UID:
kobvindex_ZLB13810835
Format:
1 Videokassette (VHS, 86 Min.)
,
NTSC
Series Statement:
Library of African Cinema : [Video]
Content:
This first feature film from Chad brings the reflexive filmmaking of Fellini's 8 1/2 and Truffaut's Day for Night to African cinema. Director Mahamat-Saleh Haroun presents what he calls a "documentary fiction" but which might just as well be called a fictional documentary about the making of a film of the same name, Bye Bye Africa. Like Abderrahmane Sissako in Rostov-Luanda and La vie sur terre, Haroun casts himself - or, more precisely, a fictionalized version of himself - as the central character of his "documentary." This focus on the process of filmmaking makes Bye Bye Africa one of the first films to address the technical and economic difficulties of film production in Africa while at the same time demonstrating the potential of new digital video technology...Haroun motors around N'djamena, Chad's war-torn capital, with a black and white video camera and finds the exotically named movie houses, the Etoile, the Vogue and the Normandie, where as he was first intoxicated by cinema, in ruins. No one goes to the movies any more; as a result of the wars these public places have been abandoned in favor of smaller, makeshift video theatres, often mere extensions of private homes...Bye Bye Africa embodies a paradox; Haroun compares it to a Russian egg, one film inside the other. It is a film about the impossibility of making films in Africa, which by its very existence demonstrates the possibility of a new kind of African cinema. Although it may not be the Bye Bye Africa he originally envisioned, the actual Bye Bye Africa, we're watching explores a new production paradigm using low-cost digital technology, non-professional actors and improvisation. Thus Haroun's farewell to Africa becomes a return to Africa and to a viable style of African filmmaking, whose backdrop is not some fictionalized Africa but the daily struggles of African life. (California Newsreel)
Note:
Orig.: Tschad/Frankreich, 1999
,
Arab., und franz., mit engl., Untertiteln
Language:
Arabic
Keywords:
Tschad
;
Filmproduktion
;
Film
;
Videokassette
;
Videokassette
