VELINGARA THEATER
Spain, 2012, 56 min
Javier Arcos & Javier Jarillo
25.01.2013 21:40
In Velingara, southern Senegal a group of teeneagers struggle to do theater. To go on stage and be part of the trip that will take them through the region of Casamance, they must fight against their fears and their own families, choosing between tradition and modernity.
Javier Arcos, doctor and filmmaker, is actually combining his work as a filmmaker and as a doctor in health humanitarian emergencies. In 2007 he created the company Synechia Film with Javier Jarillo, filmmaker and producer, specialized in Social Cinema. "Shame in the time of Cholera" is their first feature film. During 2011 they have been working in four documentaries of the International Library of Huanitarian Medicine (in collaboration with World Health Association and the Spanish Agency of Cooperation).
Director: Javier Arios & Javier Jarillo
Production: Sinechia Films
Language of dialogues: French, wolof & poulard
Language of subtitles: English, Czech
Launching of Film:
Festival Internacional de Cine y Video Alternativo y Comunitario "Ojo al Sancocho" (Columbia)
Festival Di Cinema Africand Di verona (Italy)
Montana Cine International Film fetsival (United States)
The film is an attempt to question the ways in which the visual narrative is constructed when using the feedback method. The feedback provided by the people involved (the young performers but also the elders) in the Babaluda Feast, turned out to be very important in offering an insight to the ways in which the Feast was depicted by the visual ethnographer. By recoding the shared visual ethnography, that was arranged in big groups in a large screening rooms, but also in small groups in private houses, the film will try to experiment the ways in which the visual narrative is constructed by looking at, the looked at. The montage method of the film will use a chronotopic montage technique (Bakhtin), in which the time and space unity will be enacted in a visual ethnographic present.
S.A.P.E is a acronyme for the Society of Ambience Makers and Elegant People. The followers of this movement are called "sapeurs"; men devoted to elegant dressing originally from the Congo-Brazzaville, West Africa. Part of a sapeur´s achievement is to settle in Paris, the fashion´s capital so there they can become an experimented, recognised sapeur. In Paris they are called "yayas" a lingala expression to name the elderly, those who deserve respect and recognition within the community; those who have made the journey of the S.A.P.E. Through the story of Fuluzioni Di Aluzioni, Annick Bertin "General Firenze" and Chardel Matsanga, this film tries to reveal the main aspects of this congolese practise.
