Originally published in Sisters of the Screen: Women of Africa on Film Video and Television by Beti Ellerson. Africa World Press, Trenton, NJ, 2000. Interview by Beti Ellerson during FESPACO 1997, Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, in February 1997. Translated from French.
Could you talk about your background, yourself in general, and how you became interested in cinema?
I was born in Madagascar of a Malagasy mother and a French father. Well, actually, throughout my entire childhood in Madagascar the question of being of mixed race was a real problem. All my Malagasy cousins would always say to me: "Anyway, you will never understand anything because you are white, you can never understand." And for a long, long time I wished I could go live in France. I thought that once I was in France all of this would be over. As an adolescent I went to live in France, and on the first day of school I was told: "Hummm, you are not quite French, where are you from?" And there it began again. Adolescence is already a period that is particularly difficult, one does not always feel comfortable in one's body or with the experiences during that time, so that being of mixed race was truly a problem for me.
When I met my husband, Cesar Paes, who is Brazilian, we went to live in Brazil. Never again did anyone ask me was I French, Malagasy, or what I was. Right away everyone saw me as Brazilian. That experience was a great discovery for me. It was, in fact, in Brazil that I learned that to be of mixed race was not a handicap but a blessing. It allowed me to live just as well inside water as outside of it. To know many things was not a handicap but wealth, a richness.
Cesar and I quickly decided to make films in order to talk about this experience. He is Brazilian, from another continent and another culture. We wanted to talk about countries of the South in another way than what we had seen, what we had lived. We lived in Brazil, but shortly afterwards we left for Paris. Paris was the compromise between Brazil and Madagascar, it was at the midpoint. The idea was to go in the South and see the things that we could bring out in a new light regarding its reality. We wanted to make films other than about economic problems, droughts, underdevelopment, children of the streets. We wanted to go look for the riches of the South, to bring out the things that we had lost in the countries of the North.
How did you evolve into filmmaking and film production, having the desire to visualize the cultures of people of the Southern Hemisphere?
In 1988, we began to think about doing a film in Madagascar about the Malagasy richness that does not exist elsewhere. And the richness that we found was orality, oral literature. We created a production company and that is how we began. It seemed to me to be much easier to devote my energy to convincing a financier, than trying to convince a producer.
It was our first film and we were completely unknown, so we started a company that we call Laterit Productions, like the red earth which is found everywhere in the South. We left for Madagascar, taking enormous risks which I think that I would no longer do today. We did a kamikaze production, taking on all the debt for the entire production. We met a man who leased film equipment, and said to him "Okay, we want the equipment for three and a half months to do a film." He wrote us a budget and asked, "Okay, when are you going to start paying me?" We paid him back for years and years and today, this man has been paid. The film is finally paid for.
After this kamikaze film was finished we had the extraordinary chance that this first film, Angano Angano, was awarded prizes in very important festivals in Europe, after which we succeeded in selling it. I think that as of today there are eighteen television channels around the world that have aired the film—which is quite an accomplishment, since it is a film that is spoken entirely in Malagasy, because we never accepted voice dubbing. Since it was a film that was presented in the form of storytelling, to dub what the people were relating would be awkward and some of the value of the story would be lost.
I found Angano Angano to be especially rich in its visual documentation of Malagasy tales and myths. Your second film, Aux guerriers de Silence, follows this approach. When did you begin to think about a second film?
Through the many years that have followed the production of Angano, I am still quite happy with the work that we did on the film. As I already said, the production company was established to make this film, it was a tool. But very soon after the film was finished we had to continue. We have a particular way of working, since we are married partners, because we are in the same boat all the time. We began quickly to work on the second film, which was a continuation of the first. At the end of Angano Angano a man says: "Take this history with you, carry it beyond the sea, because the oral tradition should not stay only among us. Others must hear it, and maybe they can get something from it." We took this idea and decided that we would make a new film about oral traditions, which means to show that life cannot only be led by the written word. We live in societies today where written civilization is dominant.
The following film, Aux guerriers de silence (Songs and Tears of Nature), was about the relationship between oral and written cultures. We chose two geographical locations that were total opposites. Brazil in the south and Laponi in the north. In both of these regions of the world there are indigenous people who are of oral cultures. The Indians of Brazil were dominated for five centuries by a Portuguese majority, followed by Brazilians. In Lapland we went to see the Sami, who are more commonly called the Lapps. They, too, experienced the same problem with Europeans. In Europe, there is much discussion about the Indians of North America, the Indians of Amazonia, but there are also Indians in Europe.
Has the reception of this film been as favorable as Angano Angano?
Well, the film, Aux guerriers de silence had very successful reviews and we also won prizes. However, it has been much more difficult to distribute commercially and to be picked up by television, because it is a film that is not easy to label. Since it takes place in the North and in the South, bringing together people from totally different cultures, it is not easy to classify—neither in the field of ethnology, nor as a film from the Third World, nor as a travel film. I am not discouraged; one day this film will have its place on the audiovisual landscape.
How were you able to finance the production of the film?
In terms of production, Aux guerriers de silence was very difficult. We were quite known after Angano; however, the television channels that bought it, other than the Belgium television, did not want to take the risks on Guerriers. We were still crazy enough at that time to say, "No, we will still do it and see what happens." On the other hand, as of today this film has not been paid for. Actually we have never been paid a salary, and there are many more sales to be made before the debts will be paid off.
Your latest film is in competition here at FESPACO. How soon after Guerriers did you begin filming it?
