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Touki Bouki

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Touki Bouki
2005 DVD cover
Directed byDjibril Diop Mambéty
Written byDjibril Diop Mambéty
Starring
  • Magaye Niang
  • Mareme Niang
CinematographyPap Samba Sow
Edited by
  • Siro Asteni
  • Emma Mennenti[1]
Music by
Production
companies
  • Cinegrit
  • Studio Kankourama
Distributed byWorld Cinema Foundation
Release date
  • 1973 (1973)
Running time
91 minutes
CountrySenegal
LanguageWolof
Budget$30,000

Touki Bouki (pronounced [tukki bukki], Wolof for The Journey of the Hyena) is a 1973 Senegalese drama film written and directed by Djibril Diop Mambéty.[2] It was screened at the 1973 Cannes Film Festival[2][3] and the 8th Moscow International Film Festival.[4]

Touki Bouki was restored in 2008 at Cineteca di Bologna / L'Immagine Ritrovata Laboratory by the World Cinema Foundation.[5] It was selected as the 93rd greatest film of all time by the Sight and Sound Critic's Poll.[6]

Plot

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Mory, a cowherd who drives a motorcycle mounted with a bull-horned skull, and Anta, a student, meet in Dakar. Alienated and tired of life in Senegal, they dream of going to Paris and come up with different schemes to raise money for the trip. Mory eventually succeeds in stealing the money, and a large amount of clothing, from the household of a wealthy homosexual while the latter is taking a shower. Anta and Mory can finally buy tickets for the ship to France. But their wealthy victim phones the police who begin to tail the duo, and when Anta and Mory board the ship in the Port of Dakar, the loudspeaker summons Mory to see the captain. Upon hearing this, Mory leaves Anta and runs away madly to find his bull-horned motorcycle, only to see that it has been ruined in a crash that nearly killed the rider who had taken it. The ship sails away with Anta but not Mory, who sits next to his hat on the ground, staring disconsolately at his wrecked motorcycle.

Cast

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  • Aminata Fall as Aunt Oumy
  • Ousseynou Diop as Charlie
  • Magaye Niang as Mory
  • Mareme Niang as Anta

Production

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Based on his own story and script, Djibril Diop Mambéty made Touki Bouki with a budget of $30,000 – obtained in part from the Senegalese government. Though influenced by French New Wave, Touki Bouki displays a style all its own. Its camerawork and soundtrack have a frenetic rhythm uncharacteristic of most African films – known for their often deliberately slow-paced, linearly evolving narratives. However, it has been asserted that the jump cuts and radical spatial shifts of the film are inspired by African oral traditions.[7][8] The word "Bouki" in the title refers to a popular folk character, known for causing mischief and cheating his way to what he wants.[9] Through jump cuts, colliding montage, dissonant sonic accompaniment, and the juxtaposition of premodern, pastoral and modern sounds and visual elements, Touki Bouki conveys and grapples with the hybridization of Senegal.[10]

West African cinema contemporaneous with Touki Bouki was primarily financed and distributed by the French Ministry of Cooperation's Bureau du Cinema, which ensured that scripts had to conform to cinematographic standards acceptable to the French Government. Touki Bouki, in contrast, was made without any French financial assistance, allowing Mambéty relatively significant autonomy in production of the film. Mambéty's ready adoption of French New Wave techniques was to a degree motivated by meagre financial resources, circumstances similar to those of the film-makers of the early French New Wave.[9] Narrative and cinematographic techniques associated with the Western genre (known for dehumanizing depictions of Native Americans and minorities) were also subversively utilized by Mambéty in the production of the film.[8]

During the production of Touki Bouki, Mambéty was arrested for participating in anti-racist protests in Rome, and bailed out by lawyers from the Italian Communist Party after appeals from friends such as Bernardo Bertolucci and Sophia Loren. The experience of receiving a request from the Italian Communist Party to compensate them for the legal fees spent in his defence served as an inspiration for a character in his later film, Hyènes.[11]

Awards

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Home media and restoration

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In 2005, Touki Bouki was released on DVD by Kino Video.

In 2008, the film was restored in 2K by the Cineteca di Bologna/L'Immagine Ritrovata laboratory, in association with the Martin Scorsese-founded World Cinema Project.[13] In 2013, the restoration of the film was released on DVD and Blu-ray by The Criterion Collection, as part of the Martin Scorsese's World Cinema Project box set.[14] In 2021, the Criterion Collection re-issued the film on DVD and Blu-ray as a standalone release.[15]

Legacy

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In 2014, British band Red Snapper released Hyena, an album inspired by Touki Bouki and featuring a cover image from the film.

"inspired by the band's recent soundtrack for cult 70s Senegalese road movie Touki Bouki, the first independent African film which was recently restored by Martin Scorcese and which is first and foremost an afro-funk odyssey in itself. Have toured with the film for a year, playing the soundtrack live to audiences across Europe; themes from the score have been developed and extended to form Hyena."[16]

See also

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References

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  1. ^ "Movie Review - Touki-Bouki - Review/Film; A Dream Of Escape To Paris". The New York Times. 15 February 1991. Retrieved 26 January 2011.
  2. ^ a b "Biography of Djibril DIOP MAMBéTY". African Success. 25 June 2007. Retrieved 26 January 2011.
  3. ^ "Festival de Cannes: Touki Bouki". festival-cannes.com. Retrieved 25 January 2011.
  4. ^ a b "8th Moscow International Film Festival (1973)". MIFF. Archived from the original on 16 January 2013. Retrieved 4 January 2013.
  5. ^ "World Cinema Foundation » Touki Bouki". World Cinema Foundation. Retrieved 25 January 2011.
  6. ^ "The 100 Greatest Films of All Time | Sight & Sound". British Film Institute. Archived from the original on 2 September 2012. Retrieved 29 January 2021.
  7. ^ Russell, 1941-, Sharon A. (1998). Guide to African cinema. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press. ISBN 978-1-4294-7633-1. OCLC 55638413.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  8. ^ a b Snell, Heather (2014). "Toward 'a giving and a receiving': teaching Djibril Diop Mambéty's Touki Bouki". Journal of African Cultural Studies. 26 (2): 127–139. doi:10.1080/13696815.2013.849194. ISSN 1369-6815. S2CID 191339099.
  9. ^ a b Wynchank, Anny (January 1998). "Touki-Bouki: The New Wave on the cinematic shores of Africa". South African Theatre Journal. 12 (1–2): 53–72. doi:10.1080/10137548.1998.9687665. ISSN 1013-7548.
  10. ^ Mambu, Djia. "Touki Bouki: The greatest African film ever?". www.bbc.com. Retrieved 29 January 2021.
  11. ^ Bakupa-Kanyinda, Balufu (1998). "Djibril Diop Mambety. Tribut cinématographique à Colobane". Présence Africaine. 158 (2): 173–177. doi:10.3917/presa.158.0173. ISSN 0032-7638.
  12. ^ "The 100 Best Films Of World Cinema – 52. Touki Bouki". Empire. Archived from the original on 7 February 2012.
  13. ^ "Touki bouki". Criterion.com. The Criterion Collection. Retrieved 21 February 2024.
  14. ^ Remer, Justin (12 December 2013). "Martin Scorsese's World Cinema Project". DVD Talk. Retrieved 21 February 2024.
  15. ^ Remer, Justin (13 May 2021). "Touki bouki: Criterion Collection". DVD Talk. Retrieved 21 February 2024.
  16. ^ "Red Snapper – Hyena" (Press release sticker on promotional album cover). Retrieved 27 February 2024.
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