Discussion with African filmmakers

1. Footage Lost and Found: A Roundtable on Africa’s Displaced and Silenced Film Heritage. With Jihan El-Tahri, Ali Essafi, Nii-Kwate Owoo and Jean-Marie Téno

Nikolaus Perneczky: Jihan, you are a producer, director, writer, visual artist, and educator, and you have been a filmmaker for many years, mainly of documentaries, among them Cuba, une odyssée africaine (Cuba, an African Odyssey, 2007) and Behind the Rainbow (2008). In all these sundry capacities, you have been piecing together untold and erased histories from all parts of the African continent and its diaspora, often from an explicitly pan-African perspective, and much of it based on rare historical footage sourced from archives in Africa, Europe, and elsewhere in the world. At the 2022 Berlin Biennale, you presented an installation work entitled “Complexifying Restitution” that included a found footage film comprising fragments of archival images with superimposed price tags, which displayed the prohibitive costs of licensing these same images. That work raises and at the same time complicates the question of moving image restitution, which also happens to be the purpose of this conversation. To get us started, could you tell us about some notable archival encounters you have had over the course of your long and varied career? What drew you to the archive in the first place? And following on from there, what challenges have you faced in accessing and licensing film footage of Africa’s colonial and postcolonial past? Finally, what led you to foreground the image struggles that you have been fighting behind the scenes for quite some time now in your more recent work?1

Jihan El-Tahri: My first encounter with archives was rather odd. From the age of fifteen, I was obsessed with flea markets, and in my youth, I would go to this Tuesday market in Egypt where they used to sell film cans—it was the cans rather than the films that were worth money. The market vendors would take out the celluloid, throw it away, and sell the can, and I would collect the celluloid they had discarded, ending up with a massive roll of God-knows-what. I was intrigued as I didn’t have a light box to view the celluloid and see what was there. One day when I went to pick up the celluloid, I found the vendors hadn’t thrown it away. Somebody told me they had made a deal with the jewelers who came to take it all: they would melt down the celluloid and take the silver out of it for jewelry. I think that was a real turning point for me: the sudden realization that these images would no longer exist, that they would be turned into trinkets. I began asking myself how to use those images, how to find out what was in them, how to save them somehow—that formed part of my consciousness, long before I became a filmmaker. Indeed, my very first job was as a photographer, so initially it was the single frame rather than the moving image that interested me. Challenges emerged as soon as I had decided to work with the archive. In the mid-1980s, this idea seemed strange to many. It was understood that you only worked with the archive if you had no other alternative. Seeking access to archives as part of a film project was seen as an unreasonable request. What I really wanted to do was to go beyond the colonial archive. My first objective was to seek out the places from which I was telling the story, that is to say, I tried to find archival material either in people’s homes or to get access to the archives of what were by then national television or cinema parastatals, which turned out to be extremely challenging. I realized fairly quickly that I wouldn’t be able to work exclusively from locally sourced images; that I would have to combine them with archives abroad. And yet my quest was always to find ways to minimize the part taken up by the colonial archive. That said, accessing Western archives wasn’t always that prohibitive. When I started out as a filmmaker in the 1980s, all you had to pay were transfer fees, because nobody really thought these collections were worth anything. There has been a real transformation in the past twenty years, whereby archives have become valorized as assets. At the other extreme, I would spend twelve, thirteen, sometimes eighteen months begging our own national archives to let me in. And then, when you’re finally admitted and start looking around, termites jump into your face as soon as you open those boxes and cans. It’s very disheartening. I think the biggest challenge for a filmmaker lies in learning how to recognize the importance of continuing that struggle, despite those disappointments. And to keep the focus on why you believe it is important, because if you lose sight of that, it’s just not worth it. I remember a visit to a Congolese archive, where I struck a deal with the custodian to grant me a peek at their holdings in exchange for my labor: I spent many hours logging what was in there, just to be let in. And every time I thought I had found what I was looking for, the contents turned out to be completely disintegrated. I fainted at least three times because of the nitrogen. You just go out cold. It’s a real undertaking. You have to believe that it’s important to go on.

Nikolaus Perneczky: I’m struck by your anecdote of the silver extracted from discarded celluloid, because it articulates two sides of your experience which may otherwise seem disconnected: the pervasive neglect of film heritage on the one hand, and its substantial monetary value on the other. I would now like to turn to Jean-Marie Téno, who is one of the most notable documentary filmmakers working today. Jean Marie, you have been making essay films on the colonial and postcolonial history of Africa and your native Cameroon for over thirty years, in addition to the narrative feature Clando (1996).2 In many of your films, but perhaps most prominently in the critically acclaimed Afrique, je te plumerai (Africa, I Will Fleece You, 1992), you quote archival footage from the colonial era, ranging from newsreels to other kinds of colonial propaganda.3 It is important to note that in Francophone West Africa, these are frequently the only moving images to survive from that period, since under French colonial rule Africans were effectively barred from making films of their own.4 How did you come about the images used in Afrique, je te plumerai? How did you gain access, on what terms were you granted right of use, and—picking up on Jihan’s remark that obtaining archival films used to be less onerous—have you observed any notable changes regarding access to archives in the intervening thirty-plus years?

Jean-Marie Téno: I tell stories, and when I tell stories that have a relationship to the past, I look for material that exists of that time, wherever I can find it. It is true that the colonial archive was all I had at first. In fact, we do also have newsreels from Cameroon, but most of these were processed in France and stocked by Pathé. At one point, I believe it was towards the end of the 1980s, there was a big debate as Pathé wished to grant the Cameroonian government some degree of access to all the newsreels dating back to the Independence era. But nobody wanted to take responsibility. We approached the Ministry of Culture, but they were not really interested. They looked at these newsreels, which had been shot in Cameroon and were then sent to France to be processed, edited, and fitted with a patronizing French voice-over. Most of these newsreels were of the President inaugurating this or that building, but they are valuable images regardless. Yet the Cameroonian Ministry of Culture didn’t bother to claim this archive. I’m not sure what has become of it.5 For my part, I first encountered archival footage while working on a short film called Hommage (1985). I realized then that the French Ministry of Cooperation had made a film in Cameroon documenting the moment of Independence. I went there and said, “I need some of his footage,” and they just handed over the print, adding they would be happy for me to make a copy, which is what I did. And I’ve been using this exact 16 mm footage of Cameroonian Independence ever since, in all my films from Hommage to Afrique, je te plumerai (1992) to La Tête dans les nuages (Head in the Clouds, 1994) and on to Une feuille dans le vent (Leaf in the Wind, 2014). One might say that this footage suddenly became my property, because nobody at the time wanted to claim it and there was no copyright. So I just took what interested me and kept using it over and over. When I was looking for additional footage for Afrique, je te plumerai, someone told me there was a lot of material at the French army’s audiovisual service. In 1991, when I was working on that film, the army was in the process of reorganizing its archive. It was students doing their military service who were charged with this reorganization, sorting and labeling all this footage, which was not only of Africa but from all parts of the world, everywhere the French army had been on this globe. When I sought out this archive, I was told they were still reorganizing their collections, but that I could go and meet these young people who were doing all the real work—and so I did. I told them I’m planning a film on the history of Cameroon and would like to see what had been filmed by the army. They gathered all the relevant footage they could find, much of which they had never seen themselves. What was interesting is that these young men, in their early twenties, were shocked when they finally did take a look at this footage, because the voice-over commentary was so condescending, so horrible. Every time I visited, they enthusiastically showed me all the horrible things they had found. After around a month of weekly visits, it was time for me to leave. I asked how much it was going to cost, and they said: “We have no idea. These are your images, we cannot charge you for them.” But when they asked their supervisor, he objected: “You can’t give it to him for free!” In the end we made a deal based on a flat fee of something around 1,000 French francs. It was a symbolic amount, and I paid, in exchange for all the material I needed. I left with almost one hour of colonial-era footage. I didn’t keep all of it, which was a big mistake. I don’t even know where all of it is today. I used what interested me in Afrique, je te plumerai, not realizing how important all this footage would become. When the French army was done reorganizing their archive, I had been priced out: I could no longer afford to license any of it. In 1991, when I came to London to work on an edit of the film with Black Audio Film Collective, a lady working at the British Film Institute (BFI) told me they also had some colonial-era footage from Cameroon, shot by a German cinematographer. This film had been taken from the Nazis during the war, and no credits were attached. I was given this footage, showing familiar places in Cameroon, and used it in the film. When the film aired on television, the wife of the German cinematographer recognized herself in some of the images and contacted me to say she had more. At that time, I didn’t know where to store it all, so I approached people I thought might be able to help, but to no avail. That was in 1992. I already had all the elements I needed for the film. Beyond what the story requires, frankly, I wasn’t not too concerned with the question of the archive. Today I am trying to archive and preserve my own footage. When I recently showed a film I made thirty-five years ago, people were asking if it is preserved in some archive. In truth it’s all kept in Cameroon, but there are many issues, not least the difficult climatic conditions. In sum, my relationship to archival images is rather pragmatic. I will use them if they help me address issues that are unresolved or to illuminate a moment in time. That’s what is important to me. In my more recent work, I’ve been focusing more and more on the present, but of course the archive keeps coming back. Now that I started a program training young people in Cameroon to tell stories about the country’s cultural heritage, I am again confronted with these questions.6 And because there is no archive in Cameroon—apart from some paper archives that are in a very poor state—audiovisual archival documents are almost non-existent. Television stations have kept very little of their own history. Most film materials were discarded. The cans are languishing in some basement and are no longer usable. It’s a very complex and heartbreaking situation, because things are not really changing. People are not preserving what we have, so I feel quite lost when it comes to this question of archives. One thing I would like to add by way of conclusion is that when I reclaimed all these archival images from the colonial era, I used them in a deconstructive way, letting them say everything they were saying at the time, but adding to that a counter-discourse. In Afrique, je te plumerai I retained everything the material was saying, reflecting the mentality of those behind the camera. But on top of that I layered my own narration, my own voice, to counter this mentality and express how I feel about it. I was letting the viewer understand where we came from, and what kind of relationship colonial cinema produced between those who were filming and those who were filmed.

