Touki Bouki

“It is good for the future of cinema that Africa exists. Cinema was born in Africa, because the image itself was born in Africa. The instruments, yes, are European, but the creative necessity and rationale exist in our oral tradition… Africa is a land of images, not only because images of African masks revolutionized art throughout the world but as a result, simply and paradoxically, of oral tradition. Oral tradition is a tradition of images… Imagination creates the image and the image creates cinema, so we are in direct lineage as cinema's parents.”
— Djibril Diop Mambéty, 1998

The distribution of foreign films in the United States is always something of a crapshoot, subject to the overriding motivation of profits and the impingement of political baggage; the Weinstein Company’s butchering (or “Americanization”) of Wong Kar-wai’s The Grandmaster is only the most recent example. Maybe the most unfortunate oversight in this regard, though, is the paucity of African films released in America over the last fifty years—an omission that leads many stateside moviegoers to assume that African film industries are either nascent or nonexistent, though in fact some of them have been pushing the boundaries of cinematic expression since the mid-twentieth century. When we think of “African” movies in this country, titles such as Tsotsi and Hotel Rwanda might come to mind, though such films depend heavily on Western co-production and are guided at least in part by audience expectations in Europe and the United States. Meanwhile, filmmakers in countries such as Senegal, Mali, Burkina Faso, and Nigeria strive towards a uniquely African cinema, making movies that speak to and for a particular culture while employing a diverse cinematic vocabulary indebted to everything from Eisenstein to the French New Wave.

As the Senegalese director Djibril Diop Mambéty suggests in the epigraph above, cinema—like all other forms of visual storytelling—depends on the oral tradition that dates back to ancient African cultures, some of the earliest forms of creative expression. It’s ludicrous, of course, to attempt to lump an entire continent’s cinema into one label, and a fair-minded appraisal of African movies would pay diligent attention to the differences between, for example, Senegalese or Malian or Egyptian movies; at the same time, though, it’s clear that many burgeoning North African filmmakers in the decades following independence employed similarly disjunctive methods to convey the combustion of cultures that defined post-colonial society. Directors like Mambéty and the Malian filmmaker Cheick Oumar Sissoko re-appropriate tropes from a number of previous styles and movements (Hollywood narratives, European New Waves, Soviet montage, Latin American agitprop) into a dynamic expression of a rich and multivalent African heritage.   

Mambéty’s Touki Bouki (1973) is a landmark in this regard. Widely heralded as one of the most important African movies ever made (for what it’s worth, it was the highest-ranked African title on Sight & Sound’s 2012 Greatest Films poll, at number 93), Mambéty’s brash, volatile film simultaneously lampoons those Senegalese who dream of escaping to France for a better life, and those French neo-colonialists who continue to perceive Senegal as a misguided underling in need of “guidance.” If the Senegalese setting seen here betrays a turbulent clash of European and African cultures, Touki Bouki itself is an abrasive blend of playful abstraction, wicked satire, and dreary political commentary, its disorienting and sometimes playful experimentation masking a bitter core. 

The title is Wolof for The Voyage of the Hyena, though who or what that eponymous beast is supposed to represent remains ambiguous. It could be Mory (Magaye Niang), a handsome but sullen cowherd who rides around Dakar on a motorbike with bull’s horns affixed to the handlebars; or his lover Anta (Mareme Niang), a university student awkwardly wedged between the Western system of education instilled by French colonialism and her family’s more traditional, agrarian lifestyle (when we first see her, she’s demanding payment for rice from one of her mother’s regular customers). More broadly, the hyena of title could be Senegal itself, as Mambéty has cryptically proposed in interviews: “The hyena is an African animal—you know that. It never kills. The hyena is falsehood, a caricature of man… The hyena is a permanent presence in humans, and that is why man will never be perfect.” Given Mambéty’s ambivalent portrayal of his homeland in Touki Bouki, he may see Senegal itself as an aimless scavenger, partway on its journey from colonialism to independence. 

Touki Bouki consists of Mory and Anta’s outsized schemes to gain enough money for them to hitch a ride to France on one of the ocean liners docked in the port of Dakar, but—like the French New Wave films on which Touki Bouki is partially patterned—the story is not as important as the diversions and abstractions along the way. This is obvious from the very first moments of the film, an explosive blend of metaphorical scenes only abstractly related, emphasizing the animalism of man. Elongated cattle horns form a visual motif in these early images, as footage of Mory shepherding his cattle through a tranquil field is juxtaposed with imagery of him driving his horned motorcycle through the city, as well as graphic footage of cows being slaughtered in an abattoir. Reminiscent of a similarly violent montage in Sergei Eisenstein's Strike (1925), Touki Bouki’s aggressive prologue posits recurring themes of savagery and power through juxtapositional editing. Such elliptical jump cuts, though familiar from the French New Wave, remind us of the dialectical materialism theorized by Marx: the idea that historical change is the result of the clash of social forces, often a result of material needs. In other words, conflict in the present leading to imminent, dynamic transformation—a uniquely cinematic idea, though few filmmakers have employed this philosophy to profound effect.

