The Appeal of Hybrid Documentary Forms in West Africa

The appeal of hybrid documentary forms in West Africa
Author(s): Maria Loftus

Source: French Forum , Spring/Fall 2010, Vol. 35, No. 2/3 (Spring/Fall 2010), pp. 37-55
Published by: University of Pennsylvania Press
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Maria Loftus
The appeal of hybrid documentary

forms in West Africa
Once political independence was achieved at the beginning of the

1960s, sub-Saharan African documentary filmmakers became guard-
ians of colonial memory, preserving the past and transmitting its cul-
tural heritage. They also documented the new historical path of their
countries, working with the rudimentary means at their disposal, out-
side a developed film industry. The stakes were high and the obsta-
cles real: the onus was on this first generation of African documen-
tary filmmakers to visually articulate their cultures but with little or
no trained personnel nor equipment. Cultural denigration had been
one of the principal components of the policy of assimilation imple-
mented by the French imperial regime in Afrique Occidentale Fran-
gaise. Whilst cultural nationalism reigned supreme upon the transfer
of power, the statesmen at the helm of these fledgling independent
states soon fell prey to using documentary cinema to propagate overly
flattering images of their "feats." An atmosphere of auto-congratula-
tion quickly prevailed and this genre was condemned to being the cho-
sen means to propagate state ideology.
One may note that docu-fiction has often been considered the most
appropriate form to express the vision of several filmmakers at key
moments of African cinema. For example, Afrique sur Seine (1955),
Borom Sarett (1963) and Lettre paysanne (1975), all docu-fictions,
represent respectively the first film made by an African filmmaker (al-
beit shot in France), the first African short film, and the first feature
length film directed by an African woman. What is it about this form
that answers the formal and aesthetic needs of the filmmaker at a par-
ticular moment in time?
The purpose of this article is to answer this very question by first

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38 / French Forum / Spring/Fall 2010 / Vol. 35, Nos. 2-3
exploring the different constituents of docu-fiction, as their manipula-

tion and modulation were determined by the role accorded to docu-
mentary as catalyser of change, engagement or education. I will then
proceed to examine the previously mentioned Afrique sur Seine and
demonstrate why docu-fiction was used to depict the trials and tribu-
lations of immigrant life in Paris in 1955. Particular attention will be
paid to the elaboration of a highly original and multi-faceted voice-
over. Given the importance of ethnographic film in forging a West-
ern gaze on Africa, I think it is worthwhile to explore another hybrid
form: ethno-fiction. The latter results from the crossing of ethnograph-
ic, real and imaginary discourses, and I will study their application to
the rural setting of Safi Faye's Lettre Paysanne. I will then evaluate
the extent to which ethno-fiction confronts the ample Western ethno-
graphic film canon whilst articulating a practical discourse destined
primarily for the participants in the film through the scale of camera
shots and their duration. The film Nationalite: immigre (1975) by the
Mauritanian Sidi Sokhona will constitute the final case study of this
article. This lesser known documentary represents an audacious for-
mal adventure that analyses the economic and political reasons that
incite African immigrants to leave their countries to find themselves
subsequently in precarious conditions in France. The interplay of dif-
ferent narrative devices, fictional and real, to denounce immigrant ex-
ploitation will be the focus of our analysis of this film.
Before giving a brief history of documentary practice in Franco-
phone West Africa, let us define the term "docu-fiction," as mutations
of the nomenclature are as numerous as its hybrid cinematic compo-
nents. "Docu-fiction" is the generic term used to describe the various
sub-categories of the cinematic flux between the imaginary and the
real (docu-drama, mockumentary, etc.). Various combinations of the
four basic components of "docu-fiction" determine its end "appear-
ance." These components are documentary form (voice-over, inter-
views, talking heads, etc.), documentary content (real people, places
and events), fictional form (plot and the elaboration of characters) and
fictional content (made-up characters, places and events). I will at-
tempt to ascribe a similarly specific categorization to the films com-
prising my corpus by evaluating the dialectic between documentary
form and content versus fictional form and content. This proposed
means of deconstructing documentary codes is useful as it lays bare

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Loftus: The appeal of hybrid documentary forms / 39
the film's motivational conception: militant stance, education value,

