Adama Drabo, whose 1991 film Ta-Donna screened in Un Certain Regard, is back, with Taafe fanga, winner of the special jury prize at 1997's FESPACO Festival in Ouagadougou. It is the second film from Mali to appear at Cannes this year (the other being Abdoulaye Ascofare's Faraw! screened in Critics' Week).
The film's title translates as "the power of the pagne". The pagne is a length of cotton women wrap around their bodies and symbolises womanhood. Based on an ancient legend in the oral tradition of the Dogon, who live in north-eastern Mali, the film describes a moment in Dogon history when women took power using the first mask possessed by men.
Drabo originally wrote the story as a play, then decided to adapt it to film. The setting is timeless he says, "It could have just as well taken place two or five hundred years ago as the day after tomorrow in an African village."
Audiences in Mali, where the film opened last month, have been queueing up to see the film despite the dilapidated state of the country's cinemas, which were recently put up for sale by the Mali government. (Under the former military regime, they had been given away to the brother of the president's wife.) Pressure from the African filmmakers' union, FEPACI, however, has ensured that the buildings will, for now, remain as cinemas.
Filmmaking in a poor country like Mali is hard, and trying to establish proper distribution, without government support, is even harder. Drabo, other filmmakers please note, has to print the tickets for his screenings himself.
But even the Mali government acknowledges the value of African filmmakers telling African stories for audiences in Africa and beyond.
Nick Thomas
Prod co: CNPC/Taare
Film Dir/scr: Adama Drabo
Ph: Lionel Cousin
Sound: Pierre Gauthier
Art dir: Kletigui Dembele
Ed: Rose Evans-Decraene
Music: Harouna Barry
Cast: Fanta Berete, Ramata Drabo, Ibrahim Koita, Helene Diarra, Teneman Sanogo, Michel Sangare
Running time: 102 mins
Int sales: c/o Atria/Atriascop, Paris
