Djibril Diop Mambéty

Cinema is Magic

Cinema is Magic offers a rare insight into the filmmaking process of one of African cinema’s foremost directors Djibril Diop Mambéty. Interspersed with clips from his films, Mambety poetically discusses his deep love of cinema and philosophical approach to life and making art. Director Silvia Voser, had a long-standing working relationship with Mambéty having worked as a producer on Le Franc (1994). Her documentary captures the auteur’s hopeful outlook on cinema and its infinite possibilities.

Mambéty

Senegalese director Djibril Diop Mambéty, one of the greatest figures in all of African film, died in 1998. In this behind-the-scenes documentary, shot during the making of his final work, The Little Girl Who Sold the Sun / La petite vendeuse de soleil, Mambéty speaks with his technicians, prepares the actors, talks with his young star, and, in voiceover, shares his thoughts on cinema and life.Mambéty doesn't differ significantly from the stock "behind-the-scenes" documentaries that adorn most DVDs nowadays, except that Mambéty's films have scenes you actually want to be taken behind. Because of the kind of attention that gets paid to African cinema, there's an initial intrigue to Mambéty, but that interest is sustained by Mambéty's own lyrical insights into his aesthetics.

Grandma's Grammar

Documentary about Djibril Diop Mambety.

Hyenas

A now-rich woman returns to her poor desert hometown to propose a deal to the populace: her fortune, in exchange for the death of the man who years earlier abandoned her and left her with his child.

Ninki Nanka, The Prince of Colobane

In April and May 1991, Djibril Diop Mambéty shot his second—and final—feature, Hyenas, a free, lyrical adaptation of Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s play The Visit, which he had been dreaming of bringing to life for years. Rather than taking the making-of approach, Ninki Nanka, The Prince of Colobane used the filming of Mambéty’s movie, which he wrote, directed, and acted in, as a pretext to examine his character. Following him throughout the shoot and also paying visits to his family and childhood friends, Laurence Gavron set off on a quest to find the real Djibril—actor, author, filmmaker, brilliant poet, rogue and clairvoyant, charmer with a big heart—in order to expose the different facets of this generous, creative, and fiercely committed vagabond spirit.

10,000 Years of Cinema

This documentary offers the reflections of filmmakers shot at FESPACO 1991. Djibril Diop Mambéty, David Achkar, Moussa Sene Absa, Mambaye Coulibaly, Idrissa Ouedraogo, Mansour Sora Wade... express their faith in the eternity of African cinema.

City of Contrasts

A fictional documentary that portrays the city of Dakar, Senegal, as we hear the conversation between a Senegalese man (the director, Djibril Diop Mambéty) and a French woman, Inge Hirschnitz. As we travel through the city in a picturesque horse drawn wagon, we chaotically rush into this and that popular neighborhood of the capital, discovering contrast after contrast: A small African community waiting at the Church's door, Muslims praying on the sidewalk, the Rococo architecture of the Government buildings, the modest stores of the craftsmen near the main market.

The Death Knell

At the beginning of the 1960s, in Salisbury (now Harare), in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), the government of Ian Smith hanged three black revolutionaries who had nevertheless been pardoned by the Queen of England. René Vautier, with ZAPU (Zimbabwe African Party for Unity), denounces this killing. Expelled by the Rhodesian police (informed by the French secret services), the filmmaker shoots a film in Algeria in the form of an indictment against colonial savagery. The film was first banned in France, then authorized in 1965.