Mahen Bonetti Sierra Leone

Originally published in Sisters of the Screen: Women of Africa on Film Video and Television by Beti Ellerson. Africa World Press, Trenton, NJ, 2000. Telephone interview by Beti Ellerson from Washington, DC to New York, November 1998.

Mahen, you are Executive Director of African Film Festival, Inc., an important institution that you established and which has steadily grown since 1990. Could you tell us about Mahen Bonetti?

    I am a Sierra Leonean who has lived in the United States for the past twenty-five years. I reside in New York with my husband and daughter. After completing my studies, I worked in advertising and later for Weekly News Magazine. I developed more of an interest in the arts when I met my then future husband, Luca, who is now my present husband and hopefully my last [laughter]. He is an arts conservator. As a result of this union, naturally I became aware of and interested in African art and culture. Basically, you take things for granted because you grow up with these things all around you. Besides being an arts conservator, Luca grew up in a family where, for them, art was like food. His mother, who is now retired, headed the Swiss Arts Antiques Conservation Committee. When I met his mother, I realized how important African art was to her discourse. This led me to the realization of how great Africa's influence and contribution had been, and still is, on universal arts and culture.
    My family had been active in Sierra Leone's post- independence government, and when that government was overthrown my parents were jailed for a period of time. Shortly thereafter, I left Sierra Leone and traveled to Liberia where I lived for about a year as a ward of an uncle, who was also active in the government there. Eventually I came to the States. After meeting my husband, I then embarked on an art restoration apprenticeship of sorts. I assisted my husband at a very elementary level and also did some public relations work for art-related projects. So over time my interest and involvement increased, I was growing steadily. So in a larger sense, that is the story of how the film festival began.
    In 1980, when I was able to return home, for the first time since leaving in the early seventies, I visited Sierra Leone. I was truly inspired and also felt a sense of rejuvenation which sparked an awareness in me of the misunderstanding which existed between Africa and the United States, where basically the images of Africa that were most seen or known to Americans were those of starving children, despots, natural calamities. It seemed like Africa was just one disaster zone. Yes indeed those things exist, but there are also many positive things which include the rich culture, which is so entrenched in American popular culture, as far as I am concerned. These are things that people take for granted.
    Feeling helpless, I thought, in my lifetime I had to find a way to make a contribution, to correct some of these misconceptions, about Africa, her people. Then, on the other hand, I felt that I had no tools available to do this. There was something forming in my head but I did not know how to execute it or make it become a reality.

Could you talk about some of the images that you grew up with of Africa?

I'll start off with the women in my life. When I came here--and you get more involved in different discussions with people, and of course, there is this whole issue of female genital mutilation and these stories... There is always this poor, suffering African woman. Where I grew up—and this makes me the person I am today—the women were such a force in my childhood. To me they were always liberated, they were the first people that I would address or think about when there was a problem or when I had to say something. They just seemed to be bigger than life. So that for me the women in Africa have this silent power that really is the backbone that sustains Africa. So those images are never really transported in the minds of people elsewhere. Moreover, the fact that I grew up in a society where there was, you may call it, a very advanced society where social issues were addressed, are the values you grew up with.
I am not saying what people imagine Africa to be is not true, because, mainly, in the last twenty years, there has been a sort of breakdown of society and morals in Africa. Basically, corruption has a lot to do with that. However, here is a scramble for Africa and there is this redistribution of territories and all those things that people don't hear. There seems only to be that, "this Africa cannot get it together or cannot handle things." That is what frustrated me a lot. Even today, you try to book a ticket to Rwanda for Christmas, every seat is taken. What people do not realize, despite the fact of what we are reading or hearing, everyone goes home for Christmas because it is really rejuvenating. It is like going back to get new cells to come back and cope. Of course, there is a brain drain in Africa because of the corruption and the breakdown of the infrastructure. Most people cannot find a job or cannot live there, but if really those societies could sort of get it together, and hold their own, a lot of people would go back. Because every African in their hearts wants to live on the continent, I really believe that.

So, in fact what propelled you to create the African Film Festival, Inc. is your interest in presenting the reality of Africa, through film, to people in the United States.