The temporal and spatial experimentation continues from here, making musical use of repetition and tempo (Mambéty was, in fact, a composer early in his career). A woman’s demonstrative monologue is sung to the camera in the matter of a griot, a traditional African storyteller who would often address the audience directly to comment upon the action; meanwhile, the shrieks of seagulls and sounds of breaking waves commingle harshly on the soundtrack. A sex scene between Mory and Anta is introduced so enigmatically that it initially seems like a suicidal ceremony—at least until the sounds of crashing waves morph imperceptibly into Anta’s orgasmic moans. Interactions between characters in the elusive narrative often shift abruptly into observational scenes of life in Dakar. 

The film almost obligatorily moves on with its plot, as Mory and Anta steal a trunk from a racetrack that is revealed to contain a human skeleton; later, they finally pilfer a stash of money and some foppish clothing from a wealthy homosexual who lives on the outskirts of Dakar (one of the movie’s more questionable interludes). There’s also a primitive aborigine—ironically played by a white actor—who emerges from the sub-Saharan foliage, steals Mory’s motorcycle, and ultimately provides the film’s morbid ending. The symbolism is vague and emphatic at the same time: is Mory’s motorbike an emblem for Senegal itself, a reminder of his heritage? Is the aboriginal character a representation of humanity at the dawn of time, somehow transplanted millennia into the future? Does the climactic car accident symbolize modern Senegal, steered into a collision with the dubious influence of French colonists? Mambéty’s elusive, thought-provoking style asks far-reaching questions and leaves us with cryptic glimmers of an answer.

Mambéty has said that one of his predominant themes is how neo-colonial relations are “betraying [African nations’] hopes of independence for the false promises of Western materialism”—an antagonism clearly conveyed by Touki Bouki. But the director conveys this agitative theme with a wicked sense of humor, as evidenced by the Josephine Baker song “Paris, Paris, Paris” lilting on the soundtrack anomalously. The film is guilty of some broad stereotypes—not only of the effete gay man who seems to be holding a never-ending bacchanalia at his oceanside villa, but also of the French bourgeoisie, who blatantly claim that the Senegalese natives are “just big kids.” But the transparency of Mambéty’s pessimism is in fitting with Touki Bouki’s abrasive ferocity: the movie is disgusted with the current state of affairs and can barely conceal its disdain. 

A harsh, ambiguous comment on post-colonial turmoil probably doesn’t sound like the most compelling film, but even amid Touki Bouki’s anger and volatility, an invigorating expression of national identity makes itself heard. Mambéty has never hidden the fact that he hopes to speak for and to a uniquely Senegalese audience; along with Ousmane Sembène, who helped kick-start the Senegalese film industry with his feature debut Black Girl (1968), Mambéty proposed an uncompromising view of what African expression on film might entail. Even aside from technical experimentation and political commitment, the film is gorgeous to look at—shot in pristine color, Touki Bouki is ravishingly vibrant, from the lush reds of the wardrobes to the infinite blue of the sky. Viscerally and thematically, Touki Bouki is a wonder to behold.

In its narrative and character development, the film leaves a slight taste of disappointment—if only because the bittersweet separation of Anta and Mory fails to convey the emotional impact the film seems to intend. Touki Bouki has emphasized its political undercurrents and stylistic innovations so provocatively that its attempts at pathos seem halfhearted. But this is only a minor flaw for a movie that beholds conventional storytelling as only one of its numerous aims. In its ambitious goals and diverse influences, Touki Bouki recalls a number of other African films from the 1970s that recycled international film conventions into something uniquely relevant to African audiences. It is, at the same time, markedly different from the ardent didacticism of Sembène or the mythical, folklore style of the Malian Souleymane Cissé—a reminder that each national culture (not to mention each individual filmmaker) is unique in its influences and personality. While it’s forever disheartening that screenings of African films in the US are relegated to festivals and cinematheques, a reminder that the cinematic breadth of the globe is infinitely surprising in its vitality and eclecticism—like the one that Touki Bouki offers—can only be an electrifying sensation. ​

Originally published by Joyless Creatures (March 7, 2014). 

Touki Bouki

​​Grade: B+​​

Runtime: 85m.
Country: Senegal
Premiere: July 1973 (Moscow Film Festival)
US Release: February 15, 1991

Director: Djibril Diop Mambety
Producer: Djibril Diop Mambety
Writer: Djibril Diop Mambety
Cinematography: Georges Bracher
Cast: Magaye Niang, Mareme Niang, Aminata Fall, Ousseynou Diop