It’s in the realm of African traditionalism that the Senegalese filmmaker Mansour Sora Wade found the inspiration to create his first feature film, The Price of Forgiveness. A story which plays out between hatred and revenge, between love and emotion, built on daily life in a small Lébou village, to the rhythm of fishermen heading out to sea, of the fears and hopes drifting on the Ocean.

I came to cinema by chance and by fate. I don’t know. I was born in a small village a few kilometers from Dakar, and there was a small open-air movie theater there. It was enclosed with tarpaulins. The screen was made of bricks painted white. In that theater I saw my first film. With my pals, I made a hole in the tarpaulin wall with a razor blade, and it was through that hole that I saw this first film, which was a western.

After that, I tried to make my own film. I took a box and a small white sheet, put a candle behind it, and I cut out my images. It was a western with cowboys. For me, it was a first film, because my friends came to see it, and I made them pay.

From then on, I began to say, "I’m going to make films!" But at that time I had no idea how to go about making films. I had to go to school. It was later that I knew what to do.

I therefore went to university to study filmmaking. It was the first and only profession that I chose. I have never been interested in another job. At any rate, I wonder if it wasn’t cinema that chose me.

When I was a film student, I was particularly drawn to Japanese cinema. I was impressed because Japan, which is a powerful country, continues to live equally in its Tradition.

At the time, I saw a film that fascinated me. It was a feature film composed of four short films. These four short films told tales. That immediately provoked in me the desire to make films based on folktales, because I believe that the folktale is a universal language. Whatever the country in which one finds oneself, one can discover a tale that resembles another tale that one has already in Japan, in Bulgaria, in one’s own country, or elsewhere.

I thus began to adapt folktales. The first time, it was for Senegalese television. It was an adaptation that lasted 26 minutes. After that, I was employed by the Ministry of Culture, specifically in the cultural archives. The work which was entrusted to me consisted of going into the interior of Senegal to report on literature and the oral tradition. It was there that my love of the oral tradition, already very great, was reinforced, because I realized that the folktale was a good way of transmitting universal messages.

The storyteller who tells a story doesn’t summarize it, he narrates it in all its details, as one would do in a film, in an imagistic manner. That’s the problem posed by film adaptation. It’s a completely different thing—one must choose a method. For my part, I decided to use an off-screen narrator, that is to say, a voice that accompanies the image and which is recorded on the soundtrack. For me, that voice thereby becomes an actor in its own right, and it’s thus also as important as the choice of actors that one wants to see in the roles. One must select the precise type of voice that would work best in narrating the story at hand.

The Price of Forgiveness was originally a novel by Mbissane Ngom, a Senegalese writer. This novel tells a love story, a story of hatred, of revenge. At the same time, it is a fantasy. It speaks of Lébou mythology. I therefore pressed myself to figure out how I could bring this story to the screen in a way that would give it a universal dimension. I made the choice of introducing two characters who do not exist in the original—namely the griot and his son. [young Amul and his father]

The best way for me to bring mythology to the screen was to tell this story as a legend, because if I had used a realistic manner, it would have doubtlessly been less interesting. I therefore brought about a true adaptation.

The second task that I had to attack after the adaptation was done was what I decided to do with color. In effect, in order to give it a universal dimension, I decided to draw upon the symbolic quality of colors. White, black, red, they’re all colors that one finds all over the world. I therefore relied upon them.

This feature film is the portrayal of a love story which is born in fog. Two friends, Mbanik and Yatma, are in love with the same woman. Yatma kills Mbanik and throws his body in the ocean. The dead friend is reincarnated as a shark.

To create those scenes that take place in the fog, I chose costumes in monochromatic blacks and greys. I wanted to create an atmosphere dominated by anguish, the night, obscurity.

Once the fog had dissipated, I changed colors, bringing in much more vivid colors-- yellow, orange, and blue. When light returns, life returns, and colors change.

To speak further about color, I only used white for one character. I reserved for him an environment of the same color, and I told myself while we were doing the casting that I wanted a person with a white beard. I thus was thinking of a character who exists today in Senegal, who is an important religious figure. Everyone loves him, appreciates his humility, and recognizes his knowledge. He inspired me because Yatma, who kills his friend, then seeks his peace. That’s why he goes to find this character in an all-white environment, one who symbolizes this state of peace to which he aspires. I dressed Yatma in black because he is always dragging death along with him.

As far as the griot and his son are concerned, the story was done in several colors. The griot being the guardian of memory, I dressed these two characters in a patchwork of colors. At the same time I made great use of the color red, because in the Lébou mythology, this color is used for occult activities. I also used this color to express sensuality. Yatma must wait a while to make love to his wife. When that day arrives, the color red is omnipresent. This color is also used by other directors, be they Chinese or Japanese, to express ardent love, sensuality, etc.