Yes, the reality through the African's eyes herself and himself. There were several other factors, but yes, to show that, culturally, Africa's contribution to the world—and what black people brought to the Americas as slaves, as immigrants, and so on—was culture.

So what was the seed that got it started?

In fact, the unlikely forerunner, let's say, to the film festival was an "African Nights" concept that I developed for a Manhattan nightclub in 1988, believe it or not. Some of my friends were involved in the nightclub. These were people who saw how the hip hop scene was becoming more mainstream, they had the Spike Lee's, there was this sort of rush of films made by African American directors, which were showing in theaters. That was also the time when the name African American became official. All around the late 1980s.

To return to the "African Nights" concept, it was really a special kind of gathering and all types of people would come together and create such an incredible energy that was truly African in spirit. However, I felt like I could never stay in a nightclub all my life. I also wanted to crystallize all of these energies and thoughts and to get all these people to begin to think beyond a nightclub.

So you screened films in the nightclub?

    No, we played music. I was trying to describe how this was the forerunner to the film festival. It was the idea. As I was saying, I felt that I had no tools, I did not know what to do. And I wanted to contribute something. You stay here all your life, you go back home and what do you take back? You have the security here, you try to get a pension, you go back and you become a bourgeois, you have your house, and you put on blinders, but then what do you offer? You are never really safe. Because all of a sudden, sporadically, a war can erupt and you do not know where it is coming from, but it is festooning all this time, people sweep over it and act as if it does not exist. When you have these child soldiers who are carrying guns, who are maiming and opening up pregnant women's stomachs, who get drugged by leaders, they just don't jump from the sky. They are a product of their environment, and that is what we as Africans have to address. Why has our society gone down to this point? It is not in our psyche to perform such heinous acts.
    So for me, I don't have the tools, I don't have a professional degree in medicine or law, nor do I have a lot of money. So, what do I do? So I started this concept. A lot of African musicians were coming here, and the concerts would sell out. Youssou N'dour, Ismail Lo, Toure Kunda, and others, you would go to a concert and it was packed, people from Asia, South America, Australia, you had everyone there. So, in terms of modernity this is where Africa had paved a way, through music. So, I started with that, I started "African Nights" concerts where I would bring in a local band which played African-inspired music, and drummers at times. It was incredible. It was a dance party, but it was also a soiree sort of thing, with reception. It was a lot of work to pull together; well, perhaps not compared to the festival. So, working in a nightclub was not what I saw myself doing at forty-five, especially if I wanted to have a child.
    That same year, 1988, I visited my in-laws in Lugano in Switzerland and next door, there is the Locarno Festival that goes on every year, it is the fourth largest festival in Europe. I went to open-air film screenings. I was leafing through the brochure, I came across a "thirty year retrospective of African cinema," and I was just blown away. I am looking around and I am thinking, "Who is interested in this?" I am looking around and I see it is basically a European town, a European audience. They were showing so many films, there were lectures, symposia, catalogues, translations in several languages, and the audiences revered African culture and art.
    Returning to the United States (and, like I said before, the name African-American became the official term), simultaneously African-American filmmakers were making waves. I found in cinema a powerful and immediate medium for promoting awareness and understanding. I thought that we could ride on the coat-tails of these events. Yet, what was really the driving force of this idea was what I saw in Locarno. I thought that this was something that could be done here. Next to Africa, you have the largest number of people of African descent living in the Americas. So you really had a ready-made audience in a way, and I think at that point in time there was really a sincere interest. Normally there was a trend or fashion that would die in time; we had the dashiki and Afro. I thought there is a whole generation coming up, and also there were a lot of hybrids. You have these first-generation kids born here from the Caribbean or Africa, mixed-race and mixed-culture. So there was a whole other mindset formulated here. I felt that the medium of film, that cinema was really the tool to promote an awareness and understanding of African culture in the Americas and I really believe the time was right.

How were you introduced to African films?

