They burned the reels with fuel”. “We don’t have the culture of archives. The film must be in France, they have everything there “, laments a filmmaker, who claims to have heard of Mouramanilike everyone else, but have never seen it. Thierno Souleymane Diallo therefore decides to go to France.
Beyond the untraceable film, the Guinean director reflects on cinema, on the duty of memory and on the place of filmmakers in a country without cinema. A quest for meaning.
Form
Achievement : Thierno Souleymane Diallo
Duration : 1h30
Theatrical release : July 5, 2023
Summary: In 1953, Mamadou Touré directed Mouramani, the very first film directed by a filmmaker from black French-speaking Africa. But no one knows where to find it. Thierno Souleymane Diallo travels through Guinea in search of this lost work, using his camera to confront history and cinema, the one we watch and the one we make.
Gender : documentary
Production : JPL Productions, Lagune Productions, The Attic of Shadows, The After Image
Producers: Maud Martin, Jean-Pierre Lagrange, Marie-Louise Sarr, Alpha Amadou Diouldé Diallo
Script : Thierno Souleymane Diallo
Direction of photography: Leila Chaïbi, Thierno Souleymane Diallo
Assembly : Marianne Haroche, Aurelie Jourdan
Mixing: Brice Kartmann
Her : Ophelie Boully, Jean-Marie Salque
Music : Dom Peter
Distribution : Dean Medias