African Women's films | Les réalisatrices africaines : Clermont-Ferrand Film Festival 2019

African Women's films

Les réalisatrices africaines

Clermont-Ferrand Film Festival 2019 

Sade Adeniran: My Mother's Stew
Kaouther Ben Hania: Les Pastèques du Cheikh
Theresa Traoré Dahlberg: The French Ambassador's Wife
Angèle Diabang: Ma coépouse bien-aimée
Philippa Ndisi-Herrmann: I had to bury Cucu

https://clermont-filmfest.org/



My Mother's Stew
Sade Adeniran
Royaume-Uni, Angleterre, Nigeria / 2017 / Animation / 05'30
Synopsis
[English]
As a young woman stands outside her family home, the smell of her mother's stew evokes memories of a happier childhood. Can she reconcile her past with her present and the devastating news which keeps her outside the house?
[Français]
Une jeune femme passe devant la maison de ses parents. L'odeur de la soupe de sa mère lui évoque des souvenirs de son enfance heureuse. Mais une terrible nouvelle l'empêche de franchir le seuil de la maison.

Les Pastèques du Cheikh
Kaouther Ben Hania
France, Tunisie / 2018 / Fiction / 22'00
Synopsis
[English]
Cheikh Taher is a pious and respected imam. He agrees to pray at the body of a woman he does not know. But his pious act ends up being the sin that leads to his fall from power by Hamid, his Machiavellian and ambitious sidekick.
[Français]
Cheikh Taher est un imam pieux et respecté. Il accepte de prier sur la dépouille d'une femme qu'il ne connaît pas, mais son acte de piété s'avère le péché de trop qui précipitera la spoliation de son pouvoir par Hamid, son jeune sous-fifre machiavélique et ambitieux.

The Ambassador's Wife

Theresa Traoré Dahlberg
Suède, Burkina Faso / 2018 / Documentaire / 20'00
Synopsis
[English]
We find ourselves in an extravagant garden in Ouagadougou. The French Ambassador's wife dreamt about becoming a famous opera singer. Instead, she is now using singing as a way to survive her seemingly privileged life surrounded by workers.
[Français]
Nous sommes dans un jardin somptueux à Ouagadougou. La femme de l'ambassadeur français rêvait de devenir chanteuse d'opéra. À défaut, le chant est devenu pour elle une question de survie dans un environnement apparemment privilégié.

Ma coépouse bien-aimée
Angèle Diabang
Sénégal / 2018 / Documentaire/fiction / 15'09
Synopsis
[English]
Two new co-wives are alone in a large house; the husband and children are absent. They don't want to talk to each other. At the same time, in voiceover, two other women tell us about their own experiences of polygamy.
[Français]
Deux nouvelles coépouses sont seules dans une grande maison, le mari et les enfants absents. Elles ne veulent pas se parler. Simultanément, des voix en off de deux autres femmes nous racontent leurs expériences de la polygamie.

I had to bury Cucu

Philippa Ndisi-Herrmann

Kenya / 2018 / Fiction / 13'43

Synopsis

[English]

Geoffrey and his brother Kimanthi have to travel to Shimoni to bury their grandmother. It is a most dreadful journey for the two as it will bring them face to face with the man who sexually molested them years ago.

[Français]

Geoffrey et son frère Kimanthi doivent se rendre à Shimoni pour les funérailles de leur grand-mère. Ce voyage va les forcer à revoir un homme qui leur a infligé des violences sexuelles dans leur enfance.

(Re)Discover: Theresa Traoré Dahlberg

Theresa Traore Dahlberg

(Re)Discover Theresa Traoré Dahlberg

This post was originally a description of the film Ouaga Girls screened at the CINEF 

Theresa Traoré Dahlberg, who grew up in Sweden and Burkina Faso, has been shaped personally and professionally by her multicultural experiences. Based in Sweden, she is currently involved in a collaboration with the Museum of Ethnography. She discussed with the Black Archives Sweden*, her interest in exploring her family archive through photographs, films, sound collections, memories and oral histories: "A specific work in the archives has inspired me to develop new work centered around my grandmother's recorded oral histories...The black archive allows for deeper perspective than what I have previously been exposed to or had access to. 

She had this to say in an interview with me:

I grew up with a mother from Sweden and a father from Burkina Faso.  They met when they both received grants to study abroad at Washington State University. When they had children, my three brothers and me, they decided that they wanted us to grow up with both cultures. In Sweden we lived on the island Öland, south of the mainland, and in Burkina we lived in the capital, Ouagadougou. For me, I enjoyed having two homes in different countries, and it helped me to get a greater understanding and perspective of different cultures and values. Since I am so used to moving around, I have noticed that I am always travelling a lot, going from place to place. Working with film allows me to be mobile, and to explore my curiosity in different projects and subjects that I find important.

Boury, the protagonist of Taxi Sister, is a fiesty and assertive woman, Theresa Traoré Dahlberg talks about the relationship that developed between them and the making of the film:

I spent a lot of time with her on the phone before coming to Senegal. I talked to her while she was working, even when she had clients. Sometimes she would have to stop the call in order to collect the fare for the taxi ride. While there I had hours and hours of in depth interviews. I also spent time driving around in the taxi, though not filming, but just to get a sense of her daily routine on the job. The photographer and I were guests at her house a couple of nights during which time we got to know her family and her best friend Fari, who is also a taxi driver.

Her 83 minute film Ouaga Girls made in 2017 is set in the Burkina capital:

Ouaga Girls is a documentary about a group of young women from Ouagadougou who are studying to become car mechanics at a school for women. The class becomes their port of safety, joy and sisterhood, as they go through the life-changing transition into adulthood, in a country boiling with political changes.

