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Cinema has to be put in the service of self-knowledge. -Djibril Diop Mambety
Djibril Diop Mambety (1945-98) observed that "life is always in three stages: small, big, old. Life is a drama and a drama is always in three acts: prologue, story, epilogue. I see myself in between the small and big stages of life's trilogy" (Mambety 31). Mambety's comments provide a context within which to frame his work, for he conceived of most of his films as trilogies. Born in Dakar, Senegal, Mambety believed that the role of the filmmaker was that of a gr/ot-more than a storyteller, the griot is "a messenger of one's time, a visionary and the creator of the future" (31).
Mambety began his career as a screen griot with the critically acclaimed short film Contras City (A City of Contrasts, 1969). In 1970, he released Badou Boy, a short film that won the Silver Tanit at the 1970 Carthage Film Festival in Tunisia. The films that followed were planned as parallel trilogies.1 The first series explores power and insanity (Touki Bouki, Hyenes, and the projected third part, Malaika), while the second trilogy focuses on ordinary people (Le franc, La petite vendeuse de Soleil, and the planned third part, La tailleuse de pierre).
Touki Bouki (The Hyena's journey, 1973), Mambety's first feature-length film, won the Special Jury Award at the Moscow Film Festival and the International Critics Award at Cannes. Considered a classic by film scholars, Touki Bouki follows the journey of a Senegalese couple (Anta and Mory) who run away from their families and try to acquire enough money for boat tickets to France. "Antes and Mory do not dream of building castles in Africa; they dream of finding some sort of Atlantis overseas" (Mambety qtd. in Ukadike 3). Mambety said that in his second featurelength film, Hyenes (Hyenas, 1992)3 the main characters from Touki Bouki reappear; Antes (who leaves Africa and crosses the Atlantic alone) is Linguere Ramatou, and Mory (who stays in Africa "as if he has betrayed her") is Draman Drameh.4
In HyMes, Linguere Ramatou returns to the town of Colobane a rich woman after an absence of thirty years. She promises the townspeople 100,000 million francs (half of which they can share among themselves) if...