was shot in 1981 well after my stay there. Although I had by then seen quite a number of films and was familiar with the history of Western cinema, I can't say this was a determining factor. I had done a number of Super-8 films on diverse subjects before, but
was my first 16mm.
You mentioned you were looking at films before you went to Senegal. Were you looking at the way in which Senegal or other African cultures were portrayed in film?
No, not at all. Despite my having been exposed to a number of nonmainstream films from Europe and the States at the time, I must say I was then one of the more passive consumers of the film industry. It was when I started making films myself that I really came to realize how obscene the question of power and production of meaning is in filmic representation. I don't really work in terms of influence. I've never been able to recognize anything in my background that would allow me neatly to traceeven momentarilymy itinerary back to a single point of origin. Influences in my life have always happened in the most odd, disorderly way. Everything I've done comes from all kinds of directions, certainly not just from film. It seems rather clear to me that
did not come from the films I looked at, but from what I had learned in Senegal. The film was not realized as a reaction to anything in particular, but more I would now say, as a desire not to simply
. What seemed most important to me was to expose the transformations that occurred with the attempt to materialize on film and between the frames the impossible experience of 'what' constituted Senegalese cultures. The resistance to anthropology was not a motivation for the making of the film. It came alongside other strong feelings, such as the love that one has for one's subjects of inquiry.
So the fact that you found a film form different from what has become conventional as a means of imaging culture was accidental . . .
Not quite accidental, because there were a number of things I did not want to reproduce in my work: the kind of omniscience that
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pervades many films, not just through the way the narration is being told, but more generally, in their structure, editing, and cinematography, as well as in the effacement of the flmmakers, or the invisibility of their politics. But what I rejected and did not want to carry on came also
the making of
. While I was filming, for example, I realized that my preoccupations often conformed to the norms of anthropology, and the challenge was to depart from them without merely resorting to self-censorship.
Often in
there'll be an abrupt movement of the camera or a sudden cut in the middle of a motion that in a normal film would be allowed to have a sense of completion. Coming to the films from the arena of experimental moviemaking, I felt familiar with those kinds of tactics. Had you seen much of what in this country is called 'avant-garde film' or 'experimental film'? I'm sorry to be so persistent in trying to relate you to film! I can see it troubles you.
[Laughter] I think it's an interesting problem because your attempt is to situate me somewhere in relation to a film tradition, whereas I feel that experimentation is an attitude that develops with the making process when one is plunged into a film. As one advances, one explores the different ways that one can do things without having to lug about heavy belongings. The term 'experimental' becomes questionable when it refers to techniques and vocabularies that allow one to classify a film as 'belonging' to the 'avant-garde' category. Your observation that the film foregrounds certain strategies not foreign to experimental filmmakers is accurate, although I would add that when
first came out, the experimental/avant-garde film world had as many problems with it as any other film milieu. A man who has been active in experimental filmmaking for decades, for example, said, 'She doesn't know what she's doing.'
So, while the techniques are not surprising to avant-garde filmmakers, the film still does not quite belong to that world of filmmaking. It differs perhaps because it exposes its politics of representation instead of seeking to transcend representation in favor of visionary presence and spontaneity, which often constitute the prime criteria for what the avant-garde considers to be Art. But it also differs because all the strategies I came up with in
were directly generated by the material and the context that define the work. One example is the use of repetition as a transforming, as well as rhythmic and structural device. Since making the film, I have seen many more experimental films and have sat on a number of grant panels. Hence I have had many opportunities to recognize how difficult it is to reinvent anew or to defamiliarize what has become common practice among filmmakers. It was very sad to see, for example, how conventional the use of repetition proved to be in the
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realm of 'experimental' filmmaking. This does not mean that one can no longer use it, but rather that the challenge in using it is more critical.
I still think that in
repetition functions very differently than in many of the films I have seen. For me, it's not just a technique that one introduces for fragmenting or emphasizing effects. Very often people tend to repeat mechanically three or four times something said on the sound track. This technique of looping is also very common in experimental music. But looping is not of particular interest to me. What interests me is the way certain rhythms came back to me while I was traveling and filming across Senegal, and how the intonation and inflection of each of the diverse local languages informed me of where I was. For example, the film brought out the musical quality of the Serer language through untranslated snatches of a conversation among villagers and the varying repetition of certain sentences.
