African Women in Cinema: Stories of Home and Homeland

African Women in Cinema:

Stories of Home and Homeland

"I say home is where my mother is"--Akuol Garang de Mabior

Then I ask, "where is home when your mother dies?" Sister Yonide responds to me: "home is where your mother is buried."

 

The notion of home for many transnational African women of the screen is fluid or situational, an experience that is best described by James Baldwin, the renowned expatriate writer: “you take your home with you. You’d better. Otherwise you're homeless”. Or still, Josephine Baker, who was the embodiment of this duality, and was perhaps one of the first transnational Africana women of international stature. Embracing her two countries, she describes it in this way: “J’ai deux amours, mon pays et Paris (I have two loves, my country and Paris).”

Notes to continue...

Akuol de Mbior: Home is where my mother is
What does it mean to be from a place I have never called home? So many young South Sudanese people were born and raised outside of the country and yet, whenever there is the tiniest shimmer of hope, people return.

Lucy Gebre-Egziabher: Home is always there, the notion of home

During an interview with Lucy Gebre-Egziabher at Fespaco in 1997, having settled in the United States, she reflected, in a Baldwinian manner, on the idea of home: "being in Burkina, which is very close to life in Ethiopia, it took me back home. And it made me realize, of course, home is always there. The notion of home."

Jihan el Tahri: one spends one’s life saying, I’m Egyptian, and when you go back to Egypt you feel totally out of place

"My dad was a diplomat and we moved around my whole childhood…I was born in Lebanon, then we went to Panama, Finland, England, and all over the chart…I only went back to Egypt when I was around thirteen. And that was a bit of a shock because one spends one’s life saying, I’m Egyptian, and when you go back to Egypt you feel totally out of place, you barely speak the language and all the details you don’t know about, so it took some adjusting because that was home and that was the first time that I had been to the home that had been attached to us, basically.

 

Theresa Traoré Dahlberg: My two homelands
I enjoyed having two homes in different countries [Sweden and Burkina Faso], and it helped me to get a greater understanding and perspective of different cultures and values. 

 

Hachimiya Ahamada: Homeland Dreams of Comores
These three films, [Feu leur rêve, The Ylang Ylang Residence and Ashes of Dreams] relate the story of the house in the homeland: the ideal home that takes time to build or to be completed. Our parents thought at first it would be the 'home to settle in' and then over time it became the 'vacation home' and as time passed it became the 'grave house' because the descendants return less and some do not come at all. To build one’s home is to leave one’s mark in the native village in which one has been long absent. As a trilogy these three films allowed me to explore the fate of these uninhabited houses waiting for their owners who have remained in France or elsewhere.

Feu leur rêve, my graduation film, written in a poetic way, recounts a fantasy Comoros while still in Dunkerque. The Ylang Ylang Residence, my first short fiction film, relates how the islanders living in houses made of straw or sheet metal, are not able to benefit from the permanent structures of the absent migrants. L’Ivresse d’une Oasis closes the chapter of my exploration of the subject of the house, and going further by traveling on all four islands of the Comoros archipelago in search of its Comorian identity.

Ivresse d’une Oasis relates the unfulfilled need of the islanders to achieve their dreams. They leave in order to have it better when they return, always with the idea of building the concrete house. But the difficulty in achieving this dream is that the perfect home is merely a mirage. I translate the film in English as Ashes of Dreams. Dreams that in the end send the islanders in transit, somewhere, either to France or to Mayotte and Reunion. And these constructed foundations continue to wait...
Ashes of dreams is a film written in first person singular and then first person plural. I wanted to go back to the Grande Comore, to the family, without the label of 'I’ve come from...' to measure the temperature of the family bond. But time creates a fracture even with those with which there are blood ties. I remember a comment by someone who said 'I come back in order not to stay'. It's a rather difficult acknowledgement to make. Then also in this film, I wanted to break the image of the idyllic island of the Comoros by meeting the residents of the other islands in order to get the secrets of the real Comoros. I found a lead: Comorian migration is constantly in motion, it has always been throughout its history. By economic migration, many of the islanders dream of leaving their villages in order to have it better when they return. From the island of Anjouan, some go some 70 km in order to reach Mayotte...the islanders crossed the sea by a kwassa-kwassa, a fishing boat. The death toll continues to increase as a result of this crossing. Thousands of people have died in silence. The sea has become their tomb in the place of a house.

Jacqueline Nsiah: No Place Like Home
In “No Place Like Home” we talk to the first generation from various parts of Africa and ask why they left and why they go to an Afro Shop, a term that is coined in the new world, there's no place called Afro Shop on the continent, which in itself is very interesting. I was very interested in the sensory experience when entering an Afro Shop, what do you feel, smell or taste when you enter the Afro Shop? Does it remind you of home? What is home? And where is home? “No Place Like Home” and “Returning from exile” are absolutely linked. To me “No Place Like Home” is the journey and “Returning from exile” is the arrival.

Ndèye Marame Guèye: An African Woman on the Seine
Woman speaking to Ndèye Marame Guèye: “Someone like me who was born in France but is of foreign origins, it is difficult to find one’s home, one’s space. For us when in France “my country” is my ancestral homeland. But when I am in this homeland, “my country” is France.”

Ndèye Marame Guèye: “And who are you?”

Woman: “Good question, I’m still searching.”