Cultural Heritage and Popular Cultures: The Revolution Won't Be Televised And Its Global Reception

Abstract

The recent political protests unfolding in West Africa have been paralleled to the prospect of a Black Spring. However, these citizens' struggles have received a controversial media reception in the Global North and made visible a great divide between media coverage in official state-based channels and in social media. The documentary The Revolution Won't Be Televised by Senegalese-Mauritanian filmmaker Rama Thiaw (2016) figures as a significant reference for popular cultures (such as hip-hop/rap and graffiti) in the mediatizing process of revolutions. Thiaw records the immediacy of the civil struggle before the fall of Senegal's then-president and bears an intimate testimony to the mass impact of the urban protest movement Y'en a marre. This article analyzes the inclusion of Thiaw's pan-African vision of engaged filmmaking as a supposedly political gesture in the international (African) film festival circuit. It also aims to critically outline the exhibition and reception policies of current curating trends for African cinemas.

Her gaze is oriented toward the camera as Khady Sylla lights up a cigarette and starts reading out loud a letter that is dedicated to her (fictional) son: “My child, my little one, Thiat (the last born in wolof) / whenever I see you, I'm deeply moved. / My own youth was also illuminated by the flame of rebellion. / As you, I loved this People and suffered from its alienation” (Sylla in TRWBT,¹ min. 3:00). This opening shot poetically anticipates the main theme of Rama Thiaw's documentary The Revolution Won't Be Televised (2016). The film depicts Africa's third wave of protests (Branch & Mampilly, 2015, p. 67) in Senegal while particularly highlighting the involvement of popular artists in civil society's resistance movement. Over a period of 5 years, the filmmaker engages in the daily struggles, concerns and trajectories of the protest movement Y'en a marre by accompanying her three protagonists, the Senegalese musicians Thiat and Kilifeu—rappers from the popular music band Keur Gui—and their producer and DJ, Gadiaga. The documentary chronicles the emergence and evolution of popular political engagement in Senegal during two phases, by following the musicians in their participation in the civil struggle movement in pre-2012 Dakar, as well as in their political role as pan-African civil struggle ambassadors in Burkina Faso in 2014. Thiaw contextualizes the musician's activity in a larger sociohistorical perspective by referencing two major lead figures of political activism through the arts: Senegalese filmmaker and poet Khady Sylla and Afro-American poet and musician Gil Scott-Heron. Her ethnographic and, at times, participatory filmmaking approach re-evaluates this cultural heritage by illustrating its importance for the contemporary artist-activist's struggle and sheds light on the role of popular cultures—such as rap, hip-hop, and street art—in global geopolitics.

This article features Rama Thiaw as a filmmaker of the “new African cinema wave” who uses cinema “as a medium for self-discovery, artistic invention and performance” (Diawara, 2010, p. 96, 99). In doing so, the filmmaker brings her both African and transnational gaze to a filmmaking that is less concerned about opposing a hegemonic landscape of European and American cinemas than contributing to a voice of “new creativity and self-renewal” within world cinemas (p. 95). Thiaw's TRWBT offers a locally produced and transnationally articulated cinematic language that investigates the representation of recent African uprisings as they have been mediatized regionally, continentally, and even globally.

Accordingly, documentary filmmaker Thiaw covers a specific moment of Senegal's political uprisings in three ways: First, by aligning herself with various historical and cultural references; second, by giving voice to popular cultures in her film, both with regard to content as well as aesthetics, as a result of her encounters with politically engaged artists; and, third, through the filmmaker's role as an ambassador for a personal African diasporic narrative in the international film industry.

THE REVOLUTION WON'T BE TELEVISED

This section describes how Thiaw's approach as a filmmaker counters a Eurocentric approach by highlighting the global—and often undervalued—significance of West Africa's recent protest movements at this key juncture in history. I consider Thiaw's documentary filmmaking practice an “inevitably activist” genre² on two levels. First, the filmmaker participates in a pan-African vision of activist filmmaking (Dovey, 2009, p. 3) in the digital era. Second, she draws attention to the “encompassing complexities of African cinema (or ‘identities’) outside Africa” (Bâ, 2010, p. 56) by cinematically offering a personal critique of (international) media coverage. Since the documentary reflects on the fact of being displayed or not in inter/-national media—as the film title's appropriation of Gil Scott-Heron's popular phrase “the revolution will not be televised” already announces—it can be argued that the documentary inscribes itself as a countercultural contribution to the mainstream mediatization process of the sub-Saharan African uprisings.

TRWBT delves into the hybrid nature of the protests. On one level, it examines the localized protest movement against then-president Abdoulaye Wade's corruption of the Constitutional Council in 2012 in order to make himself eligible as a candidate for a controversial third term. This protest movement, referred to as Y'en a marre (“Enough Is Enough!”), was formed in January 2011 by a group of Senegalese rappers and journalists and carried out in large part by the youth population, who ultimately succeeded in removing Wade from power. Initially, it stemmed from young people's frustrations with the difficult life conditions they faced, such as unemployment, underemployment, and lack of prospects for the future (Tall, Pommerolle, & Cahen, 2015, p. 56). The key figures of the movement, such as the artist-activists Thiat and Kilifeu, were seeking effective mechanisms for mobilizing, organizing, and strategizing an increasingly informed and connected youth population in order to take measures against the declining political situation. The youth population felt heavily alienated by the lack of democracy in their countries and the exclusion of the masses from structures of power. They searched for ways to counteract the multiparty system's inability or unwillingness to strengthen democracy as well as to hold accountable those responsible for increasing social disparity. They drew attention to the divide between urban and rural areas, unlike the earlier wave of youth riots that had centered mainly on urban protest movements (Branch & Mampilly, 2015, p. 54).

