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Djibril Diop Mambety Filmography
| 1968 | CONTRAS CITY | |
| 1970 | BADOU BOY | 60 Min, 16 mm, Color |
| 1973 | TOUKI BOUKI | 110 Min, 35 mm, Color |
| 1989 | PARLONS GRAND-MERE | 34 Min, 16 mm, Documentary |
| 1992 | HYENES | 110 Min, 35 mm, Color |
| 1994 | LE FRANC | 45 Min, 35 mm |
Djibril Diop Mambety's Films are available from Facets Multimedia
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Badou Boy Touki Bouki Made in 1973, Touki Bouki is an interesting example of the 'hybridization,' the mixing, of Western cinema and African story telling traditions. On the one hand, Mambety has been influenced by European film technique and technology. The 'continental non-linearity,' so to speak, and the stylistic self-consciousness of the film are reminiscent of 1960s European cinema. On the other, Mambety has transformed these into an African style and story. Some would argue he has been influenced as much by oral tradition as by cinematic conventions. He begins with Africa, then takes what he needs from Europe, and returns to Africa. Note carefully the style of the film. It might seem disorderly and confusing at first, especially in comparison to the usual linearity of Hollywood films and American TV. But Mambety is trying to do something expressive--to tell his story--with every image, sound, cut, collage, and juxtaposition in the film. It does hang together. Mambety is using a non-linear technique to tell a rather straightforward story. Mory and Anta, two young Senegalese, are living a life of boredom and poverty. They have little or no connection with the older generations or their community. (She is a student! He was a cattle herder.) They decide to go to Paris ("Paris, Paris, Paris"), a fantasy-land where all will be made well and where they'll enjoy the luxuries of French (or Western) living. They try several schemes to obtain money. They succeed, finally, by stealing clothes from Charlie and money from one of his guests. They book passage to France. But Mory, at the last moment, cannot bear to go, and he runs (runs and runs) in a kind of panic to recover his motorcycle and the ox's skull and horns which connect him (as well as suggest how disconnected he is) to Senegal and its pastoral traditions. Anta is left on board the ship. This film, Mambety's third and like his others,
is about money, corruption, misguided Africans, cultural alienation, European disdain
and exploitation of Africa, neo-colonialism, and so on. It's also about style, film
making, creating an African cinema. Hyenas(Ramatou) see Real Video clip  As a beautiful young woman living in Colobane (the village
in which the film is set), Linguère Ramatou fell in love with Dramaan Drameh.
She became pregnant. He denied paternity. He bribed two men to say they had slept
with her. She was driven from the village in disgrace. Dramaan married a wealthy
wife and prospered. That was years before the time of the events portrayed in the
film.
Ramatou has become miraculously wealthy--the richest woman in the world--rich as "the World Bank." She returns to the village seeking justice and revenge. Since she left, the village (and Africa itself) has become impoverished and corrupt. Dramaan "runs a dilapidated bar/general store . . . where the corrupt and indolent townsfolk drown their ennui in cheap wine." Ramatou offers the village "a trillion dollars"--if
they will kill Dramaan--the man who betrayed and destroyed her. She says, "The
world made a whore of me. I want to turn the world into a whorehouse." The villagers
express outrage at first but then are "easily seduced by air conditioners, refrigerators,
and television sets." The action of the film focuses mainly on the change--the
seduction and the yielding of Colobane--or if you prefer, the final decay, degeneration,
and corruption of the village. In the end, the people, the mayor, the priest, and
the professor all join together in the name of the consumer society to "kill"
Dramaan. (Quotations, except for Ramatou, from California Newsreel.) Hyenas is an adaptation of The Visit by Friedrich Dürrenmatt. (You needn't know the play to understand the issues.) Mambety intendsthe film as homage to "the great Friedrich." It follows the plot of the play closely. But Mambety has transformed that plot through location, image, symbolism, story, and theme. Hyenas is not simply The Visit in African costume--The Visit in-the-bush, so to speak. The animal imagery and symbolism provides one obvious example. The powerful sense of place, another. In a 1993 interview, Mambety explains his sense of the animal images--hyena, elephant, lion, bird. Those images and meanings, sustained through the film by continual cutting from people and the narrative to the animals, distinguish the film aesthetically and thematically from its source. Other--sometimes strange, even surreal--images and techniques reveal an aesthetic quite distinct from Western and Hollywood films and even from other African films. For example: the cutting from people to animals, the old man (perhaps a griot?) who wanders through the film, the dress of the townspeople in the judgment scene, the Japanese woman in uniform with handcuffs and a CB radio (?) who reads "The International Herald Tribune," the character, Gaana, whom Mambety himself plays, the bizarre representation of Colobane as an amusement park, the closing images of bulldozer, city, dozer tracks in the sand, and the Baobab tree. Like many other African films, Hyenas expresses
strong political, cultural, and moral themes. Note especially the men present , after
all the other villagers leave, after the killing of Dramaan. The mayor, the priest,
and the professor--government, religion, and education, the major social institutions--approve
and lead the village in its action. Djibril Diop Mambety's Films are
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