There was one film distributor here, Dan Talbert, who was the one and only, the sole distributor. He brought Truffaut, he created the New Wave, Cinema Nova in the sixties in America, he is a real film purist. He is the one who brought Ousmane Sembene's films to America for the first time. So, intermittently from 1979 through 1988, every two or three years an African film would come. Many of the Sembene's films, then he started bringing Idrissa Ouedraogo, and they would appear in the New York Film Festival. Then they brought Henri Duparc's Dancing in the Dust [Bal Poussière]. Talbert also had an affiliation with Lincoln Plaza Cinemas, which were commercial theaters. We were clued in and knew that these screenings were happening; and the review would be in the Times. When you went to the theater you would see that ninety percent of the audience was white and European, eight percent African, two percent the rest of the world. By the time that you got out word to people that you knew, "that you have to go, you have to see this film," the film had come and gone, because it was not reaching into the grassroots community. At least I was not aware of it, and I am sure that I am right, because most of the people in those communities that are culturally rooted to this, and who should know, were not aware. Also, information filters into those communities in a different way, they patronize different types of publication.

So what were your impressions of the first African films that you saw?

You know Clyde Taylor describes it in a really great way and I always like to use his quote. He says, "It is like you go to a river and the water is flowing, one season you go and it feels a certain way when you stick your toes in there. Then maybe you go a few years later and you stick your toes in there and it really feels differently, and maybe you want to stick your whole foot in then." And that is how I felt. Because the first time that I saw an African film, to be honest, was here. I had seen things as a child growing up, but mainly theater. Because of the British, we had many theaters, like British Council stage plays, or Yoruba film shorts for TV, but it was a play that was shot, so the camera is stationary and you are watching a play really.
One of the first African films that I saw was in the United States in 1979. I remember it was one of Sembene's films. To be honest with you, I did not digest it because I think I felt...it seemed something so surreal. I felt numb almost because Ceddo is also dealing with religion, dealing with slavery. So I saw Sembene's films initially, then I started seeing Idrissa Ouedraogo's films. I would think about it. It's like leaving Africa when you go on holidays and when you come back the smell is still in your nose and in your hair. You have this smell around you all the time. So that is what I felt when I saw the film, and it was in the winter, I remember! I kept saying there is this smell. I kept thinking, "My, how Sembene tells this story!" He tells the African story like no one else. There might be others who are even more gifted, creatively, but he really goes and grabs it, he really understands his people. So in a way I was happy that was my introduction, because it was really a good way to enter. He gives you the training of how to view it.

So the period from 1979 to 1988 was the gestation period to the film festival concept?

Yes, we were popular in New York. We were part of the art scene. And, as I said before, there were many things going on in terms of music, in African-American culture, and so things were ripe. However, I noticed that while there were many African influences, any time that Africa is discussed it is always someone else speaking. There is never really an African voice in all these discussions. Here we are in the late eighties and here is someone speaking for us. I think that is why it is so hard for Africans to be accepted in a contemporary sense, especially in the arts. In primitive art you have some of the best collections. Some of the most respected art collectors and dealers have incredible pieces of African art but then it stops there. Because as far as that period goes, there is someone else who is an authority, who has that information, and who can explain what it was all about, how the African felt when he was doing this art and the argument is that it was never signed. However, most do not realize that it was done for the community, so no one signs things, it functions as everyday life in Africa. A stool is carved and everyone is going to sit on that stool. So that the art form exists within.

Would you say that there are similar distinctions made in African film, where those that look African, in other words, are in so-called African settings, are viewed as African films as opposed to those which are not presented in "familiar" African contexts?

This is what is so great about Sembene, like what I said, being a storyteller he takes you on a guided tour from the urban to the rural. Africa, in all its complexity, there is no one set picture of Africa. Just like the arts, it's timeless, what goes on in urban or rural settings is always sort of dependent on each other.

In your experience as an organizer, would you say that African films teach the viewers the realities of Africa and dispel myths and stereotypes that they may have?

Absolutely, that is the whole point! As I said I was frustrated, I felt that I wanted to show the Africa I knew, but I wanted to educate not only Americans but Africans living here. Because throughout the continent we don't have this. You know you can travel from Washington to New York easily; at one time, for me to call Senegal from Sierra Leone, I had to go through England, England had to go through France to connect me to Senegal. So even for Africans here, the films are a milestone. Because we get to know each other through film. Because you can read all you want—and we have great writers—and you can envision something, but it is another thing when you really see it. You can also look at it another way, that people are more inspired after seeing the film to go read about how they fit in, how their footprint works on that cultural landscape.

