Tea time with Yaadikoone

An interview with Marc Picavez, director of Yaadikoone

 Yaadikoone begins with a scene of a soccer game. Does the sport have a special meaning for you? Why did you choose this opening for the film?

The film truly begins with a young boy, Yaadikoone, who walks along without paying any attention to the giant factory behind him… The sun is parching the neighborhood, and he takes a few gulps of water. The cement factory and an obsession with water will be two of the story’s focal points.

After that he does in fact come upon a street soccer match. What ties me to the sport in this context is its working class nature. The film is solidly anchored in a working class neighborhood on the outskirts of Dakar, where the houses remain unfinished, the roads are full of sand, the roofs have holes in them. Every day there, you see countless children’s soccer games of that type. And while I was location scouting, I was shown the real damage that balls represent to sheet metal roofs! The working class neighborhood’s identity is stamped straight off by that soccer match.

How did you learn about the legend of Yaadikoone – the Senegalese Robin Hood – and why did you want to connect it to your film?

I discovered the legend of Yaadikoone from a poster that you occasionally see in Dakar, in stubborn old bistros patronized by old, often well-educated men. It was in those places that are so characteristic of the Senegalese capital, where you can sometimes here Cuban or Cape Verdian music, that I discovered the story five years ago. At the time, I was writing the script for a feature film, Dakar en attendant la pluie [Dakar Waiting for the Rain] with my friend Massaër Dien who has since unfortunately passed away. He told me that he wanted to make a film about Yaadikoone one day, so when I decided to write a short film using elements from our collaborative feature, I thought about the story of the Great Yaadi.

I started doing research at that point, and it was not by any means easy, since the story of Yaadikoone is essentially oral. In preparing for the film, I met several people who knew about our grew up with his story.

Why were you interested in the theme of transmission and of its success or failure?

In Wolof, Yaadikoone literally means a “revenant” – someone who leaves and then returns. Transmission, traces, are at the heart of the project. The story of Yaadikoone was naturally stifled by the colonial powers, so its transmission is oral and belongs to the people. In the end that means that the younger generations of Senegalese don’t really know much about the man. This film should help to revive his popular memory.

Why did you want to give the name to your protagonist, who is a child? Does the film in any way try to question the frontier between childhood and adulthood?

Yaadikoone is the nickname given to children born after their mothers have had a miscarriage, or whose mothers died during childbirth. The child that left and then returned. That was what happened with Yaadikoone Ndiaye, the Great Yaadi. It’s what happens to the little Yaadikoone in the film. But the name is also often used to refer to children that are a little bit different, that have something special. Obviously, in the film, the little Yaadikoone is inspired by the Great Yaadi and makes adult decisions.

But there is also the fact that the Great Yaadikoone was beloved of children. There’s a famous story about him letting them into the local movie theater for free by forcing his way through…

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What do you think of cultural rituals – often tied to religions – that guide children towards adulthood and the world of responsibilities?

They are unbelievable. Like the rituals tied to sacred wood in Casamance, or, but this is unrelated, the rituals sailors perform when they cross important parallels our capes (I filmed an equatorial crossing with its associated rites in my documentary The Sea Is My Country which was rebroadcast on Arte on February 17 – de quelle année?). But there was nothing like that in this film.

Why did you choose a hero “without parents”?

That’s because of his name, Yaadikoone. His mother died during childbirth. The photo represents her memory, her ethereal presence in the family.

What were your cinematic reference points in Yaadikoone? Are you familiar with François Truffaut’s The 400 Blows?

Here, I obviously thought about the films and poetry of Djibril Diop Mambéty. Yaadikoone was present in his film Le franc (which is not his best, in my opinion), since the poor hero of that film tapes his winning lottery ticket to a Yaadikoone poster. The poster was in fact made for the film. That’s what I was told by Ben Diogaye Beye, the Senegalese filmmaker who worked as Djibril’s assistant and who gave me advice when I was preparing my Yaadikoone.

In your film, you tip the scales between solidarity and adversity. Do you think that human groups need adversity to define themselves?

Generally speaking, yes. But here that teetering is limited to the story of the Great Yaadikoone – a violent and altruistic outlaw who defined himself in opposition to the colonial society that tried to exclude him, a rural orphan who had wound up in the city. The film doesn’t mention all of that, but the notions of solidarity and adversity fuse with the character. In my film, the little Yaadi flouts the established order and even helps himself to cement from the factory (which, as it happens, is a multinational corporation) that produces something that is so vitally lacking from his neighborhood (in the film as in reality!).

I’ll even say that one of the film’s main sources of inspiration was that arid neighborhood with unfinished or dilapidated houses, a neighborhood whose most visible feature was a giant cement factory….

At the beginning of the film, your character thinks his name is a curse. Why did you want to use that effect and show the step that allows him to see it in another light?

There is something sacred about his name, that’s all.

What do you think of the curse of black cats, or the “curse” of albino children or of redheads?

In Rufisque, where we shot the film, or more precisely in the town of Lebbu, black cats are sometimes the incarnation of the goddess of the sea. I saw one every day there, or almost every day.

Do you think escape is an easier solution than conflict or than taking a stand?

There is no question of flight, beyond the initial one of a child who’s done something stupid.

Do you think short films are effective in questioning the meaning of family and of “macro” social units?

Of course.

Yaadikoone was either produced, co-produced or self-financed with French funds. Did you write the film with this “French” aspect in mind: making movie references, building a specific context (in a particular region, for example) or inserting characteristically French notions?

No, not really. I’ve been working in Senegal, and in those neighborhoods, for a long time. In 2005, when I was a student, Massaër Dieng and I co-directed a “wild” feature film in Senegal called Bul déconné! The film made the rounds of quite a few festivals and networks. After that, I wrote another feature, Dakar en attendant la pluie, that I was meant to make with Massaër. Finding myself all on my own made me wonder whether I was able to make a film there, in Senegal, in Wolof. That’s why I wanted to make Yaadikoone before taking up the feature again. I felt that the crew I was working with was very tightly invested in the story, in the challenge. They were also moved by the reference to Yaadikone and his myth. The crew is largely Senegalese, and the language is Wolof. It’s much more of a Senegalese film than a French one. All the same, I certainly hope that the French members of my crew will join me again on my feature film. And here I’d particularly like to mention my producer, Jean-Christophe Soulageon, the director of photography, Rémi Mazet, the sound engineer, Jérémie Halbert, and my assistant director, Vincent Pouplard.

Yaadikoone was shown in National Competition F11.