Freedom: The Power to Say No!

🎬 Historical Background

This text was written in 1995 and published in the journal of the FEPACI (Pan-African Federation of Filmmakers). It follows a speech delivered at the Carthage Film Festival in October 1988, during the screening of the film *Bikutsi Water Blues* (*L'Eau de la misère*).

“With ideas like that and the film you made, you could ruin a career.” That remark from a colleague in 1988 still rings true. But today, with upheavals taking place all over the world, these themes are everywhere. My thoughts turn to freedom, which is essential to both personal and collective creativity and fulfillment.

A divided world: North and South, top and bottom

Broadly speaking, the world today is divided into two blocs: the NORTH and the SOUTH. In both the NORTH and the SOUTH, there are those at the top and those at the bottom. Those at the top are comfortably settled and, above all, do not want that to change. Some of those at the bottom are fighting so that everyone can have at least the bare minimum, so that most people can view daily life as something other than a nightmare.

When those at the bottom can no longer keep up and die like dogs, those at the top get all worked up, collect rice, notebooks, and pencils, and rally the media to show just how generous and compassionate they are.

Addressing the immediate crisis without tackling the root causes of the problems —especially when we have the means to do so and are partly to blame—is a sophisticated form of cynicism. In six months, as they bask in the sun, they’ll say, “We went there, we did what we could for them—what a tragedy, Africa!”

Economic activity and its pillars

But how do we explain to those at the bottom—who work ten or even twelve hours a day—that they can’t make a decent living from their work? We tell them about the current crisis affecting the whole world. The truth is that if the wages of those at the bottom were better, the profit margins of those at the top would shrink, and they would have to do without a second car to take their children to school; they could no longer afford the pied-à-terre in Paris (Avenue Foch) or the many villas they usually build with taxpayer money.

⚠️ The operating system

The sell-off of Africa’s economic assets is a game that has been going on for more than half a century and is now leading us to situations like those in Somalia and Liberia, which risk spreading to many other African countries. These systems of economic exploitation have always relied on three elements: violent repression, misinformation in the state media, and ruthless censorship.

The goal remains the same: to keep the African masses, by any means necessary, out of the day-to-day management of their country’s wealth. This also involves an inadequate and highly selective educational system, which leaves the majority of Africans behind without training, only to then bombard them with images from elsewhere and colorful dreams, all while insidiously instilling in them a contempt for their own image and their fellow human beings.

Even religion is used to justify and legitimize our earthly misery by promising us rivers of milk and honey in the afterlife—if we’re gullible enough to say, “Yes, boss, thank you, boss! You’re right, boss, as always!”

The Film Industry Faces a Dilemma

Our cinema is emerging in this turbulent socio-political climate. It must choose between immediate profitability—which would condemn it to participating in the systematic dumbing down of the continent—and contributing to this necessary reflection on freedom, even if it means becoming unpopular.

When faced with this dilemma, everyone comes up with the solution that suits them best, since interpretations of the situation often differ completely. These reflections and trends should enrich our cinema. But unfortunately, filmmaking is expensive, and we have entered an era of humanitarian aid—an era that spares no one, not even the film industry—while taking care to hide behind all sorts of well-crafted concepts.

The harmful elitism of committees

I’m not going to criticize the various commissions being set up in Northern countries to support African cinema, but I simply want to draw everyone’s attention to a tendency toward elitism that, in the long run, will not help the film industry take root in our countries, but will instead tend to foster an imitation of the European box office and a race for awards at various international festivals.

What could be more harmful than handing out self-promotional awards based on vague criteria? And all those little soundbites from experts, in the hallways of the grand hotels where the festivals take place, telling you which types of films are most likely to be shown on TV in the North, encouraging you to do this or that, and leaving you with the words: “Here, take my card; come see me in Paris, Brussels, London, Milan, or Montreal.”

All these people are part of the establishment, or they work for them; they’re friends with the local establishment. Some promise us the moon—it’s all the same, as we now know—while others whip us if we don’t move fast enough in that very direction.

Freedom means taking your time; it means choosing to step back, to stay put, or to move forward at your own pace.

Freedom as an act of resistance

Freedom means making documentaries or films on Video 8 or Super 8, especially when everyone else thinks it’s not worth the effort. It also means refusing to get caught up in that competitive spiral that prevents us from thinking beyond our next film.

To me, freedom is the power to say no… with a smile.

Source: Article published in the FEPACI journal, 1995.

Freedom: the power to say no!