etc. However, the role accorded to African documentary or documen-
tary in Africa during the colonial period was extremely homogenous
as the following overview demonstrates.
Cinema historians cannot agree on the date of the arrival of this
medium in Africa. Jean Rouch claims that a Lumiere brother film was
shown in South Africa as early as 1 896, whilst historian Edward Hora-
tio-Jones believes that sub-Saharan Africa had to wait until 1925 to
enjoy cinematic projections (Ukadike, 31). Former Minister of Co-
operation, Jean-Ren^ Debrix, believes that George Melies shot the
documentary La marche de Dakar in Senegal in 1 906, an ironic fact
given that Melies is primarily accredited with inventing the fictional
film genre (Debrix, 7). In any case, these above disputed dates mark
the beginning of a long tradition of using Africa as a dramatic back-
drop for foreign productions, both documentary and fictional alike. It
is to be noted however that fiction films dealing with sub-Saharan sub-
jects enjoyed far greater success than their documentary homologues.
Let us mention Sanders of the River, King Solomon 's Mines, Con-
gorilla and L'Homme de Niger to name but a few. That is not to say
that documentary production in Francophone Africa was insignificant.
820 documentaries were shot in colonial French Africa between 1896
(this date being debatable for reasons previously explained) and 1955,
against 300 fiction films during the same period (Leroy, 4).
This apparent contradiction between success and production vol-
ume can be explained by the fact that documentary cinema was to be-
come an important vector in the articulation of the wonders of the im-
perial machine to European and African spectators alike. The French
government was happy, though, to allow private companies, as op-
posed to state agencies, to oversee this production. Its piece-meal cin-
ematic policy was emblematic of its larger colonial strategy, which
can be summed up by one word: assimilation. Having theoretical ac-
cess to French culture was deemed sufficient recompense for the em-
pire's colonized people and whilst the French government recognised
the power of documentary cinema as a propaganda tool, it was not
willing to co-ordinate and centralize its cinematic production, con-
trary to Great Britain, Portugal and Belgium. The most significant and
enduring decision taken by the French government in this domain was
the passing of the Laval decree in 1934, which made it compulsory

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for each director to obtain permission from the French government

before filming in the colonies. A detailed plan of what exactly was
to be filmed had to be provided, and effectively gave the French gov-
ernment total control over every image shot in Africa. More nefari-
ous still, it led all filmmakers to engage in strict self-censorship. Until
1941 no formal state censorship existed in France. Such draconian
legislation reveals the extent to which the French government was
aware of the propagandist lure of the cinematic image. This infamous
decret de Laval explains the deafening anti-colonial silence that ex-
isted in the African cinemascape of the 1950s. This contrasts with the
ever-increasing number of high profile anti-colonial essayists and agi-
tators, such as Frantz Fanon and Kwame Nkrumah. It is in the middle
of this decade that Afrique sur Seine, a documentary which holds the
proud claim to being the first sub-Saharan documentary, was filmed
by a West African student collective led by the Senegalese director
Paulin Soumanou Vieyra.
Paradoxically, Afrique sur Seine was shot in Paris, due to the pre-
viously cited Laval decree. In keeping with this reigning atmosphere
of control, a select number of young African students were given
the opportunity to go to Paris and train in some of its most presti-
gious cinema schools, principally Vlnstitut des Hautes Etudes Cine-
matographiques (IDHEC). This gesture was viewed as an act of ap-
peasement to the vociferous anti-colonial movements mobilized in
French West Africa. Vieyra was the first African graduate of the afore-
mentioned IDHEC but was denied access to return to film in Africa, so
he chose instead to capture the reality of immigrant life in Paris. The
resultant film has all the allures of an idealistic, relatively conform-
ist representation of African life in Paris in pre-independence times.
However, upon closer inspection one becomes aware of the subtle
mode of denunciation of the French colonial regime through the fine
tunings of the voice-over commentary, accompanied by images allow-
ing a wide interpretative scope. The voice-over in this film allows it to
be easily identified as a documentary but, with its subversive tone and
fictionalisation of real events, one may wonder whether it would be
more appropriate to speak of it as a docu-drama. Particular attention
will be paid to the commentary as a powerful means of circumvent-
ing censorship, thus presenting a plausible argument as to why Vieyra
elaborated this hybrid form.

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The voice-over traditionally plays the role of informer and propa-

gandist in documentary film, it fills in the spatial and temporal gaps in
the telling of a story. Conventionally, it distances itself from the im-
age and expresses itself in the third-person. The voice-over in Afrique
sur Seine does not escape these conventions but sometimes swings
into a more personal register in order to highlight the link between the
plight of the immigrant and colonization. Even though the voice-over
remains anonymous throughout the duration of the film, its own voice
gradually asserts itself more as the film progresses. A certain proxim-
ity seems to exist between the experience of the immigrants on screen
and that of the narrator. Is he identifying himself with the immigrants
or is he indirectly making his identity known to the spectator? The use
of the "nous" pronoun at the beginning of the film, which shows Afri-
can children playing in the river Niger, suggests that the story unfold-
ing on screen is also his:
A la face du soleil et des ai'euls, nous criions alors notre independance, jeunes. in-
soucieux. Nous ignorions le monde qui nous entourait. Nous ignorions les regions
qui limitaient notre petit coin de I' Afrique. Nous ignorions qu'il pourrait exister
d'autres regions 0C1 des petits noirs, de petits jaunes, de petits blancs jouaient, se
ddbattaient dans d'autres fleuves. Et nous, nous avions notre Niger, notre soleil,
notre foret, c'etait le bon temps, le temps du royaume des enfants, des enfants de
toute la terre, il y a de cela, que porte le temps.
The use of the possessive article "notre" insists on the common

past of the children and the narrator: "notre petit coin de 1' Afrique"
ou coule "notre Niger." The film conjugates the different codes of
documentary and fiction film, moving from a more distanced narra-
tive mode to one nearer to the spectator. The use of music is novel in
this film. It is always extra-diegetic and, in the previously quoted se-
quence, it is composed of children singing, making Africa, the home-
land, seem like paradise on earth. The cacophony of songs gives a
joyous character to the images. Throughout the film, the music contin-
ues to feed the sensorial experience of the spectator, remaining in the
background of the narrative space of the film. It supports the diegesis
and makes the viewer succumb to its affective manipulation. Sound is
subordinate to image in fiction, whilst in documentary the opposite is
true. Vieyra's choice to adhere to a more emotional register can be ex-
plained by his desire to make the spectator feel for the immigrant, and