Could you talk about the goals and objectives of African Film Festival, Inc.?

    We started in 1990. The idea started in 1988, and in 1990 we became officially an African Film Festival organization with no office, no money, a typewriter that ate ribbons. In 1993 when we did the major festival in collaboration with the Film Society of the Lincoln Center and the Brooklyn Museum of Art, we broke all records in Lincoln Center so far, at the Walter Reade Center.
    My main purpose for doing it was twofold: to show images and to educate people. Ultimately our goal is to promote an awareness and understanding, and to increase knowledge of African culture using the cinematic medium. At the same time, we are committed to developing an international audience for African cinema and to expand the opportunities for the distribution of African film in the U.S. We have the festival in New York, we have a traveling series, which introduces African cinema and culture to new venues, widens the audience of African film on the national level, which is also audience development. For future productions, you must sustain the interest. The festival is the showcase. We are presenting works and that is important because those works get seen and maybe they get picked up. Even if they get picked up by other festivals, it is still good; it is still activity that is going on.
    The educational and outreach program is twofold. First, to appeal directly to American and African-American youth and adults with images of Africa, in narrative film structure format. And secondly, to make African cinema more accessible to various communities that are significantly rooted, like public and cultural institutions, such as what we do at the Schomburg in Harlem [Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture], and going into Brooklyn.
    I think that the Lincoln Center in any case is neutral, because the Lincoln Center is the bastion of, or the institution for culture in America. And that was another problem, some people asked, "Why did you have to start there, why not in Harlem?" I felt that we were going to go to community centers anyway. I felt that this culture is the greatest gift to the world and she should be seen in a place where you have to think of the technical and creative projection of it.

Especially in New York, which is an international city, the exposure is phenomenal, I am sure...

Sure, the best state-of-the-art theater was built there, and the best sound system. That was where we had to be, that is all I knew.

Could you detail the inner workings of organizing a film festival?

When we did this festival, not to pat ourselves on the back, but we did a lot of hard work getting there. I think it was the time, because a lot of people tried before us. So it is not that we came with something really new. We were persistent. I had to be persistent because initially my husband helped me a bit and I kept thinking, "All those phone bills he had to pay and all that money he gave me to travel; if it doesn't work he is going to kill me, it has to work." I went to see people who were in high positions in the black community who said "We have tried" or "People are not really interested in Africa" or "How about Roots" or "Why don't you bring in a Brazilian slant, that would bring in more recognition" or "People are not going to go to see African films." We wrote so many proposals, I thought at least we would get an "A" for effort because we did such a good presentation with a supplement. The proposal was so well written, we thought, at least people will look at it. I wrote to so many institutions, they really felt for me. I wrote to the Public Theater, I wrote to the Lincoln Center, I wrote to the Brooklyn Museum. And everyone said, "We are really with you, we have tried before, but now it is hard to get this work out, much less about Africa."
The best response I got was from Richard Pena of the Film Society of Lincoln Center. At the time, he told me that they were building the Walter Reade Theater and their purpose was also to promote international and independent works. So, I thought that if they would be willing to join forces with our organization...we came with a brilliant idea to them and we said, how about if you join forces with us. They said, "Well, yes, but we have nineteen programs like this, we cannot specifically sponsor one of them and ignore the rest." He said, "What we do is that we have enough money for bare bones," where if you run the films they put it on and they send information out to their forty thousand-plus membership and people come. Nothing else is done because they do not need to do any more promotion than that. They said that "You are talking about something major here, there is not much money right now, if you find the money, we are on." I thought, well, this is the first step. I thought, "with all these corporations doing business in Africa..." We went to the foundations, but then each time the envelopes arrived, after you received ten of these rejection letters, or where people think it is great and they wish you well but they are supporting this or that already or it is not the time of year right now, write us back next year. I kept thinking, No, I cannot give up. I did have inroads to some important people, mind you. I was relentless; I would speak about it even at night in my sleep. Everyone I met, because that is how it works in New York—someone who may have a lead to a funder, or who may know how to get the films here without paying for shipping, or who might write me a letter of support, or who may have an affiliation with a newspaper, anything—so I spoke about it all the time. In that sense we had lots of leads and were able to cut a lot of red tape and went directly to the top of some of these corporations. They would seem very enthusiastic and we thought that this was definitely coming through and then we would get a letter a few weeks later saying, "Well, we thought about it...." Everyone is skeptical about touching Africa, even if they are making tons and millions out of there. I think a lot of them want to be clandestine and they do not want the attention. Remember the Shell story and the scandal that happened? Well, that year they sponsored FESPACO.

