| Bye
Bye Africa
Haroun states at the outset that he will try in his film to answer a question posed to him by his aunt: "What is the use of your films?" His father rather indelicately suggests he make films for whites only and could have accomplished more for humankind as a doctor. Haroun responds that he makes films for memory's sake and quotes Godard that "The cinema creates memories." His father unimpressed replies, "Is he a friend of yours?" Haroun decides to express his grief for the recent death of his mother in the form of a film, "Bye, Bye, Africa." Perhaps inevitably this becomes into an elegy for the loss of the vibrant cinema culture of his youth as a result of two decades of civil war. Haroun motors around N'djamena, Chad's war-torn capital, with a black and white video camera and finds the exotically named movie houses, the Etoile, the Vogue and the Normandie, where as he was first intoxicated by cinema, in ruins. No one goes to the movies any more; as a result of the wars these public places have been abandoned in favor of smaller, makeshift video theatres, often mere extensions of private homes. Haroun runs into an old friend, Garba, once a projectionist, who now grows tomatoes and dreams of winning the lottery for an immigration slot for the U.S. Another friend, director David-Pierre Fila, writes him from Congo-Brazzaville that theatres are in the same state there, also as a result of civil war. The infrastructure no longer exists where Africans' films can be shown to Africans even if exhibitors could be persuaded to show something other than the latest from Hollywood or Bollywood. Haroun quotes Aimé Cèsaire: "This is the core of our cultural crisis: the cultures with the best technology threaten to destroy all the others. In a world where distance is no longer an obstacle; technologically weaker cultures cannot protect themselves." Haroun visits a producer with his script but is told it is too expensive. The producer suggests that he think about making a film with new low-cost technology like the video camera he carries everywhere. But Haroun initially dismisses this suggestion because it represents a departure from "real" filmmaking, that is big budget 35mm cinema. Yet he meets another Chadian director, Issa Serge Coelo, who despite the difficulties, is shooting his own feature, Daresalam. Haroun's ambivalent commitment to Chad and Africa is symbolized by his relationship with Isabelle. She was an actress who had appeared in his last film and since then had been ostracized because people believed she had AIDS like the character she portrayed. This is confusing cinema with life. Haroun had an affair with her and then abandoned her as he did Chad for France. He tries to rekindle the relationship, but Isabelle demands more commitment. When he caddishly refuses, Isabelle accuses him of confusing life with cinema and commits suicide. This may trigger the change of heart we see in Haroun from this point to the end of the film. Bye Bye Africa embodies a paradox; Haroun compares it to a Russian egg, one film inside the other. It is a film about the impossibility of making films in Africa, which by its very existence demonstrates the possibility of a new kind of African cinema. Although it may not be the Bye Bye Africa he originally envisioned, the actual Bye Bye Africa, we're watching explores a new production paradigm using low-cost digital technology, non-professional actors and improvisation. Thus Haroun's farewell to Africa becomes a return to Africa and to a viable style of African filmmaking, whose backdrop is not some fictionalized Africa but the daily struggles of African life. The important thing, he has decided, is to continue to produce under whatever circumstances, to continue to give Africa a voice and a cinema of its own. Over the radio Haroun hears a tribute to Thomas Sankara the charismatic young leader of Burkina Faso, who had been assassinated ten years earlier and had been an outstanding champion of African cinema. Sankara said: "We have to produce in all sectors including cultural production, to produce more, because those who feed us will demand something in return and there develops a spoon-fed mentality which we reject." In the end, Haroun leaves his video camera behind with his film-obsessed nephew so a new generation of Chadians can build a new film culture for themselves. Garba wins the lottery but decides instead of emigrating to open a community center where these films could be shown. Haroun says he'll return soon to make Bye Bye Africa. We are left to ponder whether this is some future film or the fictional documentary of the same name we have just seen?  |
"While films
with a similar approach fall into narcissism and even egocentrism, the
director of Bye Bye Africa shows a remarkable sincerity
and modesty in his film. His way of filming his hometown and compatriots
enlightens us more about the reality of today's Africa than many other
simplistic or 'folkloric' operettas. "Shot on digital
video, Bye
Bye Africa is
unmistakably a work of cinema, meticulous in its craftsmanship and alive
to the vital paradoxes of the medium. An anguished, self-reflexive meditation
on the state of African cinema" "Bye
Bye Africa
carries on the tradition of Julio Espinosa's 1969 manifesto For an Imperfect
Cinema which called for an end to the division between art and life.
Using documentary technique, structuring a film within the film, he
renders a picture of Chad that is part documentary part homecoming narrative."
Director:
Mahamat-Saleh Haroun Chad, 1999, 86 minutes
|
This
first feature film from Chad brings the reflexive filmmaking of Fellini's
8 ½ and Truffaut's Day for Night to African cinema. Director
Mahamat-Saleh Haroun presents what he calls a "documentary fiction"
but which might just as well be called a fictional documentary about
the making of a film of the same name, Bye Bye Africa. Like Abderrahmane
Sissako in 