Connected to other youth movements within Senegal³ and around the world, Y'en a Marre responded to the situation in Senegal by calling for the restoration of an accountable representative democracy.⁴ Since the major achievement of Wade's resignation, spearheaded by civil society movements, served as a model on a pan-African dimension for activists in neighboring Burkina Faso,⁵ the second part of the documentary follows the band Keur Gui into Burkina Faso. There, Y'en a marre share their experiences and achievements as a model for revolting against the latest example of local entrenched leadership, incumbent president Blaise Compaoré. Similar to Senegal, the Burkinabe movement Le balai citoyen (Citizen's Broom), was established by two young musicians—rapper Smokey and reggae musician Sams'K Le Jah, who opposed any amendments to Article 37 of the Constitution that barred Compaoré from a third term in power. Both movements mobilized thousands of activists in their respective countries, especially through the use of social media. In addition, pan-African youth clubs were established in solidarity and support all over the African diasporas.

Although the recent Senegalese and Burkinabe protest movements brought about political transitions, a recurring question in reference to the political upheavals in West Africa was: Why was media coverage not available internationally? What went wrong so that the distribution of information did not happen to an international degree? Thiaw chose to respond to this media imbalance by positioning herself at the grassroots level of the artist-activists' local organization that mainly used social media to establish networks among the protesters themselves (Ekine, 2012, p. 25). Hence, the documentary wished to sensitize audiences with regard to the significant impact of the Senegalese and Burkinabe protest movements on global activism. The narrative structure of the film is based on a chronological timeline. Thiaw's documentary focuses on the urban protests in Dakar and the trips to other regions of Senegal and Ouagadougou through the lens of the two musicians Thiat (Cyril Oumar Touré) and Kilifeu (Mbessane Landing Seck) and their producer Gadiaga (Pape Aloune Gadiaga) that made up the band Keur Gui (The Household). The documentary begins at the peak moment of political tension: TRWBT starts filming the civil revolts that took place on Obelisk Square in Dakar, where thousands of protesters gathered denouncing the legitimacy of the then-president as a candidate in the upcoming elections. Thiaw contrasts these first-hand documented protest scenes with footage of the president in power from international broadcast media⁶ right before the struggles emerged in order to spotlight the political conditions that led to the protest movements. The president's controversial, contested statements shed light on factors that heightened the revolution's climactic moment.

The film's production began before the election period, when the creation of the Y'en a marre movement was about to start. By then, Thiaw had already produced her first feature-length documentary, Boul Fallé: La voix de la lutte/Boul Fallé: The wrestling way (2009), which used a sociopolitical lens in examining wrestling, Senegal's national sport. Boul Fallé also traced the eponymous movement that emerged following the controversial re-election in 1988 of Wade's predecessor, President Abdou Diouf. Thiaw's recent documentary deals with the protest movement against Wade, who represented once Diouf's popular successor. TRWBT cinematographically explores the transformative mechanisms of the political status quo in Senegal during this time.

In following the Keur Gui's artist-activists over several years, the filmmaker shows the transformative power of the Y'en a marre movement and the unexpectedly significant impact it had in the formation of a massive civil mobilization. In the documentary, Thiaw chronicles the Y'en a marre movement's evolution through its lead figures: “As diverse social groups seek to understand and challenge their own oppression, they reveal new political possibilities whose resonance can reach far beyond their place of origin, transforming people's understandings of politics nationally, regionally, and even globally” (Branch & Mampilly, 2015, p. 7). TRWBT uses a local, continental, and pan-African diasporic approach that wishes to increase awareness and relevance of the uprisings albeit without conveying a romanticized vision of struggle (p. 3). This is notable since Senegal's uprisings were relatively successful as they brought about some formal political changes and their impact can still be seen, unlike the majority of other recent protest movements across Africa.

CULTURAL HERITAGE AND POPULAR CULTURES

In the course of documenting the Senegalese protest movement between 2011 and 2014, Thiaw underscores the global relevance of these uprisings (often underrepresented by international media) by paralleling this peak moment in Senegal's history with historical references to various other times and settings (United States, Senegal). In doing so, the filmmaker clearly situates Senegal's popular movement within a broader context of key revolutionary moments in global history. Thiaw foregrounds her pan-African vision of an activist filmmaking by showing the protest movement's impacts and credibility across national boundaries. In addition to drawing on specific historical and cultural references of artist-activists (Khady Sylla and Gil Scott-Heron), the filmic analysis highlights the power of popular cultures in changing the status quo of sociopolitical conditions. Thiaw not only looks at the concrete actions of the social movement, its outer manifestations (Downing, 2008, p. 42), but she also examines its internal source, a state of mind, as expressed through various artistic means: politically engaged rap, hip-hop, and street art.

GIVING VOICE TO KHADY SYLLA

This section reflects on various forms of artistic expression that make reference to the role and transmission of cultural heritage and how it intersects with popular cultures on both a local and diasporic level. Accordingly, it examines how the filmmaker's representation of the political uprisings “built upon the actual experience of protest” (Branch & Mampilly, 2015, p. 8) reveals a productive field of analysis for exploring the sociopolitical imaginations expressed through popular cultures such as street art, rap, and hip-hop. The contextual framing of Thiaw's documentary also relies on two leading figures of political struggle through the arts. Thiaw makes use of a cultural heritage and features its intergenerational significance in two ways: For one, via Sylla's visual presence and narration as a lead figure bridging two generations of political and artistic struggle; and, for the other, via Scott-Heron's presence as evoked by the film's title The Revolution Won't Be Televised, as well as by using his song in the soundtrack.

