Each language has its own music and its practice need not be reduced to the mere function of communicating meaning. The repetition I made use of has, accordingly, nuances and differences built within it, so that repetition here is not just the automatic reproduction of the same but rather the production of the same within differences.
When I had seen
enough to see it in detail, rather than just letting it flow by, I noticed something that strikes me as very unusual. When you focus on a subject, you don't see it from a single plane. Instead, you move to different positions near and far and from side to side. You don't try to choose a view of the subject; you explore various ways of seeing it.
This is a great description of what is happening with the
in
but I'll have to expand on it a little more. It is common practice among filmmakers and photographers to shoot the same thing more than once and to select only one shotthe 'best' onein the editing process. Otherwise, to show the subject from a more varied view, the favored formula is that of utilizing the all-powerful zoom or curvilinear traveling shot, whose totalizing effect is assured by the smooth operation of the camera.
Whereas in my case, the limits of the looker and of the camera are clearly exposed, not only through the repeated inclusion of a plurality of shots of the same subject from very slightly different distances or angles (hence the numerous jump-cut effects), but also through a visibly hesitant, or as you mentioned earlier, incomplete, sudden, and unstable camera work. (The zoom is avoided in both
and
and diversely acknowledged in the more recent films I have been making.) The exploratory movements of the cameraor structurally speaking, of the film itselfwhich some viewers have qualified as 'disquieting,' and others as 'sloppy,' is neither intentional nor unconscious.
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It does not result from an (avant-garde) anti-aesthetic stance, but occurs, in my context, as a form of reflexive body writing. Its erratic and unassuming moves materialize those of the filming subject caught in a situation of trial, where the desire to capture on celluloid grows in a state of nonknowingness and with the understanding that no reality can be 'captured' without transforming.
The subject stays in its world and you try to figure out what your relationship to it is. It's exactly the opposite of 'taking a position': it's seeing what
positions reveal.
That's a useful distinction.
Your interest in living spaces is obvious in
and more obvious in
. You also did a book on living spaces.
In Burkina Faso, yes. And in collaboration with Jean-Paul Bourdier.
Did your interest in living spaces precede making the films or did it develop by making them?
The interest in the poetics of dwelling preceded
. It was very much inspired by Jean-Paul, who loves vernacular architecture and has been doing research on rural houses across several Western and non-Western cultures. We have worked together as a team on many projects.
evolves around an 'empty' subject. I did not have any preconceived idea for the film and was certainly not looking for a particularized subject that would allow me to speak
Senegal. In other words, there is no single center in the filmno central event, representative individual or individuals, or unifying theme and area of interest. And there is no single process of centering either. This does not mean that the experience of the film is not specific to Senegal. It is
related to Senegal. A viewer once asked me, 'Can you do the same film in San Francisco?' And I said, 'Sure, but it would be a totally different film.' The strategies are, in a way, dictated by the materials that constitute the film. They are bound to the circumstances and the contexts unique to each situation and cultural frame.
In the processes of emptying out positions of authority linked to knowledge, competence, and qualifications, it was important for me in the film to constantly keep alive the question people usually ask when someone sets out to write a book or in this case, to make a film: 'A film about Senegal, but what in Senegal?' By 'keeping alive' I mean, refusing to package a culture, hence not settling down with any single answer, even when you know that each work generates its own constraints and limits. So what you see in
are people's daily activities: nothing out of the ordinary, nothing 'exotic,' and nothing that constitutes the usual focal points of observation for anthropology's
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