schéma amusement

2012, 3-screen projection, 16mm & DV, 27 min, Burkina Faso.

With Mohammed Ali and Madame Saidou

The images of the triple projection can be described as a series of observations that relate to a certain history of ethnographic film: a spinner at work (Trinh T. Minh Ha), women at the market (Chris Marker), and a man on his way into the city to sell things to the tourists (Jean Rouch).
The series of images is divided into three schémas: passion, tourism and amusement (education). This schémas are connected to Gilles Deleuze's lecture at Vincennes on Mille Plateaux where he first describes systems of signification and lignes of flight.
The film aims to create a productive consciousness of close relations. A crucial point is an enunciatory moment, when Mohammed Ali, who is been followed by the camera while walking into the city, faces the viewer and talks to us in an unfamiliar language. First this sequence is not translated, but immediately after this he states in French language: “I just described in my own language what we do here, our everyday practice”. This opposes an idea of a mimesis of language, and that one might render meaning of another people in terms already familiar to us, as if the other has never been there at all.
In the last sequences we see people watching a film in a country side on the subject of organic cotton in Burkina Faso, this is combined with students in Vincennes listening to a Deleuze lecture on Mille Plateaux. It is not for “us” to know the meaning of “them”, unless it is already known to „us both“, and needs no translation, but only a reminder.

credits:
idea/camera and montage: Elke Marhöfer, camera/sound: Aboudenis Toe, actor: Mohammed Ali, sound-editing: Olaf Hochherz
many thanks to: Saidou Tirogo, Paul Gbangou, Aboudenis Toe, Mohammed Ali, Olaf Hochherz, Isidor Ouedraogo