INTERVIEW WITH DIRECTOR DANIEL KOLLO SANOU

by Olivier Barlet

Published in Africultures, January 20, 2003

Translation by Michael Dembrow

You worked on this script for fifteen years . . .

Yes, it evolved and reached fruition with a great deal of difficulty. I had disagreements with the producers. In the end, it was my meeting with Les Films du Mogho, led by Toussaint Tiendrébéogo, that allowed me to move forward on this project which is completed at last.

It was initially to be a historical film that would follow the story of a veteran, beginning with his demobilization from the French army. The former “tirailleurs” [the term by which the West African conscripts were known] with fifteen years’ service live today with a pension that they receive each quarter. The level of their pension amounts to barely a third of what the French veterans get. Others, those who served “90 days in the Front Lines” and have reached the age of 65, now have rights to a “Combat Pension." The hero of my film belongs in this second category.

There is talk today of the unfreezing of pensions for all veterans, but that’s far from being achieved.
I would prefer not to engage in this debate: I’m an artist, and I wanted to touch on a historical reality, but not to make “Billboard Films,” as Sembène puts it; my method is rather that of a witness. I nevertheless find that it’s a step in the direction of justice that France has finally decided to do this unfreezing.

You’ve done a lot of television work.

I was trained in television, and I went on to do a lot of production work there, particularly a program that’s well known in Burkina Faso called The State of Things, which denounces corruption, malfeasance, etc. It demands initiative and an ability to work under pressure. The same is true of Bush Taxi, a series that I did with fellow directors from Benin. It was necessary to be effective and high quality in a brief amount of time, with few resources: that experience deformed me a great deal! For Tasuma, I shot the way I thought the event needed to be shot. I wasn’t overly blessed with financial resources, thanks to the legacy of the initial producers, which had served to diminish the budget. I had very little film stock for shooting. But with a team of good Burkinabe and French professionals, the atmosphere on the set was excellent, which contributed to the result.

Why persist in making films when it is so hard?

It takes on average ten years to complete a film when you live in Africa! I began with this one in 1987! I decided to commit to this subject, supported by those who had believed in this project and brought in financing. Its theme deals with all of Africa and with the French. It’s a subject that I’ve been carrying around since my childhood: my father is a veteran of Indochina and Algeria. Ever since Paweogo [The Emigrant, 1983, his first feature film], I’ve understood that in Africa cinema is not going to feed you anything but fame. You do work that is either useful or not, and that’s how you leave a legacy. Paweogo sensitized the young people who were leaving for the Ivory Coast to the fact that it was not paradise there! History has caught up with the film . . . In any case, despite the real problems related to the financing of our films, I do believe that Africa cannot allow itself to be absent from the history of international film.

The character of the crazy man is central, and sets the rhythm of the film.
That’s a bit the way I see it. He’s not an object of gratuitous mockery of him: this man sees farther; he can imagine already what is going to happen to the person who is just setting off down a path. I tried to situate myself in terms of this crazy guy: a wink of the eye at the history of my country—a sarcastic glance at everyday reality, these veterans who beat themselves up over this quest for what is due them, who will frequently never get there before their death. The crazy man is also to an extent the filmmaker: we can’t develop our own film here at home! He even asks the Lebanese man to pay for his film: we transform ourselves into beggars. It’s an old story, where we know the right answers but are slow in applying them!

France is not made into an object of mockery.
This is not a billboard film: I have no accounts to settle with France. I made a film to entertain and provoke reflection at the same time. The problem of veterans is very well-known politically, and it’s not filmmakers who are going to find the solution. I can only inform Africans as well as French about the injustice being rendered these veterans. I wanted to avoid easy answers: no need to hammer out the messages in order to please the public. Paweogo was an effort to make young people invest more in the country, not out of a sense of pure nationalism, but rather out of their own self-interest. Tasuma is a clear articulation that has no need to be polemical.

You reawaken memory in utilizing the songs of the African infantrymen.

I had the opportunity of working with veterans who had lived these things: Indochina and Algeria (those who had been in World War II were often dead already). I rediscovered the infantrymen’s tunes that my father used to hum, like “The Africans,” a military march still used today. A certain gaiety released itself, and like the griotte [the female bard, praise-singer], who really sang her praise of Sogo very well, I too wanted to pay homage to them.