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for the director to be able to hide behind the mantle of fiction if ques-
tioned by the authorities.
The joyous tone depicting traditional African scenes is no longer
to be seen in the following sequence. A slow pan shot shows Parisian
rooftops against a wintry sky. The slow enunciation of the words does
not mask their subversive content:
II fallait grandir, quitter le pays, pour Paris, capitale du monde, capitale de

I'Afrique noire. Ici la brume a remplaee le soleil, les cris des machines, ceux des
hommes de la nature. Mais Paris est le centre des espoirs, de tous les espoirs. Paris
est aussi la ville des promesses faites par les jeunes a leurs pays desheritcs. Paris,
ou sont done les chemins en or de nos contes d'enfant?
Immigration is presented here as a necessity for African adults. The

irony of the statement "Paris, capitale du monde, capitale de I'Afrique
noire" is indubitable, underlining the economic and political domina-
tion of France in West Africa in the 1 950s. However, the reverent tone
of the narrator makes the message ambiguous, the poetry inherent in
this sentence adding to its subversiveness. Indeed, this quote deftly
conveys the expectations and the pressure to succeed that the newly
arrived immigrant feels in his new host environment. The commentary
wonders where the streets paved in gold to which their childhood tales
referred are. The slow pan shot evokes an atmosphere of resignation
and stagnation, suggesting all is not rosy.
As the spectator follows a series of immigrants going about their
daily existence in Paris, the director seeks to show the correlation be-
tween success and luck, social status and education. The spectator is
challenged to seek out the unifying elements of the contrasting per-
sonifications illustrated in the film (beggar, street cleaner, restaurant
owner, student, etc.) and to evaluate how each type engages with im-
migrant life. When the camera documents life in the Latin Quarter
through a succession of frames, it stops on a group of French and for-
eign students drinking coffee outside a cafe. Everything about this mi-
lieu suggests ease and well-being, the smiling faces and the activity of
having a coffee en terrasse suggests a cosmopolitan leisurely pursuit.
This filmic construction of a multicultural harmonious micro-society
clearly centres education as the defining feature of its success. The
voice-over narration accompanies the shots by adding "Le monde au

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Quartier latin s'assemble, s'assimile pour essayer de fondre au soleil

des antiques barrieres de prejuges et des monuments de haine." It ful-
fils its descriptive function, detailing what we see on screen but also
evokes the assimilation policy of the French government, which tries
to demolish barriers of prejudice and monuments of hatred. The over-
articulation of the voice-over gives a certain irony to the scene, allow-
ing the narrative double-entendre to express itself.
The inscription of real places in the film, which allows the story to
be set in a precise and tangible locale, is another trait of docu-drama.
The monuments and streets of Paris become characters in their own
right. The most famous landmarks of Paris are chosen so that the spec-
tator can locate the action precisely in this well-known cityscape. The
voice-over narration enumerates the street names of the Latin Quar-
ter. Pan shots of buildings hover on institutions such as the Sorbonne
University. Similarly, extreme long shots inscribe the action in a place
easily recognizable to the spectator, and through these readily identi-
fiable and verifiable places, credence is added to the cinematic repre-
sentation. This renders events more real and the plight of the immi-
grants more touching. The majestic buildings of Paris are also used to
denounce the imperialist bond between France and Africa. Layering
the voice-over with ambiguous praise of Parisian monuments allows
for the questioning of France's responsibility towards the components
of its empire:
En allant d&ouvrir Paris, chercher PAfrique sur Seine, dans l'espoir de se retrou-
ver, l'espoir de se rencontrer, l'espoir de trouver la civilisation, saluons le gtfnie
des hommes de la liberty, de l'egalite. saluons les victoires pacifiques d'hommes
pacifiques. Saluons tous les monuments de Paris, temoins de grandeurs passees et
prdsentes.
Vieyra's ample use of on-location shooting raises the issue of the

role of mise en scene in documentary film. Documentary film direc-
tor Laurent Chevallier defines it simply as: "La mise en scene est
quand meme tres liee & un lieu et a un type de travail artistique precis
sur quelque chose qui a 6te imagine, ecrit" (Gauthier, 127). When he
shoots in a natural setting with real people experiencing real life situ-
ations, he prefers to use the term "mise en situation" (ibid.) According
to these criteria, the presence of both mise en scene and mise en situa-

