Abderrahmane
Sissako (right) in Life on Earth.
|
The
films are a roadmap through emotional and intellectual terrain that provides a solution
on how to save pain.
John
Cassavetes, American film director (1929-1989)
|
Alejandra Rojo of Argentina
Cambodian Rithy Panh.
|
I
made films so my mother, who didn’t go to school, could read the pictures.
Safi
Faye, Senegalese film director (1943-)
|
|
Rithy Panh (Cambodia), Alejandra
Rojo (Argentina) and Abderrahmane Sissako (Mauritania) have all settled in France,
but the pull of their home country permeates their artistic lives
How did you get into film?
Rithy Panh: It wasn’t something I chose. Film came to me when I went into exile
after what I went through in Cambodia. If I’d stayed there, I probably would never
have become a filmmaker. It isn’t a recognized profession there. But I’ve always
been aware of the power of images. In Cambodia, I lived next door to a film studio,
so I used to peak in on the shoots.
The Khmer Rouge genocide is a genocide with no recorded images except for photos.
As such, everything is photographed in people’s memories. What you’ve seen and lived
through is always running through your mind. It was this—the process of remembering
things—that drew me into film. My desire to make them was born here in France. When
I arrived in 1979, I knew my work would have to relate to what had happened in Cambodia.
After a war, either you keep quiet or you try to piece together what’s been shattered.
I dabbled in painting and writing, and then, one day, someone lent me a camera for
a party at a vocational college where I was taking a carpentry course. Some people
made cakes for the occasion, I made a little film. I knew then, at 20, where my vocation
stood. I attended classes at IDHEC [a prestigious French film school] and made my
first documentary, Site Number Two, about a Cambodian refugee camp.
Alejandra Rojo: When I was a kid, I wanted to be a painter. But I was living
in a very political environment, not an artistic one. My father was a lawyer and
my mother a psychoanalyst. When I was about 15, I lost interest in painting, graduated
from high school and began studying science. But two years later, I dropped all that
and decided that I wanted to make films. So I followed classes and took the plunge.
Abderrahmane Sissako: I was brought up in Mali and returned to Mauritania to
finish high school. Right after that, I went off to the Soviet Union, like thousands
of other African students. It was easier to go there than to France. I had a scholarship
to study film and I started making my own.
How did you come to France?
Panh: Because of the Khmer Rouge. I was 17 years old. Many members of my family
were killed and the rest of them fled to France.
Rojo: I came here when I was 12, as an exile. My father defended political prisoners.
The whole family had to leave Argentina. It was the time of the death squads—22,000
people disappeared. We were apparently on the target list.
Sissako: I came in 1993 because my film October had been chosen for the Cannes
Film Festival. I was invited to stay here and continue filmmaking. I spent 12 years
in Russia and now I’m in France. For how long, I don’t know.
What are the pros and cons of living outside your own country? Does it affect the
way you make films?
Panh: When you’re an exile, you don’t really have an identity any more. Whether
in Cambodia or France, I’m kind of at home everywhere and nowhere. Far and close
from everything. I’m interested in this distance. It allows you to stand back and
to see further, to grasp the shape of things. The lesser evil for an exile is managing
to make use of this. I go back to Cambodia and then I leave it again. It’s a natural
cycle. Coming back to a Paris film studio is somewhat like going on a retreat. I
recharge my batteries. Cambodia is a cultural desert.
Rojo: Exile changes your whole destiny. No matter what, it’s always uprooting.
But half my family wasn’t killed or put in concentration camps. I had a two-week
sea voyage and then understood what a drop in status meant. You were someone back
home and suddenly you became nobody. In the end, that’s not such a bad thing. You’re
less at the mercy of your social background. You see things from a more personal
standpoint. Having to work in another language creates a style simply because you’re
not fully in tune with what’s being said. I’m always aware of the gap, that what’s
one way here would be different there. Many immigrants share this feeling of living
a double life. But as an artist, I manage to go beyond this stage. A film, a painting,
a piece of music are all countries in themselves. You don’t need a country once you
have that. Exile is a moderately interesting life experience, but it’s fascinating
from a cinematographic standpoint. It’s a source of new ideas and stories. Our age
makes me think of some science fiction stories about inter-galactic peoples who move
about and migrate on a mass scale. When I sit down to write, I don’t tell myself
that I’m going to write stories about exiled people. They just come to me, from deep
down in my sub-conscious. You don’t make the films you want. You make the films that
have to be made.
Sissako: Exile is always a handicap. But distance allows you to look at your
own country, its past, its history from a slightly foreign viewpoint. When we talk
about home, we tend to hesitate, to go by feel. It’s a delicate process that you
can lose a grip on at any moment. Maybe we have more sensitivity. Sometimes you choose
to be silent and allow people to interpret.
What ties do you have with your native country?
Panh: I’ve just made my first film in France, a documentary about the Cambodian
community here. I’ve also shot one film in Mali. I’ve made all the others in Cambodia.
I’m interested in living with the people there. The film nearly becomes secondary.
Here, I feel tired and stressed. There, the people who have to fight to survive give
me strength. Survivors always feel guilty. To escape from this strange feeling, I
need to be with other people. The camera lets me do that—lets me say I have words,
dreams and thoughts to express, that I really belong to the world. Film has helped
me restore my own dignity. In Cambodia, I’m also helping to train filmmakers and
technicians, with assistance from the Ministry of Culture. Over the past 10 years,
we’ve put together a good team.
Rojo: I don’t go back to Argentina very often. The last time, I felt I was living
in an American colony. Here in France, you don’t realize how fast globalization is
racing ahead. The countries of the South are becoming colonies, holiday camps or
military camps of the great American empire. There’s a film to be made about that.
I’d go back to Argentina to work, but that’s all. It’s to do with my family being
rejected. I don’t see anything too exciting about being Argentinian and it’s very
hard to feel a cultural identity there. It’s a sort of recent patchwork of which
I’m a good example. My maternal grandmother was Lithuanian and her husband was an
Egyptian who spoke Yiddish. My paternal grandfather, who was a Spanish Catholic,
married a Russian-German Protestant.
Sissako: I often go to Mali and Mauritania—usually about twice a year, often
to check film locations. I go back and forth. Each trip enriches and alters the story
and each casting changes the film in some way.
Do you have any urge to live in your native country?
Panh: Definitely. But there’s no movie business in Cambodia. It’s easier to find
the money in France. I raise money here but I keep to small Cambodian-scale budgets.
Rojo: I think there’s something in Latin America that’s worth really looking
into, but I haven’t found it yet.
Sissako: I know I’ll go home one day. I’m in France for financial reasons. I’m
starting to be known and I’m getting some interesting proposals from producers and
television. It’s very hard to work in our countries. Filmmakers are on their own.
There’s no money to be had, no local film industry, no film schools. Africa’s always
had this dearth of production and things are just getting worse. No more than 10
films a year are made on the whole continent. You can’t have a ski champion in a
country where there’s no snow.
What are your plans?
Panh: Apart from fiction and documentaries, the project closest to my heart is
the gathering of a film archive on the Cambodian genocide. Over the next 20 years,
the witnesses will either die or their memories will become distorted. We live in
a society dominated by images. If we don’t make our own images, we won’t exist any
more. The countries of the South are going to die of that too, after already being
economically pillaged.
Rojo: I’m working on a story about a woman with a split personality. About a
robot that replaces a woman.
Sissako: My next film will be about exile. I’m going to try to tell the story
of people who apply to emigrate, who are waiting to leave. I’d like to show that
exile begins before the voyage itself. My films are often linked to my own life.
At the same time, I’ll try to tell how I got into film.
|