Did your father pass on this memory to you?
I didn’t learn it as a tale, but I lived it, often with violence. While I was just a small child, I was with him in the military camp of Bobo Doulasso, the French base prior to independence--in his environment, with his former comrade combatants. What struck me was the way these men suffered. Their dignity lay in having fought for a cause, even if they couldn’t explain what that cause was. They had been deformed: they were treated like crazy men because they had these behavior tics that were surprising: like this uncle who would blow the bugle in the village as if he were an army bugler. He would take a grenade out of his pocket to show me what it was all about. . . But there were never big dramas: the grenades were not used. They were not used because these men had this dignity. The character in my film is going to threaten the administration with an unloaded rifle: he has this consciousness. Today, we must recognize this dignity and render it its due.

The Lebanese man is in the end a good guy . . .

It was necessary to humanize him: the women wanted to pay him with their grain, and Sogo gives it to him as a gift. Lebanese shopkeepers assimilate themselves into the local scene: they take on local citizenship, but they don’t always have good images. I decided to make him a partner. I didn’t want to get into the critique that considers them to be crooks. They are integrated and offer their contributions to the community, even for sporting events. They are not necessarily dishonest. In this film, it’s actually his client who profits from him. Khalil kept his own name in the film: the actor really is a shopkeeper in Bobo and is obsessed with movies. He had already played the role of White in Bal Poussière [1988, Henri Duparc].

In this film one feels an opposition between the perversity of the city and the humanity of the village.

I am only painting today’s reality in Burkina Faso. It wasn’t my intention to set up an opposition between city and country, but that’s what happens. The traditional customs are still in place, like arranged marriages, excision, and the practice of a man marrying his late brother’s wife in order for her to stay in the family: these practices are still there, even though the Minister of Social Action is struggling against them.

You managed to maintain a good bit of humor in the dialogue.

Yes, there is for example the bantering between the Fulanis and the Bobos [two ethnic groups in Burkina Faso]: we live it and use it. Since they are related, they have the right to shout at each other in this way without anyone taking offense. The Mossi and Samo [other ethnic groups] do it also. I took advantage of this African humor in order to make my story in the village real. The explosion of the cow is part of that. In this kind of kidding, you even make fun of corpses. The Fulani whose cow explodes, and who pushes the chief to give his daughter to Sogo, is a good example of this in the film.

The lighting is very carefully done, particularly to make the faces stand out in the night scenes.
Keo Kosal Nara, a Cambodian, who did the lighting and shooting, brought a lot to the film, thanks to his experience photographing and lighting black complexions. I was interested in concentrating on the humanity of the principal character in order to give him every chance to be convincing, and the cinematographer allowed me to do that.

Sogo is a fiery and positive character! He develops a powerful determination!

That’s part of my memory: my father and my uncles who had been in the French army. They were the pioneers of independence. Before the emergence of the union struggles in West Africa, they had brought their experience and their open-mindedness: they were the avant-garde of modernity. They weren’t all like Sogo, but were more for justice and brought modernity to the village. The first mill in my village was in fact installed by an infantryman! Today, we are investing in the large urban centers more than in the villages. These men were men of the countryside: it was from their villages that they had been conscripted into the army. They returned and got involved there.

In the end, Sogo is a man of war who has opted for peace!

The pride of having been in the army is Sogo’s reason for existence. His past legitimizes his demand: he carries it in his dress and in his accoutrements. But it’s a heavy thing to bear: Sogo represents all that those men lived through and put up with, the weight of the war and the injustice that followed it. After the bullets thinned out the ranks of those eligible, then arguments about “different living standards” were used to pay out even less!

The films Sarzan [Momar Thiam, Senegal, 1963, based on a short story by Birago Diop] or Camp de Thiaroye [Ousmane Sembène, Senegal, 1987] treated the trauma of war and the recognition of what France owed them. Tasuma takes its place alongside them as an homage to these men forgotten by history. The protagonist of my film is obsessed by the war: his consciousness is wrapped up in it. The film ends with Zao’s song in order to communicate his pacifism.

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