From the point of view of editing, Thiaw consciously aligns the two divergent historical references, Sylla and Scott-Heron, in the documentary's 9-minute introductory sequence. Dedicated to the wake of the revolution, Thiaw parallels the reference to the pre-protest moment of Wade's resignation with Sylla's appearance set in an indoor and twilight environment, who speaks out of the shadows of the (figurative) wall existing between the divide of social affiliation: the privileged versus the unprivileged. This reference evokes the historical dimension of African cinemas and liberation struggles in the 1960s and 1970s, not least because of Sylla's strong influence from Djibril Diop Mambéty, Senegal's noted socially committed cineaste (Armes, 2006, p. 113). Mambéty is considered a cineaste “against the tide” (Niang, 2002) since he devoted himself in his (unachieved) cinematographic trilogy to a cinema of the “small people” (“petites gens”).

In the first scene, Khady Sylla reads her son a letter—her gaze directly addressing the spectator—telling him about her personal involvement in the revolutionary struggle. When the Senegalese revolution was at its beginnings, Sylla was working on her third film, The Hidden Face of the West, and wanted to contribute to the movement through a letter dedicated to Thiat, who was in prison at that time. Here, Sylla's filmed letter represents the previous generation of artist-activists and a transcending of the generational boundaries by expressing solidarity and guidance to this movement through Thiat. Sylla not only becomes Thiat's guiding spirit, she also personifies a lead figure for Thiaw herself. Thiaw was strongly inspired by Sylla as a filmmaker, most especially by her last accomplished documentary on mental illness, Une fenêtre ouverte / An Open Window (2005), which addresses the politics of social marginalization in Senegal's conflicted urban society. Sylla depicts characters from various social backgrounds through an innovative cinematic style that blurs lines between fiction and reality:

[U]nlike the polished, almost glitzy, productions of her male counterparts, Ousmane Sembène, Moussa Sène Absa and Mansour Wade […], Sylla's work is raw, focusing on the eternal debate of tradition versus modernity and the social consequences for women who choose to go against the grain. She is equally not shy about condemning the corrupt and ill-run contemporary state of Senegal by wanton politics that have run the country into ground. (Orlando, 2007, p. 459)

Khady Sylla (and Fatou Kandé Senghor) counts among one of the groundbreaking women filmmakers who—same as earlier Senegalese Safi Faye and Togolese Anne-Laure Folly—was in search of agency through a personal cinematic approach without imitating a Eurocentric model or seeking to align with Western feminist movements (p. 455). Moreover, Sylla's aesthetic approach recalls that of digital video and therefore evokes the then relatively new mode of filmmaking and its potential to offer an expanding accessibility for contemporary African cinema.

The filmmaker's decision to give voice to Sylla through a filmed letter also refers to an intergenerational transmission of lived experience and evokes oral tradition. Sylla's last film Une simple parole / A Single Word (2013), finished by her sister Mariama Sylla Faye, portrays the transmission of oral knowledge by their grandmother Penda Diogo Sarr, the guardian of the spoken word. They position themselves against their own historical background, since they are their family's second generation to use writing. To counteract the decline in oral tradition, since “[t]his speech is threatened” (Sylla, 2013), the Sylla sisters decided to preserve it by placing it within filmed tradition. Similarly, Thiaw's filmed letter not only re-enacts the lead figure by combining activism through the arts, it also positions Sylla as a voice bridging two generations of political struggle. Sylla's three appearances in TRWBT also count among some of her last poetic testimonies, as she died at age 50 in 2013 during the latter production of Thiaw's documentary. This unforeseeable event results in the film also being a visual commemoration of the so far too little recognized poet and filmmaker. In such a way, both films document and preserve oral/spoken performance.

From a current perspective, Thiaw referencing Sylla can be compared to Mati Diop referencing her uncle (the mythical Djibril Diop Mambéty, a key figure in the history of African cinema) in her film Mille Soleils / A Thousand Suns (2013). Through her film, France-based filmmaker Mati Diop stages a personal artistic encounter with Mambéty (whom she never met) via her contemporary diasporic response to his film Touki Bouki / The Hyena's Journey (1973). Similar to Thiaw, Diop depicts the historical through the personal (her search of autobiographic references in her trip to Senegal) and thereby refers to the complexity of historical images, cultural memory, and personal imaginary.

GIL SCOTT-HERON'S TRENCHANT TESTIMONY

The documentary's second historical reference, the title's eponymous poem and famous song by Gil Scott-Heron, directly expresses Thiaw's driving motivation in making TRWBT: a deep dissatisfaction generated by the lack of international media coverage of the Senegalese protest movement. The song, created in 1970 within the context of the civil rights movements in the United States, correlates here with the power of words in the fight to win back democracy for the people of Senegal. In Scott-Heron's 1974 music recording, he warned that generation of people of color of the potential distraction by telecommunications that would prevent them from taking political action to the streets. From a contemporary perspective, parallels can be drawn between the context for the “political, anti-broadcasting, black power anthem” (Spigel & Curtin, 1997, p. 8) and the contemporary political distraction experienced by the digital age generation.

Drawing on the historical heritage of Gil Scott-Heron's song as an “alternative form of black poetry” (Spigel & Curtin, 1997, p. 65), the political message in its original version overlaps in TRWBT's soundtrack—as a fade in—in the third scene with the protestors' street manifestations in Dakar: “Y'en a marre, Y'en a marre / (Enough is enough, Enough is enough).” This formal concurrence relates, again, to the core message of the film: the extent to which artistic expression and social and political activism are related.⁷ Thiaw's narrative approach relates to Scott-Heron's immortal message, “The revolution they seek may or may not be televised,” since she explores ordinary people, “des héros quotidiens” (“everyday heroes,” following here Mambéty's model of foregrounding “small people” in his cinematographic oeuvre), as she claimed in a press release announcing the world premiere of her film in the Agence de Presse Sénégalaise. At the same time, Gil Scott-Heron's death in 2011—the “grandfather of rap,” in the filmmaker's opinion—coincided with Thiaw's decision in 2010 to begin the process of shooting her feature documentary.