Nikolaus Perneczky: My next question is for Ali Essafi. Ali, you are a documentary filmmaker and a visual artist born in Morocco and based in France. Your work straddles the festival circuit and contemporary art spaces; more recently, following in the footsteps of your ancestor, the Moroccan author and filmmaker Ahmed Bouanani, you have also become a film historian.7 Wearing these different hats, you have been on an archival spree for some time now. Your last two films, Al bab al sabea (Crossing the Seventh Gate, 2017) and Before the Dying of the Light (2020), take the viewer on a deep dive into the history of Moroccan film culture. The first film is an homage to Bouanani, who not only wrote the first history of Moroccan cinema but has also worked with archival footage as a filmmaker, and was himself a kind of “living archive” of Moroccan culture;8 the second recounts the history of Morocco’s Years of Lead, the repressive rule of King Hassan II from the 1960s to the 1980s, as told through images you’ve gleaned from the archive of Moroccan cinema. The Moroccan Film Centre (Centre cinématographique marocain, CCM), which was founded in 1944, holds Moroccan films, films made in Morocco under the French Protectorate, and African films from other countries such as Senegal and Mali. These important collections are in urgent need of restoration and conservation, but they are also notoriously difficult to access, owing to institutional gatekeeping and a long history of authoritarian rule that has also led to a dispersal of Moroccan film heritage. The footage you use in your archival documentary on the Years of Lead is taken from Mostafa Derkaoui’s About Some Meaningless Events (1974), a film that was suppressed in 1974 but has returned to us now via Spain, where surviving prints were found some years ago and have since been restored by the Filmoteca de Catalunya.9 Could you tell us about what drew you to the archive of Moroccan cinema in the first place? What are the specific challenges that you were confronted with as a filmmaker working with state archives that are difficult to access? Finally, what have you discovered on your long—and ongoing—archival journey about the current situation of Morocco’s film heritage?

Ali Essafi: I’m taken aback by your question because only fifteen years ago I was completely disconnected from the archive, like so many people in Morocco and in North Africa more generally. I would never have imagined that one day I would be making a film based entirely on archival footage. I first came to the archive by accident. When I made my first films in France, where I got my training, I quickly understood that to advance in my creation, it was not enough for me to know the “universal” history of cinema alone; that it was essential to also know the cinema of the country I came from, the sociocultural background to which I belong. But at the beginning of this new century, that heritage was not really circulating for all to see. There was relatively little information available about the history of Moroccan cinema. I simply needed to know—for my own creative process, to understand where I come from. Just like everywhere else in the world: you couldn’t imagine a young filmmaker in Germany studying their craft without getting to know Fassbinder or Fritz Lang. For my first film, Général, nous voilà! (1999), about Moroccan veterans of the French colonial army, I didn’t use a single archival image, because conventional archival filmmaking bored me and I wasn’t yet aware of more experimental approaches. When I decided to return to Morocco’s film history, I had only vague recollections of one film by Ahmed Bouanani, whom you mentioned before. So I went looking for Ahmed, which was not easy but easier than finding films from that era. Ahmed was completely marginalized then. I couldn’t find a single picture of him on the web. It was by chance that I finally found him. I had the good fortune of learning with him during the last three years of his life. [Bouanani passed away on February 6, 2011.] At that time, I didn’t know he had done all this amazing research, collecting memories of folk art and everything to do with culture, including Moroccan cinema. I wasn’t aware Ahmed had spent twenty years writing a book about Moroccan cinema that no one wanted to publish, La Septième Porte: Une histoire du cinéma au Maroc de 1907 à 1986. After he passed away, I discovered his huge oeuvre while helping his wife Naïma and his daughter Touda to save what remained of Ahmed’s personal archive after his apartment had been ravaged by a fire. Much was lost, but there was also a lot we were able to save. Among other things, we found the manuscript of his book, which became my bible, allowing me to get inside the complex history of filmmaking in Morocco. In 2020, the book was finally published, in French and in Spanish. It then proved very difficult to follow this guide and gain access to the films themselves. I used everything possible, even pirated and stolen materials, and I shared what I found with many people at various organizations and festivals in Morocco and especially outside the country. The interest from outside Morocco, the fact that these works were being screened all over the world, made the local institutions appreciate their importance. I would like to add that, when I think about “audiovisual heritage,” it is not only the films that matter but also other historiographic source materials, from images and sounds to paper fragments, the whole history from which these films emerged. As Jean-Marie said, as filmmakers our role is to tell a story. Working in this postcolonial era of ours which has witnessed a huge but often silenced struggle around representation, we have a big responsibility within that struggle to try to make our daily lives less traumatizing, and to identify some elements to take forward into the future. For me this is not only about cinema, it’s about life itself. It’s about today, about memory, about the things that are urgently needed for us to move forward—not only us artists but the people as a whole. What I discovered over the course of my journey is that, unlike the archival situation in other African countries, what remains in archives in Morocco and elsewhere in North Africa is very substantial. These archives are important to let us see what we have made of our history, in the colonial era and after. Before embarking on this research, like so many people, I was lacking in historical understanding of the journey we have made collectively, which is a cornerstone of true democracy. Like the Moroccan people, the country’s archives have been imprisoned. That’s why in Before the Dying of the Light, I juxtapose archival footage with the story of a political activist’s heroic escape from prison. When I first discovered these pioneering works of the Moroccan post-independence generation, I found them so powerful and modern that I gave up filmmaking for at least seven years. I liberated those archives, but they in turn liberated me: my way of thinking, of making films, of making art. To my big surprise, the elites of this country—intellectuals, academics, artists—have no regard for the importance of the archive. They’re all convincing themselves it’s something that belongs to the state, that we can’t demand to see it or protest its sequestration. The few people who tried didn’t succeed. The way I see it, the need for archives, for memory, doesn’t come from the state, it must come from the base, from the people.

Nikolaus Perneczky: This is something your work has in common with Bouanani’s: you both proffer an expansive notion of the archive inclusive of popular memory and modes of oral transmission that are not so easily captured by the state. Our final speaker is Ghanaian filmmaker, producer, and academic Nii-Kwate Owoo. In 1970, Kwate made a short documentary called You Hide Me, which uncovered a trove of looted Asante artifacts concealed in plastic bags and wooden boxes in the basement of the British Museum. In this landmark work of militant cinema, Kwate, you forcefully argue the case for returning these artworks to their communities of origin. Bénédicte Savoy, in her 2022 Africa’s Struggle for Its Art, has hailed your film as a watershed moment in the history of restitution. In the past several years, as the restitution debate is once again intensifying, You Hide Me has been rediscovered by audiences all over the world. In the more than fifty years since the film’s original release, you have kept very busy. You have been a film producer and director, a managing editor at Ecrans d’Afrique, and head of the Media Research Unit at the University of Ghana’s Institute of African Studies. But the looted artifacts you found in the basement of the British Museum have never stopped speaking to you. Right now, you are working on a documentary on the history of the Asante Empire, a project which again brought you face to face with Africa’s displaced cultural heritage. The Asante empire goes back to the early eighteenth century, long before the invention of photographic media, so in order to illuminate this history, you have been searching for other kinds of traces, leading you to museums and archives in the Global North, where much of this cultural legacy—from artifacts to historical documentation—is being kept today. Could you tell us a bit about this project in particular? What has been your experience researching the Asante empire? And what hurdles have you encountered in trying to bring this history to the screen?