Speaking of FESPACO, how do you link with other African film festivals and film festivals in general?

I would say that we are the premier showcase, we really are, because also our focus is strictly on sub-Sahara Africa for now. I think that Diaspora festivals are wonderful, but I personally do not have the sensibility for all those works. One of the best programmers that I saw who could do that is Cameron Bailey at the Toronto Film Festival. Because if you do not have the sensibility and really do not do clever programming, someone is compromised, and in most cases it is Africa because people come to see what they are familiar with, the names, or titles or something in English. So, you really have to do something genial to get people to see all the works and not only come for those they feel comfortable or familiar with.
Eventually, of course, I would like to branch out where we do parallels between Brazil and lusophone Africa in a modern context, to see, for example, what has been the influence of the conquistadors, if there are any influences.

You stated that in 1993, at the first festival, there was a record-breaking turnout. Could you talk about the general responses to the festival?

    Initially, I would have to say that, to a lot of the African filmmakers who came out of Francophone Africa I was suspect. They thought, "Who is she, first of all. She is not a filmmaker, she is not an academic. What did you say she did? What country is she from? Do they really show films in her country?" So they were really hard with me, they were not kind, to put it that way. There is a very good friend of ours, who has helped us so much and is a board member. He is from Senegal. He knows a lot of filmmakers, he works here, he runs the France 2 office in New York. He would get many calls from them asking, "Who is this person, what does she want?" "Someone else trying to use us? Are you sure she is even from Africa."
    The first year, Sembene was here. We showed thirty-seven films for a whole month. Two o'clock screenings on a Monday were sold out. That blew their minds. Sembene gave his blessings right away. We opened with Guelwaar, it had just come out. It had not been shown anywhere. We were scared. Everyone around us was skeptical. They gave us an "A" for effort, for trying. Then we found the money. Then they thought, "Oh my God, she found the money!" Then they said, "She found a lot of money." Well, certainly a lot for a festival, and the first time. We sent out flyers, we got an activist to go out to the communities. We did an extensive grassroots effort. Of course, when the festival opened and you had screenings on a Monday afternoon that were sold out, everyone was sort of swallowing their tongues, they did not know what to make of it.
    It was scary, Beti. I was green, I didn't know one camera from the other. It was something phenomenal. Then everyone jumps on you, all the sharks come out. When I think what the other two women and I went through to make this festival, and then everyone comes afterward, sucking our blood and riding the wave of this success, and never mentioning us. It was amazing! I could have acted ugly like they did, but I think that is the beauty of Africa, also. She is like the breast that never dries up and everyone wants to suck from it but she just keeps giving milk. You have to be very careful. You have to say to yourself, Why am I doing it? Because it is not really a money-making venture. Eventually, of course, you are able to pay your phone bill, it can lead to other possibilities, and we are not-for-profit, by the way. If you go for profit and you want to produce, maybe you can make something, but your initial purpose cannot be to make money. What also blew people's minds is that I raised the money, and most of the time you are expected to shave off your salary right away. However, for me, I am fortunate also. Not that we are rich, but my husband has been very supportive. Friends have been extremely supportive. I think that it is very important to do a first-rate festival. We are expected to be mediocre, to be kind of slack. I am proud of it and that is how it should be: let us at least give her that honor, Africa, she deserves it.
    After the initial first two festivals the filmmakers started getting rentals here, some come here just to pick up checks and we do this technical brochure, even if it is a simple one, where we put all the contacts. It is like a bible for programmers. I send them out. Before, people would want to program an African film, maybe within a world cinema or something, and think, "My, where do you even start looking for this film?" What we do is list the contacts, the distributor, the credits, bibliography, so that programmers or even community centers that have the facility can call or send a fax to a distributor in Europe, Africa, or here and do it on her or his own.It is very active. I am proud to say that there are people who were before us, but I think it was timing and diligent hard work that made this happen. It has to be the timing, because it has not stopped. Everyday I'm hearing that someone is doing a new festival or doing a retrospective or including a centerpiece of African films within a framework of a larger film festival.