The 2-minute scene that takes place between Khady Sylla's appearance and Gil Scott-Heron's song traces Kilifeu's conversation regarding personal political and historical influences. Their process of politicization, expressed mainly in a dialogue among the three musicians of the band, unfolds in this scene. The montage nuances how civil struggle movements are created and, most especially, organized and carried out. One member of the band Kilifeu stated:

No one inspired me. Neither Sankara nor Lumumba. When I started to revolt, I didn't know Sankara at all. Because I started to rebel when I was only 13. But I had witnessed social injustice due to politics. And it was the reason for my fighting. I told to myself I would go as far as they did, all the way to the G8, and say ‘fuck’ to toubabs (white)! We owe you nothing! That's why I respect those heros [sic].

Gadiaga responds: “I don't know who Sankara is, and I don't care. Sankara and I don't share the same country. Who is he? When my country was in trouble, where was he?” Then, Thiat reacts, in off-voice, while the hand-held camera frames Gadiaga in a close-up shot: “Gadiaga, what are you talking about? … You can't be part of a band like the Keur Gui and talk like that” (Gadiaga, Touré, & Seck as cited in TRWBT,⁸ 2016, min. 00:00:50–00:02:50). This scene unveils the protagonists' gradual process of politicization in which the band's activism had been initially driven by purely local concerns and more general issues that the country was facing, such as poverty, and which intensified when the incumbent regime tried to maintain power in 2011. Only then are the three musicians introduced as political activists and are therefore constructed as disobedient bodies (Opel & Pompper, 2003). The first shot focuses on Thiat, who appears in a street setting surrounded by crowds of protestors and state security personnel. Following the protagonists, subsequent shots take the spectator to Independence and Obelisque Squares in the financial center of Dakar where people gathered denouncing Wade's candidacy for presidency for a third term, the electoral schools where the population voted, as well as several regions where Thiat and Kilifeu campaigned against Wade (Estrella, 2017, p. 249).

From a formal-aesthetic point of view, the abrupt shifts of rhythm, the handheld camera, and the fast editing of shots and counter-shots of various street scenes intermingled with street sounds, such as political messages delivered by megaphones, all serve to amplify the musician's activist grounding. Thiat, staged amid a protesting crowd, discusses (with an anonymous journalist who is located off-screen) what the activists' next intervention strategy will look like in case the president should run for another candidacy. The following intertitle “January 27 2012 / SENEGAL / The Constitutional Council Decision” depicts Thiat as the main protagonist in the constituting series of events. The sound of a photo being taken in black and white can be read as a means of documentation of the political involvement of the activists and even adds a layer, as it can also be understood as a response to the lack of archival of (historical) events and its political implication in the West African context.

Analyzing further, Thiaw's significant images of resistance become a symbolic reflection on the interdependence between ordinary participation in protest movements and artistic expressions of dissent. This narrative approach of gradually introducing the main subject of the film with the use of a strict chronological timeline results in a shot of the title of the film, which appears fragmented in three parts on the screen (TRWBT, 2016, min. 00:09:09). The title overlaps with the off-voice of a demonstrator speaking through a megaphone, affirming: “Now, it's the turn of the people to decide.” Visually, the fragmented shots of street demonstrations alternate with three shots of Thiat, Kilifeu, and Gadiaga that occasionally overlap in split-screens, staging them as being a decisive part of “the people.” After this introductory sequence, the soundtrack, parallel to the separate shots of the three musicians, fades in with Heron's repeated song lyrics, bringing together all of the aforementioned elements of the film. Heron's criticism regarding the relationship between telecommunications and the lack of political action directly speaks to the lack of political exposure that Senegal's protest movements received and is thus doubly relevant for TRWBT.

Against the backdrop of paying tribute to these two influential political and cultural figures—Sylla and Scott-Heron—Thiaw's mise-en-scène of the three protagonists evokes a hybrid nonfiction form that encompasses, in addition to these two portraits, a direct political documentary. It is thus a directly involved ethnographic filmmaking practice that chronologically covers the main characters' process of becoming gradually and individually politicized. As the political commitments of the musicians unfold, this ethnographic approach finally enables a polyphonic reading of the protagonists' micro-politics associated with their ordinary moments of daily life (Aterianus-Owanga, 2011).

FILMMAKING FROM BELOW

Appadurai's question “Can the media ever be turned to the interests of the poor?” (2000, p. 2), raising crucial debates regarding social exclusion and its ties to epistemological exclusion, is perfectly relevant to Thiaw's documentary. In the case of the Y'en a marre movement, street activism was, in fact, organized to a great extent on a grassroots level through the activities of the Web 2.0 generation, where, in Scott-Heron's terms, “the revolution will be live.” Therefore, Thiaw portrays a revolution that, as the film title says, was happening live but was disregarded by (broadcast) media: the revolution may not be broadcasted (televised), but it will be documented for one and, more importantly, shown from the inside. In this respect, Thiaw's documentary is a personal account from the heart of the revolution in Senegal; while it was mediatized, it lacked a Senegalese voice as it unfolded on broadcast media across the globe (Vourlias, 2016).