Nii-Kwate Owoo: I must pay tribute to June Givanni, who in 2020 had the foresight to organize a series of online panels commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of You Hide Me. This program series galvanized interest in the film, and now there’s renewed demand for it from all over the world. Unlike my three colleagues, I have not been directly engaged with archival film. But interestingly enough, I have accidentally created an archive of my own. When I was at the Institute of African Studies at the University of Ghana I had my own camera, and so many things were going on around that time. Starting with Kwame Nkrumah’s overthrow in February 1966, we saw three different military regimes. With my camera I tried to record student activism and other political activities. Now I have over 250 hours of recordings I made during that period in Ghanaian history, which I am in the process of digitizing so that I may access it as an archive. When the Gold Coast Film Unit was taken over by Nkrumah’s regime after independence, the old film collections previously held by the British were preserved by the new Ghana Film Corporation. Unfortunately, when a Malaysian media company took over the Ghana Film Corporation’s holdings, they turned off the air conditioning and all that footage, 16 and 35 mm, was destroyed.10 To make matters worse, under Jerry Rawlings’ regime (1981–2001) a fire broke out at the Ghana television studio, which was attached to an archive, again leading to the massive destruction of archival assets.11 Not too long ago, I asked the BFI’s Head Curator Robin Baker whether they had any archival material from the British colonial period. I was amazed by the list he sent me in response. It contained footage going back as far as 1925. All of these films, with their pompous and ridiculous titles, nonetheless represent to me an amazing discovery, which I want to share with my colleagues in the Ghana film industry today. Because our own archives of this period are lacking, this list of archival materials dating from the 1920s all the way to 1960 is of great importance. We should be acquiring all of it, the question is how. I hope the BFI is listening. Because how were these images acquired by the British colonial regime in the first place? They used the resources of the Gold Coast. This material has been preserved, but it’s not in our hands. I would be grateful to any institution willing to support requests for the return of such collections. For a documentary commissioned by the Institute of African Studies on the death, burial, and installation of the Asante king who had just passed away, I made do without archival material, by having his history narrated by Asante historians and cultural activists. My own project, titled “Asante Kingdom of Gold,” is on standby at this time for lack of funding. We’ve solicited an endorsement from the current King of Asante in an effort to raise funds. For a project on the history of slavery that I am also working on, which is currently in post-production, I have been gathering footage for twenty years or so, much of it in the United States, where I interviewed African American academics and activists. I have accumulated over twenty-two hours of footage overall, another archive in need of care. Meanwhile, You Hide Me has itself become an archive in a way: a lot of people have reached out to me asking to reuse those images I brough back from the basement of the British Museum.12

Nikolaus Perneczky: Listening to the four of you, I feel there is a common thread in the importance you attribute to oral history as ways to move beyond the past as archived, but also to make up sequestered, derelict, or suppressed archives. What stands out to me as well is the sheer complexity of the archival landscape of African film heritage across the continent. This complexity should make us wary of generalizations, but I still would like to ask you a very general question. Given the displacement and sequestration of a substantial part of Africa’s film heritage, is it time for us to talk about “restitution”? I would be interested to learn if you find that term useful. Or is there another framework you think would be more appropriate for tackling this issue?

Jihan El-Tahri: What do we actually mean when we say “restitution”? There is a big risk of emptying the notion of its content. In that, it is very much like “decolonization.” Now every museum, every gallery, everyone is talking about decolonization, without identifying what precisely they are talking about. The word has lost its meaning, which means that the struggle itself shifts. And I believe the word “restitution” now also risks being emptied of its content. I believe we ought to be radical: why are we monetizing film heritage at all? To me, that’s the central question. If it is heritage, and if it is our heritage, then it should be in the public domain—we should be able to use it whenever we want. Where is this material kept, and how? For me, ultimately, it’s about the question of property. I think the problem begins when we start pointing fingers. We’re all responsible. Colonial archives began to realize they could get money out of their holdings, which they have been doing for some time. It’s nice of them to start “sharing” now, but what about all the income generated up to this point? Who stands to gain? Do we get a share of that, too? Or does the “sharing” start only now that it has all become “problematic”? All these questions are on the table, and so is the issue of reparations, though it is very complicated. Do we talk about reparations for the image? How has all this material been used in the past? Should we not also talk about the responsibility of our own governments? We cannot forget that they have been just as unresponsive as those public and commercial archives in Europe. Because our governments recognize that the image—what it says, who owns it, who uses it, and how—is extremely political. When I made the trilogy Egypt’s Modern Pharaohs (2015), and similarly with Cuba, une odyssée africaine, I initially didn’t realize how intensely political these archival questions really are. I thought I just needed this footage in order to tell the story, but I quickly realized that if I actually succeed in shifting and reappropriating the historical narrative, I am challenging the mythology of the incumbent regime. Every political regime creates its own mythology, and much of the ability to do so rests on a silencing of the past. Which is to say that the idea of restitution gets stuck in many places at once. Heritage is about our ability to examine our past—not just to use it, but to examine and question what is presented to us as historical truth. The minute [Egyptian] President Gamal Abdel Nasser died, his successor Anwar Sadat uncovered all sorts of things that people used to say behind closed doors while Nasser was alive. But not a single image of that remains. When Sadat came to power, he had all the footage of Nasser destroyed—hence the importance of orality and popular memory. We need to examine this reality and ask ourselves: who decides what needs to be preserved and why? Put it in the public domain, this is global heritage. This is not about sharing the profit but about access: anyone who wants to examine this material should be able to. If not for free, then at a reasonable price. In the 1980s, we used to pay transfer costs of around 200 US dollars, now we are charged 5,000 or 8,000…

Nikolaus Perneczky: Your championing of the public domain to me suggests an understanding of restitution as a process that would require a more fundamental reconfiguration of the property regime on which all of this archival wealth is predicated, questioning image ownership itself rather than merely “returning” images to different owners. Would you agree? Both Jihan and Jean-Marie mentioned that the terms of access to archives have changed since the 1980s. I wonder how this shift came about, and if the neoliberal restructuring of the public sector—and consequent decrease in public funding—may have been a contributing factor in incentivizing archives to monetize their holdings.

Jean-Marie Téno: The question of access is of the utmost importance, and not only for filmmakers, because we are no more important than other stakeholders. I see restitution as linked to reparation. Those who keep all these images should preserve them in the appropriate conditions, to be accessed and used by anyone who needs them. Otherwise, access will remain the privilege of a chosen few. Access and rights of use ought to be extended to as many people as possible, so they may use these images in other ways, as a kind of restitution or reparation. Reparations are usually understood as a simple transfer of money, but when it comes to Africa, for me the important thing is to equip ordinary people with the minimum elements they require to live a decent life, while giving them agency in determining their needs and allocating those resources. That is what reparations should be. It is not acceptable that people who live in places so rich in resources do not to benefit from them. Reparations as I understand it does not just mean giving money but really impelling the government and the whole society to provide the majority of people with clean water, infrastructure, services—so that they may live a meaningful and decent life. The same goes for the archive. They can keep archives in good shape where they are and provide spaces for collections that we know are going to last, while allowing people access free of charge, because only then will people be able to work with it. This is what we should demand, what we need to fight for.
Ali Essafi: I want to return to the question of archives and memory, because what people in the Western world call “archives” is really about memory. Restitution is not about the return of fragments of things, but the restitution of the memory of the colonial era. As Jihan said, this problem does not solely concern Western archives but also our own governments. I like to remind people that in the long durée of human history, the destruction and erasure of a people’s memory has been a foremost strategy of domination. But later that strategy changed, once the rulers understood that sequestering this heritage would allow them to control the people even more effectively. A person or a people who does not know their own past will always have difficulty interacting naturally with the present and projecting themselves into the future. This has been borne out in centuries of imperial domination. And so today, decades after independence, we are still under the control of neocolonial power when it comes to our present and future life choices. Restitution is a big battle, a battle we wage both with our former colonizers and with our current governments. It is a vital matter, as Jean-Marie said, a question of life itself.
Nii-Kwate Owoo: I agree that the issue of memory is critical. There now is a movement for restitution and responses from certain former colonial powers such as France or Germany, who are open to donating or returning some artifacts to the countries they were taken from. But these are all tangible objects. What about intangible memory, including the memory of the image, which has similarly been colonized? I plan to draft a policy paper about engaging the British authorities on the restitution of films and submit it to the Ghanaian Minister of Information. As others have stated, access and rights of use to these collections are very expensive—we are talking about a lot of money for a minute or two of archival footage. Of course, these materials would first have to be digitized, as many of them are still on celluloid. But I do believe there could be an arrangement, for instance, with the BFI to share this memory with our people. Such a move would contribute enormously to making meaningful documentaries that can help us understand the future.
Jihan El-Tahri: I would like to backtrack to two points made earlier. We skimmed over the rights and property issue, which I do think is non-negligible. It is fine for me to say that it should all be in the public domain, but as there are many different interests involved—cultural, political, and economic—there has to be the political will to address all these dimensions of the issue. There is no other way. Secondly, on the issue of copyright as we know it today, I would like to draw attention to the Berne Convention [first signed in 1886 and amended in 1971], which set the terms for image ownership and use rights, ultimately leading to the increase in prices.13 If they could change the legalities that bind us within the current framework of copyright then, I do not see why it cannot be changed again now. And I think opening that debate, about changing the nature of copyright, is at the heart of what we mean—or at least, what I mean—by restitution. I cannot forever be chasing footage I know was filmed in my hometown in Egypt, having to beg someone who lives in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, for the right to use images of what happened in my father’s birthplace.