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tion in Afrique sur Seine is undeniable. Mise en scene is present in the

sense that the narrative "events" are imagined, or at least their reality
is not verifiable. Mise en situation is also relevant as a significant part
of the action takes place outside and numerous events unfold unstaged
before the camera. Even though it is unverifiable, it is highly plausi-
ble, given what we know about the background of this film collective,
that a large part of the script is based on the true-life experiences of
its members. This mix of mise en scene and mise en situation, present
in Afrique sur Seine, adds further credence to the argument that this
film interweaves fiction and documentary threads. Its hybrid form al-
lows the collective to express dissension towards the colonial regime
in a veiled manner. At the time, the most prolific documentary genre
of that era was ethnographic film. It received ample state funding, as it
was largely perceived as apolitical; however, its days were numbered
as independence loomed on the horizon, giving rise to new mutations
in this historically rigid genre.
Sub-Saharan Africa had become a favourite place for practitioners
of ethnographic film from its earliest inception as they strove to fore-
ground the "eternal African" against the dramatic backdrop of the vast
plains of this continent. After independence, the onus was now on Af-
rican filmmakers to depict their customs and way of life. Their appro-
priation of this cinematic genre was difficult due to its colonial con-
notations, as its development was intrinsically linked to the imperial
project. However, the ability of the genre to represent and to highlight
cultural specificities incentivized sub-Saharan filmmakers to make it
their own. Ethnographic film could, in theory, be a tool of cultural
introspection, both personally and nationally, a contemporary means
of visiting the past and filling the void created by the official, dispar-
aging colonial discourse. Post-independence African filmmakers had
the chance of elaborating a counter-discourse but, on the whole, fell
into the same trap of didacticism and reification as that of their Euro-
pean homologues. The work of Safi Faye is, however, an exception.
She appropriates the genre, choosing docu-fiction, ethno-fiction to be
precise, to articulate her preoccupations and her vision of African life.
Ethno-fiction is a hybrid documentary form that mixes reality and fic-
tion, but mingled with an ethnographic concern, that is to say a de-
sire to describe and to decipher the cultural phenomena of a given
people. Jean Rouch defined ethno-fiction as a film in which "la 'fic-

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tion' s'appuie sur des recherches ethnographiques prolongdes dans le

temps" (Thompson, 327). The time spent with the filmed subject is a
fundamental element of the film, as it allows a deeper understanding
of the culture under study and facilitates a greater proximity between
the filmmaker and the person filmed. Safi Faye's work points to this
complicity but, before examining it in greater detail, some interesting
aspects of the development of Faye's career should be pointed out.
Following a chance encounter with Jean Rouch in Dakar at the
1966 Festival d'Art negre, Faye's initiation to ethnographic cinema
occurred as an actress in Rouch's Petit a petit (1971). The film is
based on the exchange of ethnocentrisms between two Africans who
go to France and the French people that they meet along their trip.
The shooting of this film was the opportunity for Faye to profession-
ally experience "cinema verite," a technique and intellectual process
to which she would adhere throughout her career, with its use of social
actors, improvised scenes and mobile camera work. She developed
a taste for cinema and returned to France a year later to study at the
prestigious Louis Lumiere Film School as well as obtain an ethnology
degree from the Ecole pratique des hautes etudes. Safi Faye's concep-
tion of the role of cinema and the filmmaker is characterized by an
underlying desire to fight against all forms of foreign domination. Her
social engagement can be read in Lettre Paysanne, a film that paints a
negative portrait of the policy of monoculture in Senegal and the tax
system. This film is a collective work, comprised of research she car-
ried out in her own village. Whilst she wrote the scenario, she spent
a considerable amount of time speaking with the farmers about their
problems. She allows them to express themselves freely in front of
the camera. In spite of some practical convergences with Jean Rouch,
her political stance differentiates her from the French ethnographer,
as well as her ardent desire for her films to have a direct educational
impact on her audience. Lettre Paysanne attempts to "give a voice to
Senegalese farmers so that they can debate amongst themselves and
present the socio-economic and political facets of their agricultural
problems" (Pfaff, 1 19).
What is interesting about this feature length black and white film is
Faye's ability to represent the traditional way of life in her village de-
void of exoticism. This film is highly personal: not only is it filmed in
her native village, but her parents and her grandfather figure amongst

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the participants. She narrates the film through the use of a voice-over
reading a letter to the villagers. Even though the spectator never sees
Faye's face, he or she knows to whom the narrative voice belongs.
This creates a sense of identification between the spectator and the
narrator by allowing the presence of the filmmaker to pervade the au-
ditory space of the diegesis. Unlike Rouch, who similarly narrates his
films, Safi Faye's commentaries lack a certain rapidity and nervous-
ness in their enunciation. The Senegalese director thereby surprises
the spectator used to the frantic masculine narration of classic ethno-
graphic films, subtly attacking the canonical patriarchy.
Her use of the letter as the structural backbone of the film is note-
worthy. It pushes the plot forward in the fictional sense but also serves
to frame her revealing of the various cultural phenomena of her vil-
lage, hence creating a unique auditory space for the spectator. The
epistolary form in this film is a one-way system in that there is no ex-
change. The spectator only hears Faye's voice speaking to an anony-
mous friend. This anonymity has great powers of suggestion, as we
wonder about the nature of the relationship between Faye and the ad-
dressee. Faye is both director and narrator, with the perversion of the
epistolary relationship from private to public being an effective ploy
in whetting the curiosity of the spectator. We feel privileged to enter
the intimate space between the director and the addressee, even if we
are aware that the letter was "written" solely to narrate the film. In ad-
dition, the enunciation of the written word is different to that used in
other narrative devices such as voice-overs, interviews and dialogues.
Each word seems more reflective, or at least the auditor, who is also
the spectator, thinks so. It is true that every voice-over is in fact read
and written by somebody but perhaps the viewer is more conscious of
this with the epistolary form, as it inscribes itself directly into the nar-
rative construction of the text. In Lettre Paysanne, the letter imbues
the more objective images with a certain sensitivity. The personal tone
allows the film to go beyond the factual tone of the traditional ethno-
graphic film. Gone is the omnipresent voice of God. The imposing
nature of the voice-over is one of the most easily recognizable fea-
tures of documentary cinema but, in Faye's film, it accompanies the
addressee and the spectator, initiating them to the personal world of
the director. This personal tone is to be felt from the first line of the
letter, which states "void mon village." The rhythm of the enunciation