Unlike several other films made on the Y'en a marre movement and on the politically unstable situation at the time, Thiaw's intention was to provide a view of the history of the country from an insider's perspective, by a Senegalese crew, and it would serve as a counterweight to the majority of films from a Eurocentric perspective made by Western filmmakers.⁹ Since the 1980s, a language of “revolution” has been subsumed under “resistance” in political culture, and the focus has increasingly been drawn to what Ella Shohat and Robert Stam call a “decentered multiplicity of localized struggles” (2014, p. 361). Likewise, TRWBT is less concerned about a specifically nation-centered mindset. More importantly, Thiaw emphasizes “a shift in focus to more quotidian priorities” (Tcheuyap, 2011, p. 25) that is carried out in a correlation between artistic expression and the dissemination of political messages. The documentary features music as a form of everyday activism, as the filmmaker engages in the three protagonists' daily struggles, concerns, and ongoing trajectories. Y'en a marre “succeeded in arousing the dormant social consciousness of Senegalese society through community organization, written manifestoes, social media, thundering oratory, striking visual imagery, and unifying hip-hop anthems, attracting enough followers to ensure Wade's defeat and his peaceful exit from office” (Bryson, 2014, p. 33).

Thiaw emphasizes the potential of popular cultures as activist vehicles for revolutions by focusing on the broad range of mass protest movements, which managed to reach audiences that were not necessarily affiliated with political struggles prior to the revolts. The ultimate aim was to exert persistent political pressure through the use of the artist's music during the film, since the documentary cinematographically renounces using distant shots and authorial voiceovers. The close-ups and handheld camera effects depict the direct involvement of the artists in the political struggle and the mobilization of the youth population. The documentary generates an innovative type of aesthetic and political dialogue that is characterized by a fusion of visuals and soundscapes—cinema's genuine audiovisual modes of expression.

Aesthetically, Thiaw appropriates and quotes the aesthetics and codes of popular cultures (Niang, 2006). The use of cross-references to popular cultures further decodes the political struggle and mobilization of the audience, as can be seen, for instance, in the various graphics for the documentary's credits and intertitles based on graffiti aesthetics (by the graffiti artists Chimère and Matzo), and traveling shots of graffiti and street art containing a political message. Exterior shots in various spaces where Keur Gui performed concerts and interior interviews with the musicians are formally intertwined with a range of multimedia formats such as extracts of music videos (of the band Kaolack). Here, rap music stands for the vehicle of expressing political resistance. Indeed, a spoken-word battle can be heard along with the soundtrack of the revolution. Thiat's version recalling the band's inception is a glorifying affirmation of “conscious” rap as a political core element:

To stand as a counter power is a power in itself (…) You know, when we created the movement back in January 2011, we didn't need much. Because we had a very important instrument: I mean hip hop, which federates the youth, which brings them together to convey a message. (Touré as cited in TRWBT, 2016, min. 01:32:00)

Building on this notion, hip-hop/rap may be considered a paradoxical hybrid encounter in the West African context. For one, it is locally produced for a specifically assigned political purpose—in this case, Senegal—and transnational hip-hop identity rooted in such struggle may be considered “fundamentally African by way of its political and cultural commitment” (Sajnani, 2013, p. 158). Then again, it is a musical phenomenon squarely placed within the context of cultural imperialism and political economy, as its globalization process has also been a result of the proliferation of major media corporations in the West (Rose, 2008). In regard to the documentary, the cinematography and editing of the many shots and counter-shots of concerts also follow the common logic of visual codes staging stardom versus fandom. The mise-en-scène of the rappers as heroes, such as overhead shots of an affirming crowd, contrasts with low-angle shots and front-on perspectives of the artists. This recalls a structural formula, which is highly economized and popularized in its transmission by mass media that aims at large audiences and is predefined by the West. Thiaw foregrounds the uprisings disregarded by the media, and to amplify the attention brought to this specifically local phenomenon, she cinematographically refers to codes mainly used in mainstream media. Therefore, the film's theme takes on a double connotation—a multiplicity, in Shohat's and Stam's term: it becomes a powerful mouthpiece for giving voice to insufficiently recognized but decisive agents of political protest exactly through the appropriation of codes that tend to be used in mass medial distribution.

Onyango-Obbo's claim: “There can be no African revolutions, only global ones” (Onyango-Obbo, 2014) best describes how Thiaw treats her cinematic subject as well as her position as an ambassador for the increased visibility of the Senegalese uprisings. Thiaw emphasizes the global relevance of the local uprisings' means of expression, which places Senegal's current situation on the world agenda of protest movements. The filmmaker therefore contributes to a form of “‘globalization from below’” (Appadurai, 2000, pp. 3, 15–17), and not only because the film's subject relies on the activist's contestation of the status quo. Besides documenting specific artist-activists visions and strategies that are carried out on a grassroots level and live, she participates in globalization from below by adopting an insider's perspective and expressing her voice internationally through the circulation of her documentary. In doing so, she skillfully points to what Appadurai named the “disjunctures” (2000, p. 5) between the vectors of globalized phenomena such as mainstream media outputs and local knowledge production.

GLOBAL CIRCULATION

This section focuses on the documentary's global reception and criticism, notably in Europe and the Americas. It considers recent debates in film festival research as well as curatorial stances on African cinemas with regard to their diasporic aspect. This analysis of the reactions that TRWBT encountered at several international venues attempts to critically propose a “continental-to-planetary construct” (Bâ, 2010, p. 58) for screening African cinemas: Rama Thiaw can be seen as a contemporary diasporic filmmaker who uses an innovative approach in documenting the political. She can also be seen as an exemplary model of an upcoming generation of activist documentary filmmakers within West Africa, since her second feature-length film has been among the few African documentaries to have been recognized internationally.