Nikolaus Perneczky: So in your understanding, the restitution of film heritage necessitates a challenge to the existing legal frameworks within which we operate, especially in relation to image property. This it true also for the wider restitution debate: if current legal provisions render restitution impossible, for instance, because of restrictive deaccessioning laws that obtain at many public heritage institutions, then the law must be changed.

Jihan El-Tahri: Yes. To clarify, the material I was talking about is the massive amount of footage I have collected since the age of fifteen. While I was obviously very excited about this find at the time, I now can’t use any of it, because I have no way of knowing where each bit comes from, and I will not spend what remains of my life trying to find out. But the other question I wanted to raise is, what do we do now? Reparation is not just a financial question. It is incumbent on all colonial archives who have benefitted in the past, to now train archivists and build archival capacity in our countries. It’s your responsibility. You can’t say, as people frequently do, if we give it back, we worry what will happen to the material given the lack of archival infrastructure and difficult climatic conditions. No. You have our money, now use it to help us build capacity and train us, to ensure that everything is in place for us to make use of it.
Ali Essafi: Personally, I do not believe that anything will come from the institutions of our former colonizers or from our governments. I’ve had a dream for the past fifteen years to build an “African film liberation front,” a large network of filmmakers that would allow us to exchange and share our works with wider African audiences. I am very sad that although my two last films were made with African audiences in mind, they were seen all over the world, even in Japan, but not in Africa. I believe in building independent networks between artists, filmmakers, and researchers to apply pressure on existing institutions from without.
Jean-Marie Téno: I would like to follow up on Jihan’s point. It is of the utmost importance to challenge the logic of copyright not only when it comes to archival film. For instance, there are people who go into the forest in Cameroon, find a tree, determine it has some kind of useful properties, and then go and register that plant, making it into property. So you live in a place where there are useful plant you can’t use without paying royalties to some company somewhere in North America. I believe this whole question of what belongs to whom must be framed in a global context. For my part, I don’t want them to build museums, to replicate museums all over the continent. We should let there be bigger archives to store all this footage but compel them to give access to the whole planet. That would be a way to enact a sort of reparation for what they have done. Because if you give it to a museum in Yaoundé, access may be revoked before long. In sum, I believe we have to challenge this whole idea of copyright as part of a broader project of reparations—to stop the copyrighting on everything on this planet, as if everything had to be someone’s property.
Jihan El-Tahri: For me, every image is an archive in and of itself. If you take one image and try to figure out who commissioned it, how it came to be: that is a whole history right there. Prior to the 1960s in particular, we are talking big cameras and expensive film stock. So the question bears asking: why was this event chosen to be documented in the first place, while another event happening right next door was not? This is about the structure and the creation of narratives. In this sense, I think every image contains an archive in itself. To return to Jean-Marie’s first point, what we as filmmakers do is simply to tell stories. I am a storyteller. My obsession with the archive is ultimately a fascination with stories that these archives have the potential to tell but also to question—because I am totally dissatisfied with where we are at. Every one of the nineteen films or so I have made is really about one question: how can we move past this dead end? And every bit of archive promises answers to that question. I am certain that long after I’m gone, people will still be asking it. So how can we multiply the possibilities of answering it? Which takes us back to the question of access: we must have access in order to do that. I should be able to see what is available from my computer, and to use anything of interest without further ado. In reality, I need to assemble an entire machinery of funding, rights, and researchers, when I should be able to do it by myself from my desk, at any time. You cannot make an archive-based film for less than 200,000 euros—but the machine I have to set in motion to obtain those 200,000 euros has already killed the prospect of that image. That is what I have to say.
Jean-Marie Téno: I have been using archival footage without really caring about whether or not I will get sued. When I made Africa, I Will Fleece You, I actually wished someone would sue me, but no one did. I was a little disappointed. The only problem I ever had was with YouTube, because of a clip from an Indian song I used, though I even had a letter from the British distributor who licensed it.
Jihan El-Tahri: Ali was talking about the role of artists and the problem of funding and distribution structures. All of these issues have meant that even if we do make our films for African audiences, the infrastructure of funding and distribution is creating a gap between our films and those who are meant to see them, who would actually be interested in accessing these works. But we also need to ask ourselves how to shift entrenched mindsets. That is what our work, as filmmakers and artists, is fundamentally about. We can break existing molds, and we can say: I’m telling you this story but I no longer want to follow the rules. I have been working on a multi-disciplinary art and culture project called People’s Stories, where we invite researchers, artists, and filmmakers to come together to interpret, rethink and reappropriate the archive across several African locations.14 There, we will be brainstorming ideas around how to break with rules, formats, ways of seeing. How do we reappropriate the archive to create alternative narratives? Multiple alternative narratives! But also, how do we break with archival labels and systems of indexing that shape access to archives? Who decides how to name collection items? I don’t want to say too much about it here. Suffice it to say that this new program is asking how we may shift entrenched mindsets by making films—but in a way that is not attached to any of these funding systems. That’s another thing we have to break with. Because we all know how to leverage foreign funding, Jean-Marie, Ali, Kwate, and myself. We understand how it all works, how this system of funding entraps us. How to break out of this vicious circle?
Ali Essafi: If I want to tell a story, I use every image, but also every object, every fragment of sound, anything which exists as a trace of our history. We can use everything, as in my last film, Before the Dying of the Light, which is like a collage, and it works. I was inspired by those pioneering filmmakers I mentioned before, who tried to mix oral storytelling traditions with the narrative form of film. One of them, for example, because of the lack of archival sources, invented images based on animated drawings composed of some very simple elements. And he succeeded in telling the story in a very modern fashion. So for me, the point is to tell the story. We have to forget this conventional Western way of treating the archive. For us, it’s about dealing with history through missing images, memories, and sounds.
Jean-Marie Téno: We are perhaps focusing too much on the colonial archive. But the situation of postcolonial film heritage is equally dramatic. You now have a whole generation of aspiring African filmmakers who haven’t even seen the films of the post-independence generation. There is a trend in film production, and in documentary filmmaking in particular, where it is increasingly funders and critics who decide which films get made and what the important films are, leading to a gradual decline in substance. How can you be making films today without having seen the work of those first African filmmakers, who thought deeply about cinema and asked all these questions in the 1960s and 70s already? What shall we do to make these young filmmakers interested in their forebears? They think they are inventing the wheel, while really they are reproducing what some people believe to be “modern.” We need to challenge the younger generation to watch these films and learn about the history of African cinema, including the challenges that prompted people to start making films in the first place after we gained our independence.
Jihan El-Tahri: This past week, the South African censorship board decided to ban Ousmane Sembène’s La Noire de… (Black Girl, 1966) because it was said to use “inappropriate language.”15 I think this decision takes us to the heart of the meaning of archives. If we do not consider a film within the context that it was made, if we align ourselves with what is politically correct or expedient, we will effectively kill the past and stifle our ability to understand how we got where we are today. Of course, hell was raised over this ban, and there is now talk of an appeal, so I doubt this decision will stand. However, the danger of our censorship boards embracing some skewed idea of politically correctness is real, preventing us from voicing criticism on the grounds that it might make us look “underdeveloped”, “primitive,” or some such thing. It also means that younger generations will never have a clue about what the forefathers of African cinema were doing.
Jean-Marie Téno: I am truly appalled. When you train young filmmakers, you realize that many of these thirty-year-olds don’t even know who Sembène is. So where are we going? We have mainly been talking about colonial archives, but even in the case of this more recent film heritage, it is almost like you are killing memory. Silence is being organized so that we are not even aware we’re not teaching the whole history. Contemporary archives, too, are at risk of being destroyed. This is a serious struggle.
Nii-Kwate Owoo: Absolutely. This is especially true for Ghana. Take the fire at the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation under the Rawlings regime. Our investigation suggests that this was an act of arson. Precisely because there were so many brutalities after Jerry Rawlings took power in 1979—I have to call a spade a spade. People were disappearing, there were arbitrary executions. In the 1980s, the archive was set on fire and up to today, as I speak, not a single frame of that period remains for anybody wanting to interrogate this issue. We are really going to have to start from scratch when it comes to reconstructing our archives. Or from memory, talking to people who remember certain periods, when these things happened. Perhaps some of the events I am talking about were recorded by foreign media such as the BBC and others. I would like to add a final note about the preservation of our work for a younger generation. For my part, I am trying to translate You Hide Me, my film about the looted Asante artifacts held at the British Museum, into all the local languages of Ghana. The narration of the film as it exists is in English, which is a colonial language. I would like to go beyond that, in order for this film to be at the level of the ordinary people in the villages. In Ghana we now have local language television stations in all the indigenous languages. My plan is to translate You Hide Me into these languages and to put it out there on local television for everyone to see and debate.16