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is in perfect harmony with the slowness of the sequences, often shot

in long takes. The narrator intimately recalls her parents saying: "Le
spectateur va se moquer de nous parce que nous sommes mal habilles
et nous sommes toujours en train de travailler." An inter-locution ex-
ists between the director, the spectator and the filmed subjects through
use of the pronouns "je," "nous" and "vous."
The voice-over seldom intervenes, only making itself heard when
certain scenes need clarification, such as the tradition of the young
girls of the village helping the older women in their daily tasks. In so
doing, it plays the traditional role here of bringing supplementary in-
formation to the spectator of the ethnographic film, where he or she
does not know the complex process of cultural production on which
recognition of the social object depends. Traditionally, the spectator
is dependent on the commentary in ethnographic film for the expla-
nation of phenomena in linguistic terms with which he or she is fa-
miliar. Safi Faye, however, allows the image to express itself through
the use of longer sequences, and thus elaborates a new way of show-
ing everyday life. This oscillation between the pre-eminence of the
voice-over and the image is unique and rewrites one of the fundamen-
tal codes of documentary cinema where commentary has dominated
the image.
The ethnographic interest of the film is to be found in the atten-
tion paid to everyday gestures. Safi Faye seeks out a new cinematic
language to show, explain and give value to the customs of her vil-
lage. Tasks such as carrying a baby on one's back or milking a cow
are filmed in their entirety in real time. Through close-up and extreme
close-up shots, the spectator understands the action in its finer details
whilst also discovering the environment in which it took place. The
camera is not overly explicative but illustrates the activity through a
variety of shots in a slow timeframe. For example, the director uses
a close-up shot to show a woman planting millet seeds and then pro-
ceeds to contextualise the gesture by alternating close-up shots and
long shots. Deep focus is also deployed to show the working environ-
ment of the women. The lack of commentary is noticeable in these se-
quences. The onus is on the spectator to understand the gesture and its
meaning. The recording of intradiegetic sound in the courtyard, such
as the noises of animals and insects, along with the crying of a baby,
acts as atmospheric hint to understanding the unfolding of events.

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There is nothing particularly inventive about the sound-scape in this

documentary but, as the camera attempts to progressively reveal the
reality of village life with precision, this unimaginative elaboration of
sound is easily forgiven.
Ethnographic cinema has often been criticised for its lack of po-
litical engagement, or rather the distinctively absent foregrounding of
any political concerns of the people featured in these films. Safi Faye
not only painstakingly shows the gestures required to carry out every-
day farming tasks in her village but also focuses on the economic sys-
tem that surrounds their subsistence living. In relation to her treatment
of women's role in millet agriculture, the director is not satisfied with
simply embellishing their gestures with dramatic low-angle shots of
women thrashing the crop or close-up shots of their movements. She
seeks to elicit an overall understanding of this economically fragile
system by showing a girl entering a shop in a village to exchange mil-
let for necessary goods. As a result, the spectator gets an insight into
the reality of peasant existence, whilst an alternative market system is
presented to the Western viewer. Similarly, another sequence shows a
shoe seller turning up in Safi Faye's village to peddle his wares to the
inhabitants. He approaches the villagers but they do not buy anything
from him. He would seem to be a "social actor," that is to say some-
body who is playing his real-life role, which renders his frustration at
not selling anything all the more moving. Up until now, the film has
remained in the world of the real by adhering to documentary form
(voice-over, non-professional actors, intradiegetic sounds) and docu-
mentary content (social subject matter, real-life location) with some
innovation (epistolary form, rare use of voice-over).
Let us now turn our attention to the fictional elements strewn
throughout the story and observe how it slides into a narrative whose
articulation of the real has, until now, been imbued with a tender and
novel gaze. The fictional element of the film is articulated principally
around a love story between two young people of the village: Couam-
ba and Ngor. The real or fictional status of a narrative element is dif-
ficult to define and depends on complex criteria, but a useful differen-
tiation meter is to think in terms of the shooting of the actual scene.
Would the event have taken place if the film had not been shot? Would
Ngor have left his native village for the big city in order to get money
for her dowry? We cannot definitively answer these questions but the