As a Senegalese, I received an education that led me to have a certain type of relationship with my family, with Nature, with people in general. And my father taught me tolerance towards others. In this film, it’s largely a question of the transmission of Knowledge through relationships. There’s the relationship between Yatma and his father, there’s the relationship between Mbanik and his father, there’s the relationship between the griot’s son and his father. These relationships express respect for the other, as in the traditional education that I received.

I was also impregnated with Western education to the extent that I went to school and speak French.

I claim these realities as being an inherent part of my own culture. What enriches me today is having one foot in one Culture and the other in the other Culture, which won’t prevent me from remaining forever Senegalese.

This double culture, I also live it in the work that I do. It’s a profession which was not invented in Africa, it’s an industry. But I have something to take to it, and it has something to bring me. It’s why I made the choice to divide my existence between France and Senegal. It has permitted me to be at the same time at ease in the industry and to tap into my creativity. My inspiration is there where I was raised, that’s to say in Senegal, and I try to harmonize all that in my manner of living in general.

The first images which peopled my imagination were those of the tales that I heard when I was little. In The Price of Forgiveness, I tried to bring a child’s look to the screen. In this film I try bring a child’s perspective to the screen, which is why I included those images from the Chinese shadow puppets. Everything I’ve seen or heard since I was a child, I tried to transmit it via these Chinese shadows. What is fantastic, it’s that when I was a child, no one said to me, "Don’t do this," or "Don’t do that." They said to me, "We’re going to tell you a story." And through the story that they told me, they were passing on an education. Sometimes, I would really become afraid, listing to those stories. Today, I think that this kind of education has enormous richness.

I believe that the cinema can help with the preservation of this oral tradition. Amadou Hampaté Ba said, "When an elder dies, it’s like a library that has burned down." Today, the work that we are doing can aid in the preservation of this heritage, and I’m conscious of it because I remain profoundly anchored in my Culture and I recognize its value.

When Léopold Sedar Senghor spoke at a certain moment "of being rooted and of being open," people didn’t understand what he meant with these words, even I wondered what it meant. But today I understand that it’s necessary to remain rooted in one’s Culture while being open to others, and it’s that which constitutes richness.

It’s also for that reason, I believe, that one must treat universal subjects, as one can do with folktales. Whatever one’s traditional culture, that culture’s tales can have a universal reach.

The short film that I made, Picc mi, tells the story of a bird which is looking for its mother. It meets a crocodile, who tries to turn it from its route. I equally conceived this film in terms of the relationship that the World Bank and the IMF can have with the underdeveloped countries, or the developing nations, as one says. I also adapted this story to point to those people who sidetrack food aid.

It’s the same thing for the story of Fary l’ânesse, that of a man who wants to possess a woman who is superbly beautiful and perfect. At the end of the story, a question is raised on the way that men regard women.

Have times really changed? Don’t men forget all too often that we must look for something different in women? This moral is a message that can have a universal dimension.

I was speaking of the double culture that I bear. I speak French, I live in France. As an inhabitant of this country, I have a culture, which I’m sure that I can convey to this Other so different from me. I also think that one can mine an enormous number of things from African culture, because it has such a universal reach. On the other hand, I’m also seduced by other cultures. What is seductive among the Japanese, it’s the fact that while they constitute a great industrial power, but when they come home, they take off their shoes and they sit on the floor, they eat on the floor, etc. And the Japanese cinema has known how to ally this respect for Tradition with technique, for example, by putting the camera at floor level in order to film a certain number of things. Me, I live like a Japanese. My cinematographer is French, we don’t have the same lifestyle, but helps me to express a certain number of things. Nevertheless, for him it was more difficult than for me to put the camera at floor level, because his technical training did not envision that. He had to make the effort to come closer to me on this, just as I have to make the necessary efforts to approach the other, whomever it is, at every moment.

Like any human being, it preoccupies me. The same things occur in the United States as in the Ivory Coast. With respect to natural disasters, it’s the same thing in Senegal as elsewhere. Regarding military coups, it’s the same thing in Rwanda as elsewhere.

From the political point of view, there are enormous numbers of things that occur in Africa that can be explained by causes that have nothing to do with Africans. Unfortunately, on the African continent, people have a thirst for power and foreign interests divide people. One asks oneself, How do the weapons get into Rwanda? Why are there wars in Liberia and in Sierra Leone? Everyone knows that in Liberia, there are diamonds. It’s a problem of interests. Or like the story of the Tutsis vs. the Hutus in Rwanda, organized from the outset. But by whom?

Today, there are countries like Belgium, which has publicly apologized. A commission of inquiry was set up in France to better understand the extent of its implication in the genocide. But this results of this inquiry have never been made public.