TRWBT has circulated relatively well in Europe, and to a lesser extent in Africa, South America, and North America.¹⁰ The documentary had its world premiere at the International Berlin Film Festival Berlinale in 2016, where it was awarded the prestigious Critics Prize of the FIPRESCI¹¹ and was distinguished with a “special mention” in the Forum section. This section is self-designated as the “most daring section” of the Berlinale, and it was running in 2016 under the title “Making Experience Tangible.” The Forum has a reputation of showcasing hybrid, unconventional works since it requests few formal limitations for submissions, neither in genre nor in the format or length of the audiovisual production. Even though the jury is known to be transversally selected, regarding both the professional affiliations of the jury members and the geographical dimensions of their respective field of activities, receiving the FIPRESCI award and the Forum's Special Mention¹² is outstanding for several reasons. With regard to her professional experience and filmography, Thiaw is an emerging filmmaker, and her background is multidisciplinary. After her studies in economics in Paris, she co-founded the Dakar-based production company Boul Fallé Images for the production of her first documentary with its eponymous title (2009), which did not circulate widely. TRWBT was Rama Thiaw's first feature-length documentary, wherein she figured as screenwriter, director, and producer.

Known as one of the major A-list festivals in Europe and with a strong industry focus due to the World Cinema Fund, the Berlinale still screens African films to a comparatively lesser extent, as the archival documentation of the post-colonial era shows. Compared to a relatively active Senegalese and Burkinabe cinematographic production, for instance, only 15 Senegalese and 11 Burkinabe films have been represented at the Berlin Film Festival in all sections since the early 1960s,¹³ most of them co-productions with countries characterized by a major film production such as Canada, France, Germany, Switzerland, the United States, Morocco, and, recently, Qatar. Therefore, it is remarkable to note that the funding of the production was predominantly provided by Senegalese film funds (up to 80%). Thiaw's major Senegalese production also stands out in comparison with the other co-productions awarded by FIPRESCI in 2016, as many of them already had an international distributor (such as The Match Factory), whereas Thiaw's film still does not have a distributor to date. Along with Abdou Khadir Ndiaye's short film Xalé Bu Rérr/Lost Child (2017), TRWBT is also the only Senegalese production since the early 2000s that did not have on board one of the aforementioned major film industries as co-producers. Finally, Rama Thiaw's documentary was the first Senegalese film presented at the Berlin Film Festival to have been directed by a woman.

Besides being shown in international documentary film festivals with a long tradition of selecting independent productions,¹⁴ Thiaw's documentary, however, was programmed mostly in film festival circuits for African cinemas or international film festivals with a selection of African films that are often screened in a specially designed “African” showcase.¹⁵ Unlike the tendency of a former generation of African filmmakers to be “ghettoized” at various film festivals curating Africa—which Manthia Diawara, among others, denounced already in the early 1990s (1993, 1994)—the younger generation is more concerned about the recent increase of what Sheila Petty called “self-styling identities” in African screen media. Following Mudimbe's and Mbembe's assertions of mestizo spaces and self-styling, Petty perceived that “[b]y moving forward in time and transcending geography, African identities (…) have become much more creative expressions of Africanity” (2011, p. 28). Although the greater possibilities that exist in self-styling identities might be economically or professionally promising for filmmakers who exploit this label as a marketable selling product, it still carries the burden of representation. Rama Thiaw, for instance, has been frustrated about the fact that since she has been traveling with her film internationally, it seems paradoxical in global film festival settings to perform as a Senegalese-based filmmaker and producer. She is almost exclusively perceived as a “French” director when it comes to her successful achievements with regard to production. In contrast, when it comes to content, she has to position herself in the European circuit as a so-called lead figure (“porte parole”) with the obligation of representing a “new” generation of engaged African filmmakers with fresh, outstanding narratives for an international audience less familiar with “the African case” (Thiaw in Posch, 2016). This entails contributing to a specific image or theme of Africa depending on prevailing trends in the curatorial process.

Global curatorship represents a sometimes challenging and uncomfortable role of mediation in terms of accommodating specific audiences' divergent demands, being marketable for the festival's policy-making authorities, and satisfying the funding structures' respective requirements. The global curatorship's mediating function faces other problematic issues concerning African films and their circulation in international circuits. First, due to a persisting lack of resources, many initiatives that support filmmaking from Africa today are upheld by the personal commitment of individuals in the absence of major institutions (Dovey, 2015, p. 26). Second, international venues that tend to put African films in a box, labeling them as “Africa in aspic” (Enwezor, 2008, p. 164), still do not take diasporic filmmakers as filmmakers in their own right from a curatorial perspective.¹⁶ For this very reason, Western European film funding (such as foreign ministries or embassies) tends to support projects on the African continent instead of African productions (Lobato, 2012). Third, this contributes, again, to the representational burden for African filmmakers of having to speak “for” Africa (Barnett, 2006, Thackway, 2014).

This demonstrates once more the hegemony inherent in the production stage and mediatizing process dominated by the Global North. The lack of a transversal global exhibition as well a lack of sensitization in both curating festivals and updating audiences makes it difficult for the filmmakers to speak as transnational subjects. As long as the need to further locate cinema and filmmakers within and between national and international frameworks at once (Martin, 1995, p. 3) persists, the filmmakers are compelled to pursue an activist agenda of defending an increasing attention for their work and their cause in the international circulation of their work once the film is already produced. Therefore, global curatorship is called upon to truly consider filmmakers such as Thiaw as being part of the international meeting place they claim to foster instead of pigeonholing them in specialized sections under the name of diversity in a reductive discourse that relates “Africa to the world.”

