Souleymane Cissé received the Carrosse d’or at the Quinzaine des cinéastes. A distinction that comes to salute four decades of cinematographic creation on a continent with little in the way.
“Cinema is a very effective means of bringing people together”, launched the Malian Souleymane Cissé, on May 17, during his master class and a few hours before the opening ceremony of the Quinzaine des cinéastes where he received the Golden Coach. He thus became the second African director, after the Senegalese Sembène Ousmane, whose centenary is being celebrated this year, to receive the distinction created in 2002 by the Society of Directors and Directors (SRF). The Dream of Light, summary in images of his career screened before the presentation of the distinction, suits the cinematographic adventure of Souleymane Cissé. Light, capital in cinema, takes on a unique dimension for the director.
The tribute afternoon began, around 3 p.m., with a discreet but obviously noticed entry by the artist to attend the screening of his first feature film. Den Muso (The girl, 1975), surrounded by his family. For the Cissés, cinema is a family affair. Under the applause of the room, the director will call his relatives to see him later in the evening, after having received the Golden Coach presented during a ceremony where the courage of the Iranian women was saluted. Nothing could be more normal for an evening dedicated to Souleymane Cissé.
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To the ends of the light
“Injustice between men and women is something imagined by us men and we have to find the solution to reduce it completely”, he believes. The patriarchal society that stifles women is the one denounced through the character of Ténin, embodied by the one who will become his wife, Dounamba Dany Coulibaly, now deceased. “Upset” and inspired by a family story, he brings the subject to the screen. That of a young girl raped by her friend with whom she will become pregnant. Her pregnancy will be worth to her to be banished by her father. Ténin, the heroine of the first film in Bambara (a language spoken in Mali), is mute. “I realized, explains Souleymane Cisséthat in all family discussions, women are not addressed”.
For the director, defending women ultimately means fighting for our common humanity in search of light. It is Yeelen (The Light), the work which offered him one of his most prestigious awards, the Jury Prize in 1987. For the selection of his film, Cissé also thanked Gilles Jacob, the former general delegate of the Cannes Film Festival and “his team for their political courage”. Yeelen, immersed in the secrets of komo (secret society in Mali), “it is a search for man who takes us towards the light and as long as(he) won’t be able to reach that light”, his humanity will be denied to him. A story “deep” which Cissé’s only regret was not having managed to make a science fiction film out of it.
“A great tragic filmmaker”
Because making films for Cissé means projecting oneself while feeling more than ever “To be human”. All assignments, especially racial ones, are shattered. A confession greeted by one of the many rounds of applause that punctuated the afternoon at the Fortnight.
The outspokenness of the Malian artist is matched only by his humor. “A wise not wise”, said Serge Toubiana, the president of Unifrance, introducing his master class and regretting that he looked so serious in the photo chosen by the Fortnight for his day. His humor is perhaps what makes him, according to Serge Toubiana, “a great tragic filmmaker”. “The theme of rejection seems to me to be something common in the work of Souleymane Cissé. When a character is driven out, banished from his own community, from his own family, he is condemned to wandering, maybe to freedom, maybe to death and I find that magnificent”thus entrusted Serge Toubiana to Franceinfo Culture at the end of the master class.
Ambassador of an underexposed cinema
The former journalist Cinema notebooks is one of those to whom Souleymane Cissé sent his thanks, as did critics Serge Daney and Danièle Heymann (who died in 1992 and 2019 respectively) and filmmakers Martin Scorsese and Costa-Gavras. “Those who said everything, wrote everything about what others did not want to hear or see”, noted the filmmaker who also paid tribute to his Soviet teachers at VGIK, the largest film school at the time. This is where he landed in 1963 to be initiated “to the secrets of the cinematographic black box”.
“The tears” of the editor Andrée Daventure, who died in 2014, will also have marked the career of Souleymane Cissé. The ones she hadalmost” when she climbed Den Muso due to “the weakness of the images” and those, of another nature, when she congratulated Cissé for the Jury Prize won by Yeelen. By receiving the Carrosse d’or, Souleymane Cissé immersed himself in happy and less happy memories. As the concerns related to the production of Den Muso which will lead him to prison. He will come out of it thanks to his brother Sékou and thanks above all to the intervention of General-President Moussa Traoré. Highlighting “the risk” taken by Claude Berri and Jérôme Seydoux to distribute films from ” from black Africa”what was “far from obvious at the time”but probably still today, Souleymane Cissé put his finger on an observation that his tribute day allowed everyone to make: the under-exposure of cinema produced by African countries. A blunder that the Cannes Film Festival claims to have somewhat corrected for its 76th edition.