The Life of an Ambassador's Wife

While making the film Ouaga Girls Theresa Traoré Dahlberg was introduced to the wife of the French ambassador to Burkina Faso, who also sang opera, she asked her to film her during her rehearsals. The film shoot developed into an intimate portrait of her daily activities at the ambassador residence. 

Theresa Traore Dahlberg: "When I was filming my first feature film, “Ouaga Girls,” in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, in 2015, I was introduced to the French ambassador’s wife. She asked me to film her singing opera, but as I walked into the opulent gardens of the ambassador’s residence, I asked if I could follow her in her daily life instead.

As the child of a Burkinabé father and Swedish mother, I spent my childhood traveling between Burkina Faso and Sweden. During the making of this film, I had a lot of conflicting thoughts and feelings. Walking down the aisle of perfectly manicured trees at the residency, I was reminded of the stories my grandmother used to tell me about when Burkina Faso was a French colony." (New York Times)

Report by Beti Ellerson

*Black Archives Sweden: https://www.blackarchivessweden.com/theresa-traore-dahlberg/

FESPACO 2017: Ouaga Girls by/de Theresa Traore Dahlberg (Burkina Faso)

FESPACO 2017

Ouaga Girls

by/de Theresa Traore Dahlberg

(Burkina Faso)

Women at the 25th Edition |

Les femmes à la 25e édition

FESPACO PANORAMA

OUT-OF-COMPETITION | HORS COMPETITION

FICTION | DOCS

Synopsis: Ouaga Girls (2017)

[English]

Ouaga Girls is a documentary about a group of young women from Ouagadougou who are studying to become car mechanics at a school for women. The class becomes their port of safety, joy and sisterhood, as they go through the life-changing transition into adulthood, in a country boiling with political changes.

[Français]

« Ouaga Girls » est un documentaire sur un groupe de jeunes femmes de Ouagadougou qui font des études pour devenir mécanicienne d’automobile dans une école de femmes. La classe devient leur port de la sécurité, la joie et la solidarité, tandis qu’elles traversent la période de transition vers l'âge adulte, dans un pays bouillant avec des changements politiques.

Theresa Traore Dahlberg and the Taxi Sister

Theresa Traore Dahlberg

Theresa Traore Dahlberg talks about her Swedish-Burkinabé heritage and her film Taxi Sister

Theresa, you grew up in Sweden and Burkina Faso, how have your experiences in these very different cultures shaped you personally and professionally?

I grew up with a mother from Sweden and a father from Burkina Faso.  They met when they both received grants to study abroad at Washington State University. When they had children, my three brothers and me, they decided that they wanted us to grow up with both cultures. In Sweden we lived on the island Öland, south of the mainland, and in Burkina we lived in the capital, Ouagadougou. For me, I enjoyed having two homes in different countries, and it helped me to get a greater understanding and perspective of different cultures and values.  Since I am so used to moving around, I have noticed that I am always travelling a lot, going from place to place. Working with film allows me to be mobile, and to explore my curiosity in different projects and subjects that I find important.

Taxi Sister, is your thesis film for your studies at the Royal Dramatic College in Stockholm, how did you choose the subject and location for the film?

I was on Skype talking with a good friend of mine, Valerie Traore who works and lives in Dakar. She mentioned the Taxi Sisters Project and immediately I became interested. I did some research and found out that today there are only 15 women who drive taxis in Senegal compared to the 15,000 male taxi drivers. I wanted to get to know one of the women drivers and explore her everyday experiences and to know more about why she made the choice to go against the norm and the consequences for doing so.  Being in the film industry I could also relate to being a woman in a male-dominated profession. I also wanted to make a movie that was inspiring for women all over the world, and to give a different picture of a country in Africa, from what I am used to seeing in the western media.

Boury, the protagonist of Taxi Sister, is a fiesty and assertive woman, how were you able to get to know her and her life as a taxi driver?

I spent a lot of time with her on the phone before coming to Senegal. I talked to her while she was working, even when she had clients. Sometimes she would have to stop the call in order to collect the fare for the taxi ride. While there I had hours and hours of in depth interviews. I also spent time driving around in the taxi, though not filming, but just to get a sense of her daily routine on the job. The photographer and I were guests at her house a couple of nights during which time we got to know her family and her best friend Fari, who is also a taxi driver.

Your film has travelled quite a bit to many festivals, what has been the audience response to the film? Has it been screened in Senegal?

I am still working on arranging a screening in Dakar, hopefully it will be sometime this fall. But there are a lot of Senegalese people that have come to my screenings and they have all loved the movie. Even people who have never been to Senegal want to go there after seeing the movie. When it was recently screened in Italy, there was a great reaction by the audience: "In Italy we have a lot of Senegalese people selling things on the street, I would never have thought that they came from such a beautiful place. All I see on the news is war and famine”.

The film has been popular amongst women and men, young and old, and with feminist organizations. At the pre-show in New York there were a lot of young enthusiastic artists from all over the world. I am now looking for a distributor.

The film was screened at the CineAfrica Film Festival in Stockholm, what was the reception to the film in Stockholm?

In Sweden it received coverage in the largest newspaper and was actually on the cover. In addition, it has been reviewed in a lot of magazines, and has been the subject of discussion on the radio. The screening at the Festival was sold out and the reactions from people were very positive.
  

Taxi Sister by Theresa Traore Dahlberg

Future projects?

Yes. Lots of them, but I am developing them as we speak. I am moving to New york this fall, and hoping to be in Ouagadougou this winter.

Interview by Beti Ellerson, May 2011