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love story functions as a means of revealing the regional migrant ex-

perience without having to have recourse to anonymous portraits. This
ploy introduces an affective interest in the film by requiring an emo-
tional investment on the part of the spectator. Up until now, we have
seen the elaboration of types in the narrative: the girl who is carry-
ing her brother, the women working in the field, the shoe seller. With
Couamba and Ngor we are now confronted with the portrayal of char-
acters. These fictional creations push the plot forward and carry the
story. As such, this characterization places the film outside the ethno-
graphic framework, defined by American anthropologist Walter Gold-
schmidt in the following terms: "Ethnographic film is film which en-
deavours to interpret the behaviour of people of one culture to persons
of another culture by using shots of people doing precisely what they
would have been doing if the camera were not there" (Weinberger,
150). This definition, foregrounding a quest for an immaculate reality,
is strikingly naive. The fictional depiction of the social misadventures
of Ngor brings immediacy to the story when the static and indiscrete
camera, so beloved to Walter Goldschmidt, would surely have failed
to do so.
Ngor is confronted by the social, cultural and economic difficulties
of urban life upon his arrival in the big city. Long shots are deployed
to describe the density of this city-scape and to provide snap shots of
its inhabitants. Ngor succeeds in obtaining gainful employment at a
rich woman's house but is fired shortly afterwards as she feels he does
not clean her laundry sufficiently well. The sequences depicting his
experiences at his female employer's may seem exaggerated and Man-
ichean but Safi Faye strives to reveal the hidden face of the perceived
Eldorado which is the big city. The director accords an educational
role to cinema and the fictional element allows her to lessen the didac-
tic nature of her discourse. Through the experiences of an individual,
to whom the spectator is emotionally attached, Faye sketches the por-
trait of the reality of rural exodus.
What is laudable about Lettre Paysanne is that Safi Faye suggests
practical and political solutions to subsistence farming. She deftly de-
lineates her vision of agricultural reform, clearly inciting farmers to
buy out their own land and encouraging them to engage in alterna-
tives to monocultural groundnut farming. The director manages to put
forward an economic alternative without recourse to a didactic voice-

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over. Instead, a sequence shows children acting out a theatre scene,

mimicking the confrontation between adult villagers and brutal civil
servants, the former unable to reimburse their debts to the latter. This
choice of mise en scene is an effective means of tackling a sensitive
theme whilst avoiding any awkward reconstructions. This thematic
concern is reflected in the sequences showing adults seated at the foot
of a baobab, discussing the same problem. By this juncture in the film,
the spectator has already become familiarized with the subject mat-
ter. The elders idealize the past, speaking of the abundance of rice and
cattle in bygone days. We enter their space and collective memory
through the selective use of subtitles. One man pronounces: "the state
has seized our rebate." At precisely this moment, the voice-over inter-
venes to explain the rebate system to the spectator. It fills the lacunae
in the agricultural knowledge of the spectator. But it is through the
character of Ngor, recently back from the big city, that the film de-
velops a more educational thread. Upon his return, he addresses the
council of elders, stating: "Plantons des arbres, ne les coupons pas et
la pluie tombera. A la radio on parle des projets pour fertiliser le sol.
On va instruire les paysans, leur apprendre des techniques. II faut di-
versifier ce qu'on cultive."
The presence of the script manifests itself clearly in this sequence
and reminds us of the choice of docu-fiction as the narrative mode
of the film. When Ngor announces "On va instruire les paysans," the
"on" refers to the ethnographic work of Faye, with its intended practi-
cal reach. She wants the farmers to become agents of their own desti-
ny, and this on a local and national level. Her own voice is to be heard
at the very end of the film when she says "La lettre est de moi, tout le
reste est de mes parents, agriculteurs. Je les remercie." On that note,
the rain begins to fall. The docu-fiction format permits the director to
articulate their story and to provide a follow-up by coming up with a
possible solution to their problems. The ethnographic content depicts
their daily existence and explains the reality of their existence, or rath-
er subsistence living, by distancing itself from traditional ethnogra-
phy (Pouillaude, 72). The film critic Mahama Baba Moustapha aptly
states that above this film "plane l'ombre de l'approche ethnologique"
(Moustapha, 36), an eloquent take on ethno-fiction. The ethnographic
component uses the real as a referent and fiction for its didactic reach.
Safi Faye has appropriated this hybrid form in Lettre Paysanne and

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also in her later film Fad'jal (1979) to create her own enunciatory
modality. This is perhaps where the originality and specificity of the
director reside. She does not seek to erase her cinematic signature nor
her directorial flourishes.
Let us now turn our attention to our final case study, which also
acts as a showcase in formal innovation. The film in question is Na-
tionalite: immigre( 1975) by Sidi Sokhona, who continues the militant
tendency of Safi Faye by depicting social marginalisation and the rac-
ism experienced by African immigrants in Paris, and this through the
elaboration of the hybrid form of docu-drama. Nationalite: immigre
represents an audacious aesthetic adventure examining the economic
and political reasons that incite Africans to leave their country to find
themselves subsequently in precarious conditions in France. Similarly
to other political films from that era, the ideological message of this
film prevails over the action. It denounces the injustice of the exploi-
tation of immigrants through several narrative forms: an informative
voice-over, an extradiegetic character who plays the role of narrator
and provides sporadic information, and a fictional plot that mixes fic-
titious characters and the reconstruction of real events. The narrative
thread weaves its way around the fictional world, recounting the ar-
rival of a Mauritanian immigrant in France, played by the director,
and his difficulty in finding accommodation and a job. To what extent
is the real present in this fictional work or should one speak solely
of fictional elements strewn throughout this documentary? This very
question is at the heart of this article as the mixture of constituents of
the real defines the resultant particular form of docu-fiction. Let us be
reminded that docu-drama is comprised of fictional form with docu-
mentary content, mixing realism and (melo)drama in order to deliver a
representation close to the reality of the spectator or a dramatized real
life event but in a more digestible, entertaining form. Let us examine
in greater detail possible explanations for Sidi Sokhona's use of docu-
drama as the narrative backbone of his first film.
A desire to depict an event imbued with a historical and social sig-
nificance could possibly explain the director's mixing of the real and
fiction. He wants to inform and mobilize the spectator and hence has
recourse to fictional narrative forms to facilitate his or her identifi-
cation with the character and his desperate situation. The subjectiv-
ity imposed by the fictional form arouses a feeling of empathy in the

