Senegalese filmmaker Samba Felix Ndiaye sadly passed away from malaria last Friday, 6 November.
The following homage to Samba Felix Ndiaye written by Claude Haffner and includes an extract from her Master’s thesis “Documentary Film – a possible cure for the ills that plague African cinema?’ (Paris III, Sorbonne, 2005)
A few weeks ago I was talking to my friend Felix in Dakar. As production manager and researcher on South African filmmaker Ramadan Suleman’s documentary on African liberation movements, I had called my friend to tell him that Ramadan wanted to use footage of Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade, from one of his films. Felix immediately agreed to let us use the footage and stressed the importance of filmmakers helping each other out. That was the last thing my friend said to me and that is how I will remember him; a generous filmmaker with a heart as great as his talent. In his memory I would like to share a text which I wrote after a lecture delivered by Felix during FESPACO 2005. I thank you for this lesson and bid you farewell my dear friend. You have left an immense void in the family of African filmmakers.
started his career as a documentary filmmaker with a series of five 13-minute documentaries. “The Treasure in the Trash Can’ (1989) treats various aspects of Dakar’s craft industry. “Aqua’, shows how bottles are turned into ornate aquariums, “The Tomato Diplomat’ how briefcases are made out of tomato sauce tins, and in “Brasswork’ old engines are turned into kitchen utensils. “Ngalam Falls’ deals with the gathering of gold dust to be sold to jewellers. The last film in the series is “The Suitcases’ in which metal barrels are transformed into suitcases. During the last edition of FESPACO Samba Felix Ndiaye captivated his audience with a lecture, which was moderated by Jean-Marie Teno and took place within the context of the festival’s special focus on documentary film, “Cote Doc’.
The following is an extract from a transcript of the documentary filmmaker explaining the reasons behind his firm belief in the documentary genre and the origin of his documentary series.
“I come from a movement that used to be called “The Africans of the Independence’. During this great period we used to gather at film clubs and discuss film with Maoists and Trotskyite and even though we didn’t share the same political ideas, we would talk about film all night long.
“I had noticed that after watching African fiction films I was preoccupied with the places, the landscapes and the people, but never the film direction. Moreover, I found the films long and often boring – for which I apologize on behalf of colleagues and friends who make fiction. I felt that my friends did not pay enough attention to the cultural background, to the things that their film did not address, or to the way our African history was being told.
“After many years in Paris I returned to Dakar with a 16smm camera intent on making a series of short documentaries about the craft industry. I gathered my friends and together we made five films in one month. We never discussed beforehand but at the time of the shoot I would say to Maguette [a well-known Senegalese sound engineer] “I think we need this sound’, and he would get it for me. That is how the elaborate sound design in “The Suitcases’, one of the films in the series, came about, with the sounds of the hammers and the wind fusing together into a symphony. Similarly, with the imagery, I paid careful attention to the movements of the bodies in order to create the impression of watching a ballet.’
This is indeed the beauty of a short documentary like “The Suitcases’. A few seconds into the film we forget that we are actually watching a film about the manufacturing of an object. Through his meticulous concern for framing, lighting and sound and his careful direction that perfectly captures the grace of the craftsman’s movements, Samba Felix Ndiaye treats us to 13 minutes of wonderful dramatic performance.
The above was translated from French by Katarina Hedren.