Since the late 2000s, a major desire to finally have a larger number of facilities for post-production within Africa, for instance, was mentioned in several international transdisciplinary panel discussions as a crucial step toward establishing a greater economic and artistic independence in co-productions financially dominated by the Global North (at least speaking for lower-budget productions). This continuing challenging issue within the Global South makes it difficult for the filmmaker's productions to be placed within “global networks” as they are marginalized as “minor transnational practices” (Adejunmobi, 2014, p. 88) within a global neoliberal capitalist film industry. In terms of production, Thiaw, for instance, “conceive(s) the world as a globalized system composed of interconnected networks. Each system of production, each network is intertwined with another one. It is the lack of depth of the interconnections between different networks that isolates a production system” (Thiaw in Russo, 2016). Due to her experience of having been mentored in South Africa, as well as in several Anglophone areas, she has noted a conducive relationship between African and American cinemas. However, she acknowledges a great need to finally end the industry's persisting heavy reliance on French-African codependent productions. Since the documentary illustrates African cinematic identities on a local, regional, and continental scale, its global circulation encompasses what Saër Maty Bâ termed the complexities of African cinemas outside Africa (2010, p. 56). Consequently, Thiaw as a filmmaker represents an African filmmaking that embodies how diaspora can help transcend the concept of nation-state and national particularities that are bound to individual territories.

CONCLUSION

This article foregrounds Thiaw's activist filmmaking practice as an example of current global documentary filmmaking in the light of urban and popular cultures within an existing cultural heritage. Thiaw merges historically grounded cultural references from geopolitically diverse settings (brought to light by Khady Sylla and Gil Scott-Heron as emblematic figures of cinematographically, poetically, and politically charged discourse) with current artist-activist expression in an Afro-urban environment and borrows from their formal-aesthetic styles (such as hip-hop, rap, and street art). The strength of the documentary lies in its unique depiction of the set ruling elite and the civil resistance movements of the youth generation. These uprisings gain credibility as Thiaw renders an intimate portrait from an “insider's” perspective and heightens the (thus far lacking) attention to the impacts of the protest movements from a local perspective.

This places Thiaw among other West African and diasporic filmmakers of her generation—increasingly women documentary filmmakers—whose optic lies more on specific histories and quotidian practices in a contemporary and, often, urban setting, some of which embody “individual diasporic histories” (Mishra, 2006, p. 18). These individual stories are narrated from a personal perspective, such as, among others, Senegalese filmmaker Aïcha Thiam's short film Fi Fabililahi (2003) that sheds light on both local and national concerns in urban Dakar; the singular approach to personal (Mauritanian) histories in Katy Lena Ndiaye's En attendant les hommes / Waiting for Men (2007); Angèle Diabang Brener's filmic series that showcases the destinies of various individual women; Dyana Gaye's narrative approach that intersects individual (diasporic) stories in Des étoiles / Under the Starry Sky (2013) and in her earlier musical Saint Louis Blues / Un transport en commun (2009); and, finally, Alice Diop's and Mati Diop's personal rendition of the search for (cultural) African history. Therefore, all of these African/(Afro-) diasporic filmmakers establish a “contact zone from within” (Bâ, 2010, pp. 55, 65–66; Petty, 2008). In this frame, Thiaw's documentary, which portrays the artist-activist's trajectory in a politically charged but cinematographically little viewed setting, is undoubtedly a great contribution to the expression of singular voices of everyday struggle. As the article has shown, Thiaw represents an engaged filmmaker of transnationally articulated African cinemas that—through her personal investment, as highlighted in TRWBT's possible nodes of global circulation—offers a decisive point of debate for media and social change, political mobilization, as well as transnational movements in this current cinematographic and cultural landscape.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Doris Posch

Doris Posch ([email protected]) is a film and media scholar and lecturer at the Film Academy Vienna, the University of Vienna and a fellow of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. In 2015-2016, she was a Visiting Scholar at New York University and at Concordia University, Canada. Her research focuses on transnational and postcolonial cinemas, in particular emerging film cultures in African and Caribbean spaces. In addition to conducting academic research, she has also curated at film festivals in Brazil, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Madagascar, Tanzania, etc.

Notes

1 In the following, the abbreviation TRWBT will be used for The Revolution Won't Be Televised.

2 This notion of the African documentary as being an “inevitably activist” genre was largely discussed and reflected at the 2017 conference on Documentary Filmmaking Practices in Africa that was hosted by Suzanne Crosta, Sada Niang, and Alexie Tcheuyap and held at the University of Toronto in 2017.

3 Several urban movements and social phenomena marked the emergence of political protests in the public sphere of Senegal. Albeit different in their modes of organization, aims, and operation, they share a common background in the creation and assertion of a civic consciousness (Ba, 2016, p. 12). In Thiaw's regard, these took place on the basis of intergenerational dynamics regardless of gender and age. This opinion contrasts the much-cited international journalists' and scholars' claim that considered the youth generation to be exclusively accountable for the civic mobilization that took place during the protests.

4 Among Y'en a marre's first initiatives was “Daas Fanaanal” (the metaphoric significance of “sharpening one's weapon in order to finish up a slaughter”), a program inviting citizens to claim their voter's card and participate in the upcoming election. (Ardizzoni, 2016, p. 140, 145).

5 In this case, the movement for greater democracy was actually implemented within a much shorter period of time, but it had the same effects, as it aimed at removing Blaise Compaoré from power in Burkina Faso, where he had been governing for 27 years. In Une Révolution Africaine – Les Dix Jours Qui Ont Fait Chuter Blaise Compaoré (2015), Boubakar Sangaré uses a retrospective point of view along with interviews to memorialize this protest movement. In contrast, Thiaw's approach to document the protest movement is much more immediately involved and cinematographically direct.