What role do you see film festivals playing in the promotion and dissemination of African cinema and culture? And particularly African Film Festival, Inc.?

You know it troubles me when I hear this, and not only from African filmmakers, who say, "You know, we are tired of film festivals." Listen, Woody Allen's Celebrity opened the New York Film Festival. It is not necessarily that he had a distributor ready, but it is a showcase and especially a high-profile showcase of stature. Naturally, distributors are going to see our audiences because they are sitting there. Producers are going to see how audiences react to a certain film: whether the theater is crowded, how popular the film is.

Every filmmaker's dream is to have a theatrical release right away. But if people don't know who you are, or you don't have the possibility of getting as many distributors to watch your film when you screen it one time, a festival is so important as a showcase. Because distributors, producers, film critics, film writers are aware that a festival happens at a certain time of the year. Before the festival, weeks or months ahead, the public is already being informed, they get the schedule, they prepare, they come to see your work. They see that it is in the setting of an audience. Other programmers hear about it. It is critical, especially to African filmmakers.
Television is another medium that people should start considering, or cable; that is what we are also working on, to try to get some people to FESPACO [1999] this year from HBO and places like this. I think it is so important for them, if these festivals were not in place for African cinema, believe you me a lot of these films would not be in circulation and people would not even hear of them.

During the festival, are you directly involved with distributors who are interested in distributing films that are being shown?

Yes, some incredible deals have happened during our festival. There are also other results as well. A guy here has been writing a script. He has been here two years and he is getting a salary. Another one is working with some people on the West Coast. Wanjiru Kinyanjui, from Kenya, got a really nice review which was reprinted in the local paper in Nairobi. She is making commercials, she is making educational information films, and she has found some money for her next film project. We are proud of these things. There is one filmmaker, Jean-Marie Teno, every time he comes here someone gives him money, maybe if it is only a check for $500. He says it never happens to him at a festival. Not a corporation or foundation, but someone in the audience who feels so moved by his work that they always give him money. Every time that he has attended our festival, three times, and this time we did a little retrospective of his work, someone gives him money.

How does your being a woman reflect in your work as organizer?

It is a very good question to ask. First of all, as I was saying to you before, I did not come with a background. Of course when I see what one really considers to be a background, I do not have a complex because I think that I am in tune and I know a lot more than a lot of others. I can talk all day and have a discussion among elitist colleagues about film. But if these same people do not have us, because we are the ones who disseminate the work, we get it out there. Someone who writes about cinema and culture can write all they want, but putting the films out to the larger public is what a festival does, because that also spills over into the literary and other disciplines of art related to Africa and the Diaspora. It is twofold. Primarily, our purpose is to educate and to help the filmmakers, but it is helping every other art form in a way, because the films depict that also.
As a woman, well, it is a very male-dominated scene and the thing is—and I don't think that I am challenging personal confrontations—but, at times, you say enough is enough. Some of the filmmakers, because they are dealing with me, think they have to behave a certain way. It is a cultural thing. They see I am a woman—and they wonder, I am not a European woman, I am not African-American, and I am an African working in America and in New York of all places—it was something that was very odd for a lot of people, too. They were trying to put their finger on it, yet it is no big mystery. I am just someone who lives here, who happens to do it. One filmmaker actually—I won't name him—was in Carthage and he told this person, "Yeah, she is Richard Pena's assistant," and the woman said, "No, she is the director of the African Film Festival, the founder and the director." She said, "It is her idea and they do it in collaboration." And he said, "Oh no, then she must be his mistress." So, that sums it up for you. This is a big, intelligent, African filmmaker, who does not want to believe in his mind that I have anything to do with this, so I must be sleeping with Richard. The younger guys are great. This is what is nice about the emerging group. Some of them are difficult, but it is so nice. Even with someone like Sembene, it is nice to have his support. To my back, they will praise me, but in front of me, they really work me. The guys in my country will tell me, "You married a European because none of us wanted you." When they see Luca they say, "You know you got a good one, so you'd better hold her well."

