A Golden Coach to salute the unprecedented career of one of the faces of African cinema. The Malian Souleymane Cissé receives the distinction awarded by the Fortnight of filmmakers on May 17 in Cannes.
The Golden Coach of the 2023 edition of the Quinzaine des cinéastes is awarded to a pioneer in his field in Mali, the filmmaker Souleymane Cissé. Born on April 21, 1940, he became one of the patriarchal figures of cinema produced in West Africa. Recognized by his family and internationally, he is one of the African directors who try to write, sometimes in pain, the story strewn with pitfalls of a film industry which is still struggling to exist at home and beyond. of its borders.
However, it is without counting the legendary fishing of the young octogenarian that is Souleymane Cissé, crossed again Tuesday May 16 in the Palais des Festivals of Cannes, a few minutes from the opening ceremony of the 76th edition of the Cannes Film Festival, as he took some pictures with his family, on the eve of one of the great moments of his career.
But why is “Le Carrosse d’or” attributed to Souleymane Cissé? The answer is in the letter sent to Souleymane Cissé by the Board of Directors of the Society of Film Directors and Directors (SRF) which awards the Golden Coach: “At the crossroads of poetry and politics, social criticism and mythology, anchoring in the centuries-old culture of your country, Mali, and openness to the world in all its pluriversal dimension, your filmography has marked our cinephilia in depth”, explains the letter. “Your courage, admirable if we consider the dictatorial political climate in which you made your first three feature films, Den Muso (The Young Girl, 1975), Baara (The Work, 1978) And Finyè (The Wind, 1982), forces our admiration. Denouncing the oppression of the poor, women and opponents, confronting the yoke of conservatism in all its forms – religious, economic and patriarchal –, you have always kept your of ideology to create Art”, continues the text. Souleymane Cissé has devoted his life to the seventh art, a cinephilia that dates back to childhood. Here are some keys to discovering the filmmaker and producer.
child cinephile
“When I was 5 years old, I cried for my big brother to take me to the cinema. Which he did. It was a click”confided the filmmaker to Franceinfo in 2022 on the occasion of the presentation at Cannes Classics of the documentary A daughter’s tribute to her father directed by his daughter Fatou Cissé. This job “mad” gave birth to a flourishing and engaged filmography.
Formed in the Soviet Union
“If I hadn’t learned that trade in Moscow, I wouldn’t be who I am today,” he confides in the documentary A daughter’s tribute to her father (2022). After Mali’s independence in 1960, he was one of the young people the new state sent abroad to train in order to serve the future nation. In the Soviet Union, he gave in to his passion for cinema. “I had never had a diploma when I arrived in Russia”he remembers. “I did not have the bac or the certificate. I left because we belonged to a youth who wanted to get out of colonialism and Modibo [premier président malien, NDLR] had the presence of mind to send those who wanted to do something to do internships abroad (..) I learned the Russian language and I turned to the cinema which was my passion”. Hardened by this training during which he learned “to fend for themselves”, he discovers a vocation: to make films in a country that does not have the means and whose political staff can prove sensitive.
A courageous and dubbed filmography
When we talk about freedom of expression, Souleymane Cissé knows exactly what it’s all about. His first work, Den Muso, whose main actress is none other than his future companion and mother of his children, Dounamba Dany Coulibaly, will earn him to be sent to prison. The film, which will be banned, evokes the drama of a mute young woman who will be raped, then rejected by her family because of her pregnancy. Den Muso is also the first film in Bambara.
It’s for feature films just as committed as the Malien has twice won the Etalon d’or at Yennenga, the supreme award from Fespaco – the largest film festival organized on the African continent – for baara in 1979 and, in 1985, Finye, the story of the revolt of young people against military power in Mali, a very topical theme since the 2020 and 2021 coups that the country experienced. With Yeelen (The light), an initiatory tale on the eternal quest for knowledge of the human being, Cissé won the Jury Prize ex-aequo at the Cannes Film Festival in 1987. “I never thought that one day one of my films would be selected at the Cannes Film Festival. When I arrived, I said to myself that anything is possible”underlines Souleymane Cissé.
Cissé, a regular on the Croisette
His Jury Prize in 1987 made him one of the members of the great Cannes family. For decades, his slender silhouette dressed in Malian know-how in terms of boubous (traditional clothing found in several countries in West Africa) has been almost part of the Cannes landscape as he has been a regular on the Croisette for decades. decades. His first presence in the official selection dates from 1982 when he presented Finye (The wind) at Un Certain Regard. After Yeelenit returns to competition with Waati in 1995. In 2009, his film Min Ye is programmed in Special Sessions, a section in which will be screened Okay in 2015. Souleymane Cisse was also a member of the jury for the 36th edition of the Cannes Film Festival in 1983. In 2006, he participated in the jury for the Short Films selection and the Cinéfondation.
A leitmotif: developing cinema in Mali and Africa
Souleymane Cissé has always campaigned, in his country and across the continent, for the development of the film industry. He chairs the Union of Creators and Entrepreneurs of Cinema and Audiovisual in West Africa, which he founded in 1997.. “In our countries, as long as culture is not in its place, we will not move“. “The most developed countries have understood this and that is why they have never given up on their cultural industry. The Americans are not giving up, the same for the Europeans”. “It’s necessary that the cinema moves first within the continent in order to then be able to export”he pleads again.