6 The documentary includes an extract of an interview with President Wade on France 24, pointing out the moderators' attempt to address the polemics of the presidential candidacy.

7 Interestingly, Thiaw draws parallels between Scott-Heron's trajectory and the biographies of the protagonists of her film, as Scott-Heron was also deeply involved in activism at the time of the release of his most famous song, a sardonic comment on the becoming of Black American civil-rights struggle, which is topical in a contemporary reading of the emergence of the Black Lives Matter network and, more specifically, in the actions spearheaded by the bloggers behind Document the Silence and What About Our Daughters that took place in the United States on October 31, 2007 and that observed violence against women of color.

8 All quotes refer to the English subtitles of the original version unless otherwise indicated.

9 Films that address the political situation in the country with regard to a portrayal of musicians in the citizen movements are Boy Saloum: La Révolte des Y'en a Marre (2012), directed by French filmmaker and producer Audrey Gallet, Quitte le Pouvoir (2014) by the Dutch filmmaker Aida Grovestins, or the earlier online documentary film series titled African Underground: Democracy in Dakar (2007), directed by Ben Herson and Magee McIlvaine.

10 In the Americas, the documentary was presented at the Seattle International Film Festival and the Massachusetts Multicultural Film Festival, as well as the Festival do Rio, Brazil. It was screened at the oldest film festival in Africa, the Journées Cinématographiques de Carthage, Tunisia, and at the Festival Gorée Cinéma in Senegal, in addition to other venues in Dakar in 2016.

11 Founded in 1930, the FIPRESCI Prize was awarded in three categories in the 2016 edition: besides Thiaw's Senegalese production, the French-Bosnian co-production Smrt u Sarajevu/Death in Sarajevo by Danis Tanovic was distinguished in the section International Competition and Tobias Nölle's French-Swiss co-production Aloys in the Panorama section.

12 The two awards were certainly a driving force for the further circulation of the film in various prestigious international film festivals, such as the BAFICI in Buenos Aires—where the film was running for official competition in the documentary section—the prestigious Durban International Film Festival in South Africa, as well as the Hot Docs International Documentary Festival in Toronto, Canada, which is well known for its strong mentoring program from leading filmmakers.

13 For Senegal, only four out of the 15 films have been selected for competition: Blaise Senghor's Le Grand Magal de Touba in 1962 as the very first Senegalese film presented at the festival and Moussa Sene Absa's Canadian-Senegalese co-production Madame Brouette in 2002. Both films were distinguished with the Silver Bear, Senghor's film for Best Short Film and Madame Brouette for Best Film Music. The other two films that were chosen for competition were Alain Gomis' French-Senegalese co-production Tey/Aujourd'hui in 2012 and his most recent film Félicité (2017), a French-Senegalese-German-Belgian-Lebanese co-production that was distinguished with the Grand Jury Prize, the third Silver Bear in the selected Senegalese productions, whereas his earlier short film Petite lumière/A Little Light from 2003 was selected in the children's film festival (Kinderfilmfest / 14plus). The other films programmed in the Forum section were: En résidence surveillée (Under Police Protection) (1981) by Paulin Soumanou Vieyra, Abacabar Samb-Kaharam's Jom (1984), Djibril Diop Mambéty's Le Franc (1994) and La petite vendeuse de soleil (The Little Girl Who Sold The Sun) from 1998, L'Appel des arènes (Wrestling Grounds), directed by Cheikh Ndiaye in 2005, as well as Ousmane Sembène's Guelwaar from 1993 and Camp de Thiaroye (The Camp of Thiaroye) from 1989—which counts among one of the few purely African co-productions (Algeria, Tunisia, Senegal)—with the exceptions of Abdou Khadir Ndiaye's Xalé Bu Rérr/Lost Child, which was screened in the Generation section in 2017, and Sembène's Ceddo from 1976, which was screened in the Retrospective in 1990; Sembène was also a member of the International Jury in 1977. Since Gaston J. M. Kaboré's Wend Kuuni from 1984, which was screened at the children's film festival, only 10 Burkinabe films have been presented to date; six films were programmed in the Forum section, one in the Panorama section, Berni Goldblat's recent French-Quatar-Burkinabe feature film debut Wallay (2017) in the Generation section, and only two of them were selected for competition, both in 1993: Idrissa Ouédraogo's Samba Traoré, which was a French-Burkinabe co-production and also won the Silver Bear as the only Burkinabe film in the festival's history, and Sankofa, by the Ethiopian American director Haile Gerima, also a co-production of Burkina Faso and the United States; in 2009, Gaston Kaboré was the first (and only) Burkinabe jury member (in the international competition; Berlinale Archive, 2016).

14 In 2016, these include festivals such as the Buenos Aires Festival Internacional de Cine Independiente (BAFICI), Argentina, the Festival International du Documentaire d'Agadir (FIDADOC), Morocco, the Millennium Docs Against Gravity Film Festival in Warsaw, Poland, and the Encounters International Documentary Festival, South Africa.

15 These include the Africa Day 2016 section at Dok Fest in Munich—and screenings at the Festival International de films de Fribourg, Lausanne's Festival Cinémas d'Afrique, the Black Movie Festival of Geneva, the Festival Cinema Africano, Asia, e America Latina di Milano, and the CinemAfrica in Sweden.

16 Nigerian art curator Okwui Enwezor stated that “[i]t is a frightening prospect to think about renewal of the aesthetic and critical conditions of contemporary African art without addressing these issues” (2008, p. 163) and without broadening our definitions of “Africa” to include its diverse diasporas.