quotes from Sembene and Pfaff:

Sembène:

"The African filmmaker is like the griot who is similar to the European medieval minstrel: a man of learning and common sense who is the historian, the raconteur, the living memory and the conscience of his people. The filmmaker must live within his society and say what goes wrong within his society." (1978 interview with Pfaff), 15.

"It is as a griot--and within a moralistic and didactic framework--that Sembène tackles with ease a multiplicity of topics. . . . It is as an attentive and concerned griot that Sembène interprets the socio-historical and cultural heritage of his community." 15

"Besides chronicling life in a contemporary setting, the traditional African griot is also a historian who reconstructs the legendary deeds of past heroes to whom he attributes contemporary moral significance. As such, Sembène incorporates in his thematic scope important events in African history which have often been forgotten or neglected in the Western historical canon." 15

More Sembene from Pfaff’s book on him:

"He is the kind of griot who has maintained an almost complete freedom of expression and should not be confused with the court griot owing allegiance to a powerful family or group. Sembene’s objective is not to provide an escape from reality by embellishing it, for ‘the griot may only embellish reality during victorious times through what people call court songs or festive songs. In terms of crisis, however, a griot does not embellish reality. On the contrary, he finds himself in the brutality of surrounding events. I have never tried to please my audiences through the embellishment of reality. I am a participant and an observer of my society." (interview 1978) 40

Cham: "With the true [emphasis mine] griot as a model, Sembène enters into a battle for history and around history." 24 in Gadjigo et. al.

More Cham: The Third Cinema type: "Some film-makers in this category proclaim themselves the modern-day equivalents of the traditional oral artists (the griot and/or the oral narrative performer) in the service of the masses, and they appropriate resources from their respective indigenous artistic heritages--oral, written and otherwise--in terms of both theme and technique, to create a cinema which engages a broad range of the personal, social, cultural, historical, political and imaginative experiences and challenges of their societies. These African film-makers seek to fashion a different film language with which to represent African realities and desires." 2 includes such people as Sembène, Cissé, Gerima, Mambety, Safi Faye, among those south of the Sahara.

"They posit film as a crucial site of the battle to decolonise minds, to develop radical consciousness, to reflect and engage critically with African cultures and traditions, and to make desirable the meaningful transformation of society for the benefit of the majority." 2

Malkmus and Armes question the application of the term "griot" to a filmmaker whose work is fundamentally subversive of the status quo and in that sense anti-traditional (178)

[But is that necessarily the case? Diawara points out the similarity between Yeelen and epics such as Sundjiata in their attempt to overcome an oppressive system 161]

Diawara’s Anti-Romantic Conception of the griot

quotes on Djelli and Jom:

Sembène transcends the griot, therefore, and surrounds him and his old narrative with a new vision which traces the mechanism by which people such as the cart driver are exploited." 213

"The richness of this scene is such that it shows the spectator that a return to tradition, to authenticity, does not always bring about solutions to the problems of Africans such as the cart driver." 213

"Sembène creates a distance between spectators and the characters in the film which enables the spectators to criticise themselves in their tradition." 213

Djeli (The Griot, 1981) by Lancine Fadika-Kramo fails to critically transcend the griot's perspective as S. did. "He posits the griot as the point of departure and the master of narrative. Djeli starts with a flashback retracing the griot's mythic origin in order to put into question the hierarchies of the caste system. According to this rhetoric, the griot was originally a hunter who changed trades to become a singer, storyteller, and musician." 213

Jom (1981) by Ababakar Samb, presents another romantic view of the griot.

"In Jom the griot is the main character, the omniscient narrator of the different sketches that form the film, and the immortal persona who travels through time and space. He remains unchanged by age and by the weapons used by the enemies of tradition. Neither money nor fear can corrupt him. He is the griot of the poor as well as of the rich." He is like the narrator of Borom Sarret, an activist. 214

Samb uses the griot as an easy, nostalgic place of refuge for the spectator. "The figure of the griot is used to reinvent a beautiful image of the past. Unlike Sembène, who puts the griot's narrative within a larger narrative, Samb surrenders to the narrative authority of the griot. This romanticisation of the griot defines Samb's film language which valorises tradition as characterised in the film by authenticity, dignity and truth, and negates modernism as characterised by alienation, colonialism and exploitation. Jom positions the spectator to identify with tradition without any attempt at self-criticism: everything positive is pushed on the side of tradition and everything negative on the side of modernism." 214