Between Guerriers and the most recent film, I produced a series of short programs for Sandra Kogut, a woman from Brazil. It was co-produced with a video company in France. The series was well done and well received. However, a co-production is not at all the same thing as being in a production where one takes all the risks. As the executive producer, one signs all the contracts, giving one's word, in fact, to others: "I commit myself to the completion of this film, for a certain sum of money, for a certain amount of time."
Cesar and I have just finished our film Le Bouillon d'Awara (Awara Soup), a production on Super 16 blown up to 35mm which I co-produced with ARTE. I actually went from a two horse-power to a limousine in terms of production. We were basically making ends meet when we first started. The problem with the limousine is that it consumes a lot of energy. I had many associates to manage. There was ARTE on the French side, there was the Belgium television, there was ORSTOM (L'Institut français de recherche scientifique pour le développement en coopération), a French research institution. I had an independent co-producer like myself from Belgium who was terrific.
Because it was shot on film it was a much larger budget. Since we wanted to have the same level of quality in terms of shooting conditions, I did not want to do the film in a rushed manner. I wanted this project to have the same plan of action that we had used up until then. During a shooting we generally take the time that is necessary. We spend enough time so that the people who we want to meet and put on film can feel at ease and be willing and actually want to come our way. A film is—before anything else—an encounter, and our endeavor is to put on film the relationship that we have with people.
We completed this film with a great deal of time devoted to coming to an agreement, convincing associates that the film was easy enough to understand on its own without having to edit or narrate it. None of our films have ever been narrated; the people themselves construct the story, and the editing is done in such a way that commentary is not needed. The images speak for themselves.
Where do you situate your films in relationship to African cinema? Would you locate them in the African Diaspora, in the world of the people of the Southern Hemisphere, in the multicultural world?
The best response is to tell you about—and I don't know if it is pertinent to the question—the idea of the last film, Le Bouillon d'Awara. We decided to make a film about a place in the world, a kind of little laboratory in the world, where people from very different cultures and races live in one location. It is a tiny place, a microscopic area, which is why we like to say laboratory. We went to shoot a film in a little village in Guyana where there are 1,500 inhabitants, and among these 1,500 people there are thirteen languages spoken. Over the last twenty years, sixty percent of the population of this city is made up of recent immigrants. They come from the Antilles, Brazil, China, Laos, France—from where there has been a presence for a long time—and, of course, there were Amerindians from the beginning, and there are also Lebanese. Actually, there are people from all of the continents who are in this little place together, and who intermix. We wanted to show that, despite the increase of nationalism everywhere, in the world there exists a glimmer of hope. In this little place the people are able to live together despite all the different languages, cultures, colors, and customs.
How do I situate myself in the context of the subject of this film? I am mixed-race, Cesar is Brazilian, we have children together and we live in Paris. I don't feel that I have the right to claim my negritude. I don't feel that it is mine to claim and I don't want to. Because of my multiple identity, I am more interested in an identity that creates, an identity in movement. I am very afraid of identities that block this movement, that refuse the other, that reject all the contributions of others. This film refuses this as well.
I was fascinated by how the story is told using the actual making of the soup itself. The mixture of ingredients was the thread that weaves the cultures and the experiences of the people together.
Yes, the history of the metissage and cultural mélange in Bouillon is actually told through the preparation of a dish called Awara soup. It is a metaphor because it is a dish whose ingredients normally are not cooked together. Pork is not cooked with shrimp nor are cucumbers mixed with eggplant; these are not what normally blend together in a dish.
There is a legend behind this Awara soup. In Guyana it is said that when one eats it, one will never leave Guyana. One becomes Guyanese, one becomes Créole. There was another story that was not in the film that I found very interesting. When invited to eat Awara soup, the mistress of the house never obliges anyone to eat everything. She comes to ask you what you want to eat. The person who wants to eat only shrimp may do so; the person who wants to eat only fish may do so. The person who wants to eat everything may do so. But she never says, "Here taste this." No, it really is about fishing about in the soup to find the consistency, or the color, or the odor that appeals to you.
In many ways my culture is similar. My husband is South American, I take a lot of things from Latin America. I am very Malagasy, and the older I get I recognize in my manner, in my values, things that are deeply Malagasy. I am French, I cannot deny that. I was educated in a French school, I learned "my ancestors the Gaulois" before learning who the Malagasy king was. Besides, I don’t think that I ever learned it in school, it was much later when I began reading books on my own that I learned about Malagasy history. So Diaspora, yes, I would say; but more nomad than Diaspora, which is also implied it the latter term. It's true that the films that I have done up until now, and I intend to do others, have been to fight against this rise of nationalism which concerns me a great deal at the moment.
In future films that you and Cesar do, will the division of work continue to be allocated in such a way that you are the producer and Cesar is the director, or does it change according to the needs of the film?
When we first began, we did everything together. We wrote Angano together. However, I never do the cinematography, Cesar has always done the shooting; in fact, that is how he started. We go on location together and we direct the interviews together. We have always edited together. I would say that with Bouillon there was a division of tasks that was such that I was dealing more and more with the production aspect, while he dealt with the direction. We have a tacit agreement together, which is; when we are not in agreement, and this comes from my producer side—sometimes we discuss a great deal, sometimes for days—but when we do not agree, he has the last word. I know he is the director, and as the producer I don't want to lose money or time. Time flies by and when we are using film, with each second that passes there are lots of dollars that are spent. Thus it is agreed between us. I feel that the écriture of a film, the sensibilities that come from both of us are very much visible in the film. We complement each other very much. But more and more as time goes by, the production, financial, and administrative aspects, are my responsibility.