All of these stories touch me enormously. It’s why I decided to make a film, a fiction film which would be my own personal perspective on these types of realities. In any case, I’m convinced that for those kinds of things to change, it’s the human being who must change.

This film speaks of a certain number of things that occur in the world. In Algeria, for example, people are killed every day. Why don’t we speak of that? When there’s a problem like September 11, all the media speaks of it. You can see the imbalance in the way that news is handled. There were 100,000 deaths in Algeria, people who were equally killed by terrorists. They speak of 4,000 deaths in New York, but in Algeria there were 100,000. It’s just as important to speak of that.

Nevertheless, I myself do not do politics; I look at what’s going on around me, like everyone, and I make images. I’m therefore going to try to make a film which will be my personal point of view on all that.

I respect women enormously because it’s women who contribute to equilibrium. When one tries to say that women don’t have power in Africa, it’s a false statement, because women have always had enormous power on our continent.

I recall the relationship that I had with my grandmother, this woman who was absolutely kind-hearted. When she spoke with men, I remember the authority that she had. And today, with my mother, I notice the same thing. I continue to have the same enormous respect for my mother that I had for my grandmother. I accept without question the advice that she gives me because I’m always certain that it’s going to be good. At home I was surrounded by women; I had many sisters. For some of them, I helped with their education. Today they are adults and continue to treat me with respect and admiration. I would never want to disappoint them by creating a negative image of women. And I refuse to show a certain number of things in my films, because I’d like my mother to be able to view my work without being disturbed or shocked.

A woman can bring me equilibrium. With a simple word, with the delicate way in which she touches me, in a few seconds she can bring me something. I respect her also for the pleasure that she offers me daily just in her person, because a man can feel great joy by nothing more than gazing upon a woman. She deserves respect if only for that.

No man can ever pretend that he truly knows a woman, even after having lived with her for 30 years. With a woman, there are always surprises. You can never live with a woman enough to know her. If only for that, for the mystery that envelopes them, I would love them.

Woman is mystery. Woman is terrible. I could film a woman eating for hours, for example, because that could translate so many things about her. I think that one must continue to give her the image of a mother, of a sister, of a lover, and perhaps also that of a danger. But I prefer to retain the mystery without trying too hard to understand it. . .

I don’t like to bring that to the screen. We Senegalese are not brought up to show certain images of women. We are not able to show sexual acts in an explicit manner on the screen. If there are today African filmmakers who do that, it’s to please a Western audience. As for me, I think of my own audience first.

To represent women in a way that we did not receive in our upbringing, that’s to forget this upbringing. You can show a hyper-sensual woman without showing her naked. I can show details, suggest powerful emotions, but I don’t need to strip her to accomplish that.

My mother has got to be able to view these images. She’s a woman who never went to school, and yet when I made the decision to go into filmmaking, even if she had no idea what that was all about, she never tried to prevent me from doing so. She has always supported me. Therefore, I cannot include images that would shock her.

I’m going to tell you a little story. I went to shoot The Price of Forgivenss in a village called Djifer, which is located 150 km. from Dakar, with very difficult access. I arrived, I had requested all the necessary authorizations from the Ministry of Culture, from the Ministry of the Interior, I had all my papers in order.

I therefore imagined that I’d be able to shoot without any problems. But at the same time I went to see the village chief. I explained to him that I wanted to make a film in his village and I needed his authorization. The old man told me that I had done well to come to him, and he assembled all the elders. They decided then to have a ceremony for the ancestors. I accepted and gave them money for the ceremony. That’s how I conceive respect for the Other.

I promised to come back to see them afterwards with the film, and I did. I returned with a "ciné-bus," a film bus, and they organized yet another ceremony for me. I made a documentary on this experience that I’ve titled Return of the Images. It was important for me to reassure them on how these images would be used, because with us lots of people still are concerned about how images of them will be used. They’re afraid of it.

Amadou Hampatâ Ba often recounted how during the colonial period the Whites used to organize open-air film screenings. He explained that one day they announced that a screening would take place in the village that night. The villagers assumed that anything that one would show them at night was necessarily something that was not clear, something that could have a relationship with hidden powers, and for them this was very disturbing. They had no knowledge of cinema technique. So when the Whites projected the film on the screen, every inhabitant of the village turned his back on the screen; they refused to look at it.

Today in certain parts of Africa there are still people who refuse to be filmed or to be photographed.

When I returned, people were very happy, because I had kept my word. Many of them, in discovering the content of the film, regretted not having participated in the adventure.

It was important for me to respect this tradition, and to reassure people. It is important for me to remain faithful to who I am.

In Africa there is a proverb that says that no matter how long a stick remains in the water, it will never become a crocodile. So for me, I remain who I am, and I try to move forward while remaining what I am.