2. Transcript of conversation with Suliman Elnour

Online conversation via Zoom, February 25, 2025, between Nikolaus Perneczky and Suliman Elnour.
Archived on Nakala: https://doi.org/​10.34847/​NKL.6BC817TH

Nikolaus Perneczky: Can you tell me how you ended up at VGIK, at the film school in Moscow? Did you know you wanted to make films right away, or were you enrolled for another subject? How did you end up there?

Suliman Elnour: After the graduation, you mean?

No, I know that you went to Moscow to study film, right?

Yeah, yeah.

But were you sent there by the Sudanese government, or did you go there on your own initiative? How did you arrive in Moscow?

You see, this is also the part of the complexities in Sudan. I started… actually, I was at the University of Khartoum, College of Arts, I spent two years. Then I left, I worked for the State Corporation for Cinema, this is 1970. And with another colleague, we were to be sent to Moscow to study cinema direction and cinematography/photography. And then happened the 1971 coup d’état against the Nimeiry regime, and the relations between the Soviet Union and Sudan was not easy. So, the scholarship was ended at that end in 1971. And then I approached the Friendship Society between the Soviet Union and Sudan, and they sent me to study. I was accepted first at Patrice Lumumba University Moscow. I did my first year of studying Russian language, and I was accepted in the International Law College. And then I applied to the film school VGIK in Moscow. And then they took me on for documentary filmmaking in 1973.

Who were your teachers at VGIK?

You see, they have [a rule] in the institute that one of the film directors takes the students for the whole five years. And my master was Roman Karmen Lazarevich, who was a famous documentary filmmaker at that time.

I know of him, he’s a very famous figure. I would like to ask now specifically about Africa, the Jungle, Drums and Revolution, and starting with the making of the film. In which archives did you find the footage that you used in the film? And how did you gain access to this material?

See, I don’t remember exactly the title of the centre. I think it is the Central Archive; I don’t know the exact title or name.

Maybe Gosfilmofond?

I don’t think so, I don’t know.17 And to get there without permission, of course it is very difficult. And because our master was so influential and known, so they wrote to the archival centre there, and they admitted me, and I started the selection. I don’t know if they gave me the free hand for any material there, but they suggested a number of archival films and I started to search.

Do you have a sense what types of films… was it mostly rushes, or was it completed films or newsreels that you then took apart? What kind of material was it that you were dealing with?

I think, if I remember exactly, most were newsreels, most of them. It might be one or two short documentaries, but the majority are raw material rushes or newsreels.

And do you think the majority of them then were shot by Soviet teams and camerapeople, or were there also Western productions? Was there also maybe ethnographic material? Or was it really mainly newsreels shot by the Soviets? 

Mostly it might be shot by the Soviet cameramen, I think. There might be some, but I didn’t know exactly the source, but mostly I think they are Soviet rushes or newsreels or so on.

And this is maybe difficult to remember after such a long time, but do you have any memory of what you were expecting in approaching this archive, the kind of footage that you were expecting and what you found? How you felt about these images that you found?

You see, because when I thought of making the film, I had in mind questions to be asked randomly for people in the streets, or any gatherings of the Soviet people there in Moscow.

So those interview scenes were the starting point, that came first?

Yes. So my question, I wanted to make it… I don’t know, I’m sorry for my English, but I have tried to express myself as much as possible.

Your English is impeccable.

You see, I wanted to make it as a very sudden question, what do they think about Africa? What’s their first impressions or the images they have about Africa? As I said, I don’t know if you got through the Arsenal booklet?

Yes.

So there you find an interview with me about… and some answers there. Because that was fresh, and now more than fifty years has passed [laughs].

You mean the interview with Eltayeb Mahdi from 1989?

Yes.

That’s very interesting, I wanted to ask you more about that as well.

It was ’79, yes.

So that was just about 10 years later, that was quite –

No, no, no, this is ’79, not ’89.

The interview is ’79? Oh really, okay.

Yes, yes.

Ah, right, so very recently –

Immediately after I returned from Moscow, yes.

Okay, I see, okay. And lastly, so there are the interviews; there is the footage you found in the archives; and then there are these images of children, there’s also children whom you interview on the street, but then there are children’s drawings. Can you talk a bit about what led you to include this element, what were you getting at by showing us not just Africa through Soviet eyes, but also, I suppose, Africa through children’s eyes?

Yes, actually this helped me very much. Because I was searching before I was starting and writing even the outlines of the script, I tried to find if there was any interest in African culture, African art in Moscow. So my legs led me to this workshop studio of a Russian or Soviet artist who happened to be in Africa. And then I came to know that he opened or established this small workshop to train children. And so he tells them folk tales and the stories about Africa, and then asks them to draw freely. This is one. The second, or the clearest idea came when I started to think about making a film about Africa, this folk song which was the entry for the film: [recites nursery rhyme in Russian] and so on. And this is only in production or prologue to the film, it was not intended in itself. But most of the children, they know this poem, and it was sung. And then the workshop. And then the event of one of the schools in support or solidarity with Angola, they collected… I don’t know, I don’t know, clothes or... This scene in the film, if you remember, there is a thread for that, and the children are there, even in the interviews, which it was...

Alright. Did you edit the film yourself?

You see, we have editors. The editors, they do the technical part of it.

But you give the instructions?

Yes, I know how… and “this is a very short second scene” and so on, prepared by me orally.

Can you say a bit what the process of editing this film was like? Because to me it seems like the editing is so important, to bring out the hidden meanings and not just to show these images, not just to repeat these cliches, but to comment on them. But it’s not something you do explicitly, it’s more something that is in the montage, in the editing. So I was wondering if you could say a bit about how did that happen. Was it quite intuitive, how the different elements work together in the end?

You see, I think, the film was actually born on the table and the Moviola, and it’s a process of creating the film or making the film…creating, this is a big word…and making the film, the process actually was in the Moviola, in the table, editing. And before I sit with the editor, actually I had on paper all the shots, all the interviews. And I started editing on paper before I sit in with him. Okay, sometimes the interviews and the scenes, as if they answer, give answers to the answers of the interviewees, in a way. But I wanted to say “yes, Africa is underdeveloped or was under colonialism, but it started to rise up.” I made a small black cut between… I don’t know if it was clear or not, but I wanted to say “yes, this is a dark period in our history, in the history of Africa.” You see, I didn’t have much archival material, I was controlled… I don’t know, I was caught by the material I found. So I started just to edit the film accordingly. I wished if I had more material that I will put all the ideas better then.

You just said that you felt maybe somewhat constrained by the limited archival material that was available. But more generally, were you free to decide every aspect of the production, or were there certain constraints? Were there other people interfering or commenting, or was it entirely up to you? I’m also thinking about the voiceover narration, for instance.