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spectator faced with injustice and material precariousness. Cinematic

codes such as conflict and resolution help the spectator to identify the
protagonist as the victim, which is an important device in the cathar-
sis process (Rhodes and Springer, 18). Rhodes and Springer speak of
a growing tendency in docu-drama towards "focus[ing] upon 'ordi-
nary citizens'" (14). This "ordinary man" nature gives the spectator
the impression that other immigrants could also go through what Sidi
Sokhona's character is experiencing on screen. As docu-drama tends
to treat ideologically "heavy" themes, directors often have recourse
to particular narrative elements to convince the spectator of the le-
gitimacy of their sentiments (ibid., 5). Nationalite: immigre also suf-
fers from this thematic "heaviness," but we can excuse his didactic
militancy given the urgent need at that particular time to raise public
awareness of the plight of the immigrant in Paris. We shall see how-
ever that this film is not a "pure bred hybrid," if such a term exists, as
certain sequences contain documentary forms and content such as in-
terviews with immigrants in the street. It is the alternation between the
real, docu-drama and fiction that interest us in Nationalite: immigre,
creating a variation of this hybrid form that regularly reinvents itself.
Sidi Sokhona's defence of his use of a hybrid form is interesting
as he simply states that he incorporated fictional elements in his film
in order to be better able to reach an immigrant audience. According
to him, other immigration films "avaient un defaut, c'est qu'il y avait
toujours un large commentaire qu'un tres faible pourcentage de tra-
vailleurs pouvaient suivre. C'est ce qui m'a amene a faire un peu de
fiction pour que ceux qui ne peuvent pas suivre au commentaire, puis-
sent suivre a 1'image" (Daney, Le Peron and Oudart, 27). His musings
testify to the pre-eminence of image over word in fictional film where-
as in documentary the word can exist independently, floating over the
image. He further explains:
J'ai voulu faire une fiction parce que dans le documentaire, tout repose sur le son. Et
chez les immigres, c'est quelque chose de tres imposant, de tres lourd, surtout quand
il s'agit de la langue frangaise. Dans le Foyer oil je suis, il y a par exemple trois
cents personnes, mais il y en a a peu pres seize qui savent lire et ecrire. (ibid., 33)
Even though Sidi Sokhona describes this film as a fiction with re-
constructed events, he clearly states that all the characters we see on

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screen really exist. This mixture of reality and fiction allows us to cat-
egorize it as a docu-drama. Given the narrative complexity of the film
and the confines of this article, I will limit my analysis of formal in-
vention to the multifaceted voice-over. Before doing so however, here
is a summary of the film as articulated by the director:
En 1970, je suis devenu iocataire du Foyer Riquet oil il y eut une grfcve des loyers.
L'idee ctait de faire un film sur cette greve [. . .] Dans le film, je joue mon propre
r61e; j'aurais voulu que quelqu'un d' autre le joue, mais je ne pouvais pas mobiliser
un travailleur comme 5a, sans le payer, (ibid., 26)
One of the most striking aspects of this film is the elaboration of

a highly theatrical and surreal voice-over. It takes the physical form
of a French man seated on a chair in the middle of a forest. He is not
a character per se in the film and as such can be interpreted as a vis-
ible voice-over belonging to the domain of the narration of the film.
The body-less voice-over usually manifests itself in two main forms
in documentary: the anonymous voice-of-God or that belonging to an
individual living in the diegesis of the film (character or director). In
Nationalite: immigre, the spectator can see to whom the voice-over be-
longs but does not know who the person is. In the previously evoked
sequence, the "visible voice-over" stares at the camera and explains
the economic and historical context of previous sequences, stating that
French employers like to hire illegal immigrants as they can pay them
less than their legal homologues. This explanation follows a rather
Brechtian opening sequence, showing a series of immigrants on their
knees with signs in their mouths denoting where they are going to live
in Paris: slums, immigrant shelters and suburbs. The intervention of the
"visible voice-over" is crucial in illuminating the previous sequence.
This original embodied voice-over intervenes later in the film to
contextualize images the spectator will later discover. It states:
Pour bien comprendre la presence des travailleurs immigres, il faut se dire

