Burkina Faso
Gaston J-M Kabore
Buud Yam arrives in Cannes already a winner. In the spring, it
carried away the prestigious Etalon De Yenenga (the African
equivalent of the Palme D'Or) at the Pan-African Film Festval in
Ougadougou. It is the third feature by Burkina Faso's Gaston J-M
Kabore, one of the most influential filmmakers working in Africa
today.
Perhaps surprisingly, Kabore describes the film, which is set in the early part of the 19th Century, as partly autobiographical. 'I think that every film takes its director back on journeys he or she has made previously. A film has truth in it precisely because in some way it reveals one's own story.'
The narrative unfolds like a piece of African folklore. The main character is again Wend-Kuuni (Serge Yanogo), a young man who was orphaned as a child and brought up by an adoptive family. (Kabore's earlier film, Wend-Kunni, tells of how he was discovered abandoned in the bush, a dumb, traumatised 7-year-old.) His step-parents dote on him, but the other villagers shun him because he is an outsider. When his adoptive sister falls ill, Wend-Kuuni is blamed. Desperate to restore her health, he sets off on an epic journey in search of 'the lion's herbs,' a remedy described to him by a village elder.
Buud-Yam had a long gestation. 'I began to write the script for this film in 1990,' Kabore remembers. Despite the lyricism and deceptively simple structure, the director insists that the film has a serious political subtext. Like his fellow countryman Idrissa Ouedraogo (whose Kini & Adams screens in competition), Kabore believes it is crucial that African filmmakers look to their own culture, 'our art of storytelling, our sense of rhythm and our view of the world,' in their work rather than imitate movies from elsewhere.
Buud Yam, he claims, 'deals with what builds up or destroys the world and humanity: none other than the acceptance of difference, tolerance and dialogue or fear of the other, mistrust, intolerance, exclusion...' Geoffrey Macnab
Prod Co: Cinecom Production, Caroline Productions
Prod: Gaston J-M Kabore, Bruno Hodebert
Dir/Scr: Gaston J-M Kabore
Ph: Jean-Noel Ferragut
Art Dir: Joseph Kpobly
Ed: Didier Ranz
Cast: Serge Yanogo, Amssatou Maiga, Severine Oueddouda
Running Time: 97 mins
Int Sales: Mainstream SA