No, I had free hand, no interventions. After I completed the film, after that the master and my colleagues saw the film as the final product. And even, not even then did I need to consult my master, or even my colleagues.

But in the end, they would comment, it was subject to criticism, to a collective critique or something like that?

You see, I remember only one of my colleagues, a Russian colleague, and was a friend, his comment was only he asked if I can… you see at the end of the film, you see pigeons flying, as a sign for peace or something like this. So he asked me if I can slow this, because peace is not accomplished yet. And I think it was a good idea, but I don’t know why I didn’t, but I think it was a good idea.

How did you decide on the soundtrack? There’s this jazz score as well, that’s very fast, very buoyant, how did you come up with that?

Well, I wanted, you see, also, at least to find this African rhythm and tempo in the music. The choice was not that much, but I listened to many, many pieces, African pieces, and then I selected this. I don’t know if it was fine or not, I don’t know now [laughs].

But you edited it first and then you added the music, or did you put the music –

Yes, yes. And the narration already, and I was writing it then. And when we were making the film, I had the narration in my hands then, I didn’t approach it after.

This is a more conceptual question I suppose. So the other three filmmakers I write about in my article, they are all confronting colonial archives and colonial or ethnographic images made by Western filmmakers. But your film is really more specifically about Soviet attitudes to the African continent, and to the African Revolution at that precise historical moment. And I wanted to ask you if you could reflect a little bit on how you see the differences and perhaps the similarities between Soviet and Western attitudes to Africa at the time? I mean, yeah, obviously this is something that the film talks about very eloquently, and it’s maybe a bit… I don’t know how you feel about me prodding you further, but it’s a question that I’m quite interested in, and I was wondering if you had any reflections on that?

At that time, you mean?

At that time, yes. Not in general, but at that precise moment?

The seventies?

Yes.

[Pause] You see, the period of the sixties and seventies was a global movement, and great expectations through all the continents. The seventies was the era of independence of many African countries, and the colonies already collapsed, and taking their things and going back. Also, [there] was the Vietnam war, and even the Israeli-Arab war at this time, the Six-Days war. So the supporters of the Third World, of Latin America, Africa and Asia come definitely from the socialist countries [and] less [from] the Western. Besides, in the mid-sixties we started to see African films from different… mainly it might be Ousman Sembène, who was called the father of African cinema. Because in the seventies, yes you have known even Costa Diagne, who was a known figure at that time. And when we see the attitude of the French colonisers in Western Africa, we knew that it was not easy for Africans in these colonies to make films. We know the ethnographer that the films… his name now is not in my head [laughs].

Jean Rouch?

Yes, Rouch, and his ethnographical films about Africa. And even he trained some Africans. So the attitude of… because the colonisers are from the West, not from the Soviet world or socialist countries.

So politically it was very different, there was neocolonial exploitation on one side and socialist solidarity on the other side. But what about, for instance, attitudes towards African culture and ideas about Africans being underdeveloped, things like that, those are things that you would also find in the Soviet Union I suppose?

Yes, you see when we speak about the West you do not speak about all the people there, you might speak about the governments or main political parties in the Western countries. Because definitely there are so many progressive people who supported the African struggles again, even again in their countries, as in France or England or Belgium and so on. So we differentiate between the attitude of the capitalist countries/imperialist countries and the people there, all the many intellectuals who supported and actually stood very strongly with the Africans, supporting their culture. I remember one of the films which they did about the masks, when the French stole actually the African masks and put them in museums. And the film was by two French… I think famous directors.

Chris Marker [and Alain Resnais’ Statues also Die] –

Yes, they said “this mask or this culture is dead now, if you put it in the museum.” And this film was not released for many years. [Pause] Actually still, you see the movements now from francophone countries, African countries, who stood now against the French policies. This might be a new enlightenment or renaissance in Africa, it might be, I don’t know.

Alright, thank you, that’s really an interesting and very –

I allow you to elaborate on my poor English [laughs], if you’ve got the idea.

Yes, I think so.

I expect that you can elaborate more.

I think I got the idea. I guess you’re not going along with my generalizations, which I think is very good, I appreciate it a lot. I have another question about your time in the Soviet Union and making this archival film, because there is of course a long tradition in the Soviet Union of archival filmmaking, of found-footage filmmaking. For instance, I don’t know if you know the filmmaker Esfir Shub, who made The Fall of the House of Romanov, which also uses archival footage that dates back to the tsarist era. But she uses this material in a way that expresses revolutionary aims and outlook, and I really see a certain parallel with your work there. And I was wondering, more generally, in addition to your teacher, were there other Soviet filmmakers, or is there a lineage of Soviet archival filmmaking that you were aware of at the time, that you thought was an inspiration to what you were trying to do? Or is that not something that was on your mind at all?

You see, to make a documentary film, for a foreign student in Moscow, it was difficult for me. Either I make a film about, say, African students in Moscow, or the life of Sudanese students in Moscow. And it was not easy for me to return back to Sudan to make a film, for political reasons. And this is why my graduation film, I did it in South Yemen.

Yes, I’ve seen it, it’s amazing.

Yes. And why I did it there, because just it happened that my older brother was working for FAO, the United Nations, in South Yemen. And therefore, the whole period I spent in Moscow, I would not go to Sudan. So okay, I would visit my brother in South Yemen, and there I thought of the film, my graduation film, when I came back to Moscow. So, the two films, before graduation Africa [the Jungle, Drums and Revolution], and It Still Rotates, the graduation [film], I did them outside Moscow. So it was not easy for me to make a documentary film in Moscow. You see, we studied for five years, in the second year they asked us to make a film, the first film. Actually, in the first year they gave us a 16 mm camera, and they wanted to test our abilities and skills and so on. And I made a… not a film, it was only rushes, about… I called it “Reading Moscow.” Because everywhere in Moscow you find people reading journals or books, in the bars, in the metro, in the gardens, everywhere. So this impressed me, and I asked to make a film. The second year, they asked us to make a short documentary, and I thought of the gypsies. So I asked my master “I want to make a film about the gypsies,” because the gypsies are free people, how can they survive in a socialist country, how the socialist government dealt with them. And it was difficult for my master to accept the idea, he accepted, but he asked a Russian student, one of my colleagues, to make it together. I don’t know if he wanted to have a support for me or a cover for me, I don’t know. Unfortunately, the film was not completed then, I don’t know the reasons now, but it was not completed. And when I thought to use the archival material, honestly, for me it was a good exercise to work on archival material and so on. It might be only Mikhail Romm, we saw many of his films; and of Roman Karmen himself; and even the most famous film director, [Joris] Ivens from Holland. He was invited, and he came to our class, and I had a masterclass with him at that time. So we saw many documentaries, part of them used archival material or mostly depended on archival material.

This is very helpful and instructive. Are you okay to go on for a while longer?

Yeah, please. I have nothing to do in Cairo [laughs], it is all…

These earlier films you made, you say one wasn’t finished, and they probably no longer exist, or do you think there might be prints still held somewhere in Moscow? You’re not sure?

You see, it is difficult now after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and how many years now since 1990 or 1991. So I don’t know if… even the institute itself now, I don’t know if it is a private institution or it’s still governmental. Still it has the same name, Vsesojuznyj… Vserossiyskiy. Before… You know Russian a bit?

I can understand it a little bit. It was Gerasimov, no?

No, “Vsesojuznyj,” all Union, but now it is all Russian, “Vserossiyskiy institut kinematografii… Gerasimov.”

But when the films of the Sudanese Film Group, including your films, were restored, my assumption was that those prints came from Moscow at the time, is that not right? Where did you find those prints of your films?

I don’t know. Unfortunately I’ve lost my two films in Sudan. I mean, Africa [the Jungle, Drums and Revolution], I lost it in Sudan, I don’t know what happened. And for It Still Rotates, it was screened so many times, so it was just scratches. So I gave this copy of mine to Arsenal, and they worked on it. They didn’t work on the negatives, because I don’t have the negatives, so they restored the film as they received it, yeah.

So It Still Rotates was your personal copy of the film?

Yes, yes.

And what about Africa, the Jungle Drums and Revolution?

I lost it in Sudan.

When you left just now?

No, no. The film was not restored by Arsenal, it was a copy, I don’t know who worked on it. I don’t remember the names of even… you know Rasha Salti?

Yes.

She can tell you how they found this film.

Okay, I will ask her.