Do you envision organizing an African women film screening as a component of one of the festivals?

Definitely, starting next year we are going on an annual basis. The main festival will always be the even years and it will be major, something like two weeks. During the odd years we will do perhaps four- or five-day weekend festivals. We will start out like that and build it up. Perhaps I will start out with the lusophone regions the next time, or perhaps the 2000 festival will focus on women.

In another conversation, you talked about your role as a mother and your interest in exposing you daughter to African images. Could you talk about that in the context of your work?

We started this work, and obviously we are not going to change the face of Africa or save it today, but at least we are setting an example. Going back to my childhood, this is the quality of traditional and formal education that I had. That is why people of my generation are really so in tune with our culture and there is a lot of pride in that. It makes you who you are. For all black people, our past is so connected with our present. That is why in certain parts of the Diaspora, people are still in a state of searching, because you need to do something. I think these hybrids, this first-generation-born group, who thinks, "Oh no, African food today," who look down on it, or who could not stand this or that, or African music. They want Burger King or they want to go to rap parties. Then when these children are in their late teens, early twenties, and they are curious about Africa, they are so upset with their parents, that they never taught them their language. Maybe this generation of African kids is not as passionate as we are, and on the one hand, they do not have that tribalism baggage and other baggage that we have. The way that they lack the passion, they shrug their shoulders, but maybe we need that sort of complacency right now in Africa, this kind of muteness, to sort of clean things up.

So I feel, for me, that it is very important that we catch our young people, even if they are complaining and they hate it when they are young. Later in life, they will appreciate it because I know that there are some things that I hated as a child. And today I am so happy that my parents were insistent on sending me upcountry during the holidays, of making me eat certain foods, or listen to certain stories. I am post-independence, so the first schools I attended were with English kids, and I was ashamed of the beads on my waist because I took swimming courses and the English kids would asked, "what is that," or I had mor mor, the gold earrings that are twisted in your ears and I was ashamed of those things. I wish I could find those earrings, or those beads.
My daughter really wants to know. Maybe it is Mariama's unique personality, but she likes to be known as an African and a Swiss child. She likes all those unique things about Africa. She likes to show off with her friends. I think that it is important.

In another conversation, you said that though there are not many African women filmmakers, you do attempt as much as possible to profile African women filmmakers, that you actually seek out their work. As a woman, do you feel that you have a sensibility towards African women's works? Could you talk about the visual image of African women and the representation of African women in the film industry and also share your impressions on films by African women, the sensibility, themes, tendencies?

    I think Africa is a woman and everything that is working in Africa is because women are behind it. They also have a sensitivity and the rhythm. Women are more three-dimensional, they are deeper, and in Africa, that complexity comes from a woman. I find that the subjects that the African women deal with are different from those of African-American women's films, much less Hollywood. Here in the States, one doesn't expect to see things like polygamy, female genital mutilation, or women in Tanzania crushing stone. You feel their passion, you feel their confusion, you share it with them. Safi Faye's film Mossane is a beautiful film; there you have three generations of women. I also felt lucky; she let me show it this year. I love the relationship between the grandmother and the granddaughter.
    No aspect of African cinema is more miraculous than the most unbidden emergence of female filmmakers on the continent. What makes film the most immediate, the most direct of all art forms is its ability to transport, to place one instantaneously in someone else's situation. Their films sometimes focus on the challenges of adjustment and this is why audiences can identify. Whether they are depicting upheavals or celebrating life, they show "little people" trying to "do the right thing."
    I believe the female African filmmaker has a defined perception of her world and because of this her films translate. It can move from one language into others. They have tenacity, resourcefulness, and buoyancy. Their situation requires all these qualities.
    I also believe that, in using the cinematic medium, we find that in their films, women are best able to recapture, help define the true essence of African culture and African people. They address issues in a sense that are taken away from imposed colonial values or colonial distortions and point of view.