Diawara seems to be saying that Sembene is rejecting a romantic valorization of the griot in order to take on the role of world-creator directly; does not need the intermediary of a griot. "In film, the camera replaces the griot as the director's eyes and constructs the new images of Africa for the spectator. It is in this sense that one says that the African film-maker has replaced the griot in the rewriting of history." 216

Dispute the following:

Importance of the virtuoso: "While Western directors often achieve recognition by letting the story tell itself, African diretors, like the griots, master their craft by impresssing the spectator with their narrative performance. This may be because, with the griots, one achieves fame not by being the author of new texts but by being able to reproduce the best versions of old texts." 217

Diawara also stresses the use of cinematic objectivity as analogous to the griot’s narrative art--never letting us inside the character’s head, few pov shots or pov close-ups, everything coming through the intermediary of the narrator/filmmaker’s art.

Ukadike: "New Developments in Black African Cinema"

In a film like Yaaba, we appreciate the cinematic griot's ability to merge different styles, to show himself a virtuoso with the material

Black African Cinema:

"A griot can be anybody in the society who transmits messages to the people" (Ukadike 206)

"Black African cinema assumes autonomy; here is an art for communal enlightenment analogous to the griot’s role within the oral tradition. The communal role of art in traditional Africa has always recognized the historical, political, social, and economic factors of the people’s development (311).

Tomaselli:

"As intermediaries, critical African film makers are also travellers. They physically and psychically travel between the First, Second, Third, and Fourth Worlds, cultures, and ontologies. As global griots or bards, they memorize and recite African legends and valiant deeds through story-telling (see Stoller, Jean Rouch Cinematic Griot). They are the storehouses of oral knowledge. The reach of these griots is global because they are often lcoated outside Africa where they have sought safety from repression in their own countries. It is also here where they raise the bulk of their financial support. As griots, they represent and incubate the cultural ready-to-hand of the African societies from whence they derive. These films recover memories which have been partly destroyed by colonialism and neo-colonialism. Most specifically, griots serve to recover and preserve for exhibition in film, that which has been alienated from the present generation because of the disruption consequent to imposition of modernization policies. In this sense, these filmmakers are also travellers between generations, and as griots they are the intergenerational counterparts of the medieval European troubadours who travelled in a more literally geographical sense. Peculiarly, the evolution of modernity has collapsed geographical space in a way that makes this kind of travelling one of the few ways open for exploration, with film being one of the vehicles wherein the explorer can voyage on quests, not of 'new' discovery, but of rediscovery." 23

"The filmmakers depend on their art for economic survival and thus function in a similar manner as the traditional 'roving poets' who make their livelihood through their art. These poets/griots often show no allegiance to anyone in particular and can vilify and praise an audience, politicians, rulers, or a lay person simultaneously. Thus economics often determine the nature of the praise poetry performed. African filmmakers' art, however, is often not influenced by loyalty to established power, or faithfulness to an individual. Rather, the filmmakers' function is determined by a combination of artistic, economic, and political ideologies, as well as social vision." 32

"Thus seen in broader terms, the African filmmaker embodies the complex, yet multiple roles of griots/bards in their traditional contexts of origin. They are simultaneously social critics, historians, bards and seers; they criticize the present to encourage change; re-examine and reconstruct the past to shed more light on its effects on the present; and they transmit cultures and histories from the past generation to those who are present." 32

"Critical African cinema is about the right of Africans to represent to themselves the possibilities inherent in their past. The role of African Filmmaker as griot becomes important when seen in the context of recent attempts by colonized people to reconstruct their histories and pasts against a predominantly European colonialist interpretation of those experiences." 26

Discusses Teno's Afrique, Je Te Plumerai as an example of filmmaker as griot--"Teno fulfils one of the functions of the griot or oral historian, that of transmitting stories or history from one generation to another. This intergenerational transmission or testimony is one of the fundamental features of the oral tradition." 26

Foucault: Discourse that possesses an author’s name is not to be immediately consumed and forgotten; neither is it accorded the momentary attention given to ordinary, fleeting words. Rather, its status and its manner of reception are regulated by the culture in which it ciculates.

We can conclude that, unlike a proper name, which moves from the interior of a discourse to the real person outside who produced it, the name of the author remains at the contours of texts--separating one from the other, defining their form, and characterizing their mode of existence." (Language, Counter-Memory, Practice, 1969, 1977, in Caughie 284)