Because they succeeded to get a copy from inside Russia, from inside the institute, they paid for it, I don’t know how.

Alright, okay. But that’s what I thought, I thought it came from Russia. I mean, that would not be possible now, right? That was possible then, but now, with the war and the geopolitical confrontation between Western Europe and Russia, there are very little diplomatic exchanges, films don’t travel any more, it would be impossible to get it out of there. So it was kind of lucky that it got out before that.

I don’t know if they got the film or if they got it as a –

A scan?

A scan, yes, most probably.

But the print might still be there?

Yes.

Okay, that’s good to know. And how about… well, sorry, let me just first ask another question, let’s go back a moment. So after your studies in Moscow, you returned to Sudan. Was that a difficult return also politically, were you suspicious [suspect] to the government because of your Soviet education and your time there? If this is something that you are comfortable talking about, of course.

You see, when I ended my studies in July 1978, I asked my institution to give me one year to train myself on camera, because still I think to be a documentarist it is better to shoot your own films by yourself. And fortunately they gave me the okay to stay one year, but it was monotonous, I had only four hours per week for the training. So I felt that I cannot stay longer, to end the year. So in March 1979, I returned back to Sudan. And in October 1979, I was appointed Cinema Section in the Department of Culture, Ministry of Information and Culture. In 1981 they fired the government, fired so many people from different ministries, and I was one of them. And before they fired me from my job, I started a diploma at the University of Khartoum Institute of African and Asian studies, I attended a diploma in folklore. So I continued my study at the African and Asian institute, and in 1982 they awarded me the diploma. So I found I was busy somehow. And I worked, I don’t know, for a civil society organisation or something like this. Then I was appointed as a teaching assistant to Juba University in Southern Sudan. And after the intifada or revolution against the Nimeiry regime on 6^th of April 1985, they allowed us to come back to our previous jobs. So I joined, in 1987, the State Corporation for Cinema, production unit, this is in 1987. In 1989, the 30^th of June, came the coup d’état of the Islamist regime, and they fired me again from my job in 1990, even before they completed their first year, and I was fired from my job. Then I joined the civil society organisation Friends of Children Society in 1990/1991 till 1994. I made a few films for civil society organisations. Then I joined the Sudanese Environment Conservation Society. Then I lectured at Sudan College for Girls or something like this, till 2019.

And throughout this time there was also the activities of the Sudanese Film Group which sort of continued, no? You were still doing workshops with youth and things like that, is that right?

You see we had the Sudan Film Club, which was established in 1968. Actually, before 1968 there was a film society at Khartoum University in 1967, but it only survived for one year. And the second birth of the Sudan Film Society or Club, it was in 1968. And then we carried our activities through screening films and so on, training youth through Sudan Film Club. In April 1989, we founded the Sudanese Film Group. Actually, it was just two months before the coup d’état on 30^th of June. And after the coup d’état t all the unions and civil society organizations were banned, the political parties, everything. Actually, this was a very harsh period. You saw the film talking about this, yes?18

Yes.

So it is not a history of course of cinema in Sudan, but you see the fates of these four… all the directors, friends, Ibrahim Shaddad left to Cairo and then to Canada; Eltayeb Mahi left to Saudi Arabia; I stayed in Sudan; Manar [Al Hilo] stayed also somewhere. We actually were able to restart the activities of the Sudanese Film Group after the comprehensive peace agreement between the North and South Sudan in 2005. So after that, yes, we started, and we had an office, we had equipment and meetings, we organised workshops, we organised mobile cinema shows.

And you have been doing quite a bit of work also in the regions, right, not just in Khartoum and Omdurman but in different parts of the country as well.

Yes, especially the mobile cinema. You had many activities of the mobile cinema for (unclear 0.48.58). And the venues were not only in the capital of Sudan, or the three cities, Khartoum, Omdurman and Khartoum Bahri, but in different states. We even trained in Juba, in South Sudan. So the activities were so many. And we had a cinema magazine. We produced three books, one about the history of cinema in Sudan, Once Upon a Time, and about the first screenings. And we celebrated even one hundred years of the first film screening in Sudan in 1912, in 2012 we celebrated the one hundred years of this. And I translated a book from Russian language, the beginnings of African cinema, or Black African cinema.

By this scholar [Semen Chertok], I’ve heard about this book, yeah.

So we actually were active in different aspects: training, writing, cinema culture. And even we made small workshops for reading our scenarios, just at the same time, we must have our scenarios in our hands. So actually, so many activities.

So there are a lot of unmade films, a lot of scripts for films that weren’t made as well?

Yes, yes.

All of this self-organised, without state support?

Without not only state support, without support or without interventions and without security interrupting us. They do not give hands; they want to twist our hands.

I’m interested in what you said about the books you’ve written and translated, because that seems quite central to transmit knowledge of Sudanese film history. I know Ibrahim Shaddad published a tome, but I also found this manuscript – I don’t remember where I found it – that you wrote, gathering materials towards a history of cinema in Sudan, titled “From the Maxim Gun and Railway to the Film Camera: Modernisation in Cinema in Sudan.”

Yes, I wrote this paper.

Was this published in Arabic?

It is actually the seminar or, I don’t know, the conference remembering the period of the sixties and the seventies in Sudan. It was organised by Sharjah, you know Sharjah, yes? The state of one of the Arab Emirates.

Sharjah? Yeah.

Yes, it was organised by them there. And I presented this paper –

What year was this, do you know?

Hmm?

What year was this?

What year, what year? 2016 or 17, something like that.

Something like that, okay, alright.

And they translated the paper in English, because they said they wanted to produce a book about all the papers I had presented there. And I presented part of it in Arsenal, they invited me, but I think it was about cinema magazines or something like this. Also, I don’t remember, 2018 it might be, or ’17, something like this.

Did you draw on your own archive for this? Because there’s also articles in there dating back to the sixties and seventies, where did you gather this material? Was this something that the Sudanese Film Group was doing as well, creating a library for these materials? Or how did you have access to this information? Was this your own personal archive?

Not only mine, but Sudanese Film Group archive and others. Because you know, Ibrahim Shaddad came back to Sudan in 1964, so he has information, good information, of course he’s part of the Sudan Film Unit. And then we came later, so we gathered all the information about cinema in Sudan. Unfortunately, what is known about Sudan that it’s culture is oral, even among the intellectuals. So we wanted to document everything, to take things from the people and from memories and put it in writing. So this is actually what led Ibrahim to… before Ibrahim, two Sudanese directors, the pioneers, wrote their memories or their cinema life. To agree or not with it, this is something else, but they wrote their own experience.

And you’ve collected all of these testimonies and all of these materials?

A part of the paper of the Maxim [“From the Maxim Gun and Railway to the Film Camera”], I did myself interview Ibrahim Shaddad, Eltayeb Mahdi, and so I put it at the end of the paper. But the other information is there, I know what Ibrahim made, what others made, this is known.

Can you tell me what happened to this archive, and to the premises of the Sudanese Film Group in Omdurman? Where is it today? Were you able to save this material or to bring it with you, or is it there still?

We don’t know. But most probably, everything is damaged there, we lost everything, most probably everything is damaged there. Because the premises at… the locality of Omdurman premises, this is one of the target areas for the fighters.

So like the film and television archives, which are also –

Also, yes. Nobody knows exactly what is happening there. We hope that we will find something.

But it’s under serious threat of destruction?

Yes.

You already have sort of talked about this, but maybe you could say a bit more about the archival situation in Sudan today, especially for all audiovisual media, film and television. Can you just say a bit more about archives? The people who have been able to leave the country for safe places, have they sometimes brought their own archives, or do you think that a lot will have been lost in the process?

If you send me your…ah, you have your email, yes, and I will send a very short one-and-a-half paper A4, just about the situation of archives in Sudan.

That would be wonderful.

But you see, when we all left our country, our homes, we took very light things, just what we needed. Fortunately, I brought with me my laptop, which I have a few films there, and hard discs, which I have some rushes there. But all the people just fled, they left everything, and they could not take... So I think the situation is very sad.

Yes, indeed, very sad. There is one last thing I wanted to ask you, I’m not sure you’ll be able to help me out with this, but I know that some of the materials that were used by Arsenal to restore and scan the films… not your films, but those by, I believe, Eltayeb Mahdi and some of the others, were actually found in commercial image archives in the US, like with AP, Associated Press, they had some of this footage. Do you know how it ended up there? Do you know how your colleagues’ films ended up in these commercial image archives?