qu'apres la Seconde Guerre mondiale, le patronat en Europe, face & une classe ou-
vriere prete il dtSfendre ses interets, est obligtS de faire venir les travailleurs immi-
gres en isolant et opposant les travailleurs locaux pour mieux les exploiter.
This last assertion is accompanied by images of Sidi looking for

work. The "visible voice-over" deconstructs its traditional, authori-

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tative role in documentary. It draws attention to its existence and re-

moves all informative objectivity. At the end of the film, the spectator
still does not know who this person in the forest is - he would seem to
simply be a narrator without any influence on the unfolding of events
in the film. Even though the voice-over is personified, it remains im-
personal. It would perhaps be more pertinent to speak of an anony-
mous personification of a voice-over. Traditionally, the personifica-
tion of a voice-over adds credence to its enunciations. In Nationalite:
immigre, it follows and breaks with traditional narrative documentary
codes. It contextualizes sequences and events in order to clarify con-
tent for the spectator but physically presents itself as an anonymous
character. If its anonymous nature reminds us of the traditional, om-
niscient voice-over, its physical manifestation is novel and audacious.
However, in an interview given to Cahiers du cinema in 1976, Sidi
Sokhona offers an alternative interpretation of the man on the chair
as the incarnation of a 1970s leftist (ibid., 30). The latter no longer
understands the reality of the immigrant experience and disengages
from the struggle: "Son discours est suspendu, en suspens. £a ne veut
pas dire qu'il est annuls, ridiculise, depassd. (^a veut dire qu'il est mis
entre parentheses" (ibid., 30). The director's interpretation is signifi-
cantly more political than a simple structural vision. The anonymous
character's inaction and sedentary nature are in fact an overt criticism
of the absence of support for immigrants from the left. Sidi Sokho-
na's desire to attribute new forms to already existing narrative devices
is impressive. He is sure of the message he wants to articulate and
pushes traditional documentary codes in order to ensure that it reaches
his target audience.
In his article " Borom Sarret: la fiction documentaire," the historian
Maxime Scheinfeigel presents docu-fiction as a characteristic element
of African cinema (Scheinfeigel, 32). This theory is problematic giv-
en that the boundary between fiction and documentary is not always
clear. In addition, it is possible to distinguish a corpus of documen-
taries that contain no fictional elements, principally those of Paulin
Soumanou Vieyra dating from the 1950s. However, the preponderance
of ideological motifs creates a certain unity amongst the hybrid docu-
mentaries we have examined in this article. Paulin Soumanou Vieyra's
Afrique sur Seine had to deal with stifling state censorship in all mat-
ters relating to the colonies, so that docu-fiction allowed him more

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creative leeway to hide behind an apparently apolitical voice-over.

Safi Faye's work is dominated by a collaborative approach that aims at
cultural re-evaluation by mixing educational elements from ethnogra-
phy with fictional codes. The elaboration of docu-drama by Sidi Sok-
hona can be explained in terms of the type of audience he wishes to
reach where the pre-eminence of image over word is a prerequisite.
All three foreground the survival instincts of their protagonists, with
fictional codes facilitating spectator identification with the characters.
The subjective vision of the world, delineated differently by each di-
rector, is all the more striking because the intersection between the
real and fiction is in a perpetual state of flux.
Dublin City University ( Ireland )
Works Cited
Daney, Serge (with Le Peron, Serge and Oudart, Jean-Pierre), "Entretien avec Sidney Sokhona,"
Cahiers du cinema , 265, Paris, 1976, p. 26-33.
Debrix, Jean R., "Le cinema africain," Afrique contemporaine , n° 38-39, Georges Leygnac (ed.),
Paris, La Documentation fran^aise, 1968, p. 7-12.
Gauthier, Guy, Le Documentaire, un autre cinema , Paris, Nathan, 1995.
Leroy, Eric, "Le fonds cin£matographique colonial aux Archives du film et du depot Idgal du
CNC (France)," Journal of Film Preservation , 63, Bruxelles, 2001, p. 55-59.
Moustapha, Mahama Baba, "Lettre paysanne," Cinemarabe , 6, Paris, 1977.
Pfaff, Frangoise, Twenty-five Black African Filmmakers , New York, Greenwood Press, 1988.
Pouillaude, Jean-Luc, "Lettre paysanne," Positif n° 188, 1976, p. 72.
Rhodes, Gary D. and Springer, John Parris (eds.), Docufictions. Essays in the Intersection of
Documentary and Fictional Filmmaking , Jefferson, N.C., McFarland and Company, 2006.
Scheinfeigel, Maxime, Jean Rouch , Paris, CNRS Editions, 2008.
Thompson, Clem W. (ed.), L' Autre et le Sacre: surrealisme, cinema, ethnologie , Paris, L'Har-
mattan, 1995.
Ukadike, Nwachukwu Frank, Black African Cinetna, Berkeley, University of California Press,
1993.
Weinberger Eliot, "The Camera People," in Warren, Charles (ed.), Beyond Document. Essays on
Nonfiction Film , Middletown, Wesleyan University Press, 1996, p. 137-168.

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The Appeal of Hybrid Documentary Forms in West Africa

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The appeal of hybrid documentary forms in West Africa

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