I have no idea about this. But what I know, that the films that were restored by Arsenal were within the property of the filmmakers. Eltayeb had his own films, hard copies, Ibrahim as well. And so they were sent together, from Sudan. But I don’t know about the others.

I just should ask the people at Arsenal directly. I think that’s about it, these are my questions, for now. Maybe I’ll have more questions later on.

Yes, you’re welcome at any time.

I’ll drop you an email. This has been very instructive, and I am really impressed that you remember this in so much detail. All the years, not just the years but the months, and sometimes the day. I don’t remember what happened last week, so very impressive memory. And, I mean, very important that you have this memory, because so many archival sources have been destroyed or are at risk of being destroyed, so it’s very important that it exists somewhere. Are you thinking of writing things down, of committing some of your memory to paper so that it can be shared? Or is that not something you’re interested in at this point?

No. But, you see, in almost two years in Cairo, how do we spend our time? Most of our colleagues, Sudanese Film Group, are here in Cairo. We still meet, we are trying to organise what we used to do since 1987, African cinema days, which we used to do it in Sudan. We failed to organise it here in Cairo. Some difficulties because of money, others because of regulations and laws in Egypt. And we are foreigners, so it is not easy to organise without the Egyptian umbrella.

But there are many of you. There are many Sudanese exiles in Cairo.

In Cairo, especially in our group, Eltayeb Mahdi is here, Ibrahim Shaddad in Cairo, yes, and others, Manar, Maasif, Abbas, so many names, are here, and are trying to do something, not just to stay. I’m trying just to write something about African cinema.

You are?

I’m trying. You see, no references, very rare to see African films. But I’m trying to write something about African films as a continuation to oral history. And if I write this, I will just take from others… Because, I haven’t the opportunity to see many African films.

I just wanted to say, I would be very happy to help you access films and resources. I’m in London and there’s great libraries here, and I also have a big collection of films from the sixties and seventies. If there’s anything you’re interested in, you’re very welcome to drop me a line and see if I can help you, I’m very happy to share anything I can find, I can get my hands on, either written sources or film screeners.

Thank you.

It’s an absurd situation that I can offer this, I am sitting in London and here I have all this access, and you are in North Africa and you don’t have access to African film heritage, it’s absurd. But I would be very happy to help.

Even the French, they have a good collection of African films, because either they are producers or coproducers. And all the films, when we organise African cinema days we approach Africa as a French culture, all the cinematheques in Paris, yeah, to give us African films.

What do you think about that, should the French return these films? Should there be a restitution of film heritage like there is a restitution of other cultural artefacts?

You see, when we see the situation of Sudan now, we say it was good if we keep the films in London, where they have [been] kept. So to return them back, it is not accepted like it should be, with respect and… what I can say? If it is done with respect, and they give it actually for the Africans someday, not to use it as part of their properties.

So if it were truly a shared heritage, that they care for but that you can freely access without having to pay fees?

You see, because there was an opportunity when the University of Bergen, in Norway, they presented the offer that they will digitise all the audiovisual materials and the visual audio materials of Sudan TV and Sudan radio. But what were the conditions, what did they ask to do this, was they started but I don’t know how long it went. So when I send you this small paper you will find a few information about the archive in Sudan.

I’ve heard about this Bergen project, but I don’t know what happened there. You don’t know how it went?

Even we don’t know how, because we are not part of it, they didn’t ask anyone working in cinema.

Right, so it was done over your heads, in a way?

Yeah.

Do you know the filmmaker and film historian Paulin Vieyra?

Personally, no, but we know him as a historian and a critic. And the book I translated from Russian, his name is there also.

He also was the producer of Ousmane Sembène.

Yeah, yes.

I mention him because he wrote a really interesting article in 1958, so still under French colonial rule, where he imagines a form of archival cooperation between France and its colonies that would be geared towards increasing African self-determination. And that would also involve the return of archival footage from France, that had been shot in Africa by Frenchmen, during many decades when Africans in the French colonies were legally prohibited from making films of their own. So he said it’s only right that the French should return these films now, at the end of… I mean it wasn’t yet the end, but everybody knew it was going to end soon. And he was essentially demanding the restitution of these films. And I think this is quite an interesting precedent, that’s still relevant today, when I hear you talk about how you still have to go through the Institut Français or the Cinémathèque Afrique to borrow French [francophone] African films to screen in Cairo.

They give them a copy, and keep the original there.

Yes, indeed.

Okay then, may I ask you a very few… give me an idea about the three other filmmakers you said, Costa Diagne and… When did their films… because (unclear 1.11.41) no, no, no, I did it for 50 years.

So Costa Diagne’s film is also a student film he made in Moscow, at VGIK. It’s called Homme de la danse, Men of Dance. And it’s about an African student who goes to an exhibition of African art in Moscow, and confronts a mask that speaks to him. So it’s a bit like a commentary on the film you mentioned, Statues Also Die by Marker and Resnais, this famous French film, it’s kind of like a response to that as well. And he uses some archival ethnographic images of dancing… I don’t know where they’re from, somewhere in West Africa, he intersperses these ethnographic images to animate the masks. As you said, the masks in Western museums, they’ve been stilled, and they’re no longer living objects, right, and he kind of tries to reanimate them by using archival footage. And that film is from 1965, so I guess sometime before you were in Moscow.

[Off-topic discussion about Zoom interferences]

And then looking at Ahmed Bouanani , the film is called Mémoire 14, or Memory 14. He’s a Moroccan filmmaker, and he worked for the Moroccan Film Section, the state film company. But also, he was suspected of being a Trotskyist, being a communist. He studied at IDHEC in Paris. And so, his superiors… first, he was hired as an editor, he was the head editor, but then he was demoted because of his alleged political, communist sympathies, and so they banished him into the archive. But he loved it, he was like “amazing!” And he looked at all this footage they had there of the French protectorate period, and he made a film using this archival footage that reimagines or remembers the colonial period, but through oral history and through popular memory, not the official memory of post-colonial Morocco, which is about the King and devotion to the King, but the popular memory of the colonial period. So instead of giving the years of the Christian calendar or the years of the Arabic calendar, he just calls it the “Time of Locusts” – the temporality of popular folklore, not the time of a modern conception. It’s a very beautiful film. I can send you the film if you’re interested? I can send you all of the films if you’re interested in watching them.

Yes please.

And the last film is by Assia Djebar, she’s an Algerian filmmaker. She was mainly a novelist, but this was her second…she only was able to make two films, both were produced by Algerian national television. And for this film called La Zerda, which is the name of a traditional dance festivity, she went to Paris, and went to Pathé and the big French commercial film studios that shot newsreel footage in colonial France [North Africa]. But what she did is she didn’t look at the completed films, but at the discarded material, rushes, and stuff that was supposed to be thrown away, either because it wasn’t interesting or, as she found, because it documented the most horrific colonial atrocities, the worst things about French colonial rule that they didn’t want to be seen. So she spent a whole year going through these archives, and buying stuff, and bringing it back to Algeria. And then she made this film, which is very beautiful, very poetic. It’s kind of like she uses the material, but she then also closes her eyes and… it’s about not always showing everything, but also pointing us to the things that are maybe not showable, and to the absences in the archive, to what’s missing. It’s a very beautiful film, yeah. And I’m trying to create a conversation between your films, all of your films, yeah.

That would be interesting, if you can send me.

Yes, I will send you the films, yeah. I will send you my article when it’s finished, and –

Yes, I already gave you free hand.

Okay, thank you, that’s very kind of you. Well, I really appreciate your time and everything you were able to share with me, it’s really a great honour and a pleasure to be speaking to you. And I hope that maybe sometime I’ll meet you in person, maybe I will come to Cairo sometime, that would be nice. Do you know Tamer El Said?

Yes, yes, I know him, yes.

I wanted to visit him; I wanted to visit the Cinematheque Cairo.

Cimatheque, yes.

The Cimatheque, yes. Do you go there sometimes? Do you have links with them?

Yes, before. And a long time passed, we didn’t meet. But when we came to know him, he invited us to his office and Cimatheque. And there’s an American university in Cairo, they organised a seminar, I participated in it. This is last year; this is the last time I saw him here. But when you come, it will be a pleasure to meet you.

Yes, I will send you an email before I come, yes.

Yes, please. Okay.

Shukran.

Shukran, thank you. And also thank you for your interest, to give life to this old student film.

[End of Recording]

Online conversation via Zoom, February 25, 2025, between Nikolaus Perneczky and Suliman Elnour.
Archived on Nakala: https://doi.org/​10.34847/​NKL.6BC817TH