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 IMUNGA
IVANGA, Gabon
:: Dôlè ::
(Please
note that although Mr. Ivanga is unable to attend, one of the other
directors will be present to introduce and discuss his film)
Who
is Imunga Ivanga? How does a young man in Gabon, West Africa, decide
to become a movie maker? The film-maker answers this question as
follows: ‘I began by pressing myself up against the knees of my
grandmothers, Mahine and Sanana, Iya Ngouabdji, my mother, and
Otangani my father, who were all marvelous storytellers. Orature has
the miraculous quality of forcing the memory into feats of
imagination. It’s just too bad that the book is not yet a
tradition that has anchored itself in our societies. We are content
with radio, television and the big screen. And then, there were
cartoons. I fell in love with them very young, and I’ve never
recovered. The universes they open up are so delightful and diverse
that it strikes me it would take several lives to exhaust their
potential. And so it was that, like a cartoon hero, I was suddenly
carried away by a water spirit, into the realization that I
absolutely had to be a storyteller. I set myself to reading
everything that came to hand, and I learnt to draw, to the point of
being distracted from my school work, carried away by the pleasure
of daydreaming.’
Imunga
and his fellow Gabonese film-makers have had the support of their
government in the form of state subsidies, which were very important
in the 1970s and 80s. They led, however, to a form of ‘official
cinema’, and in the 90s, a restructuring of Gabonese cinema took
place, with an emphasis (as in Nigeria and Ghana) on video. While
more than a dozen films were produced in less than ten years as a
result, cinemas have suffered from the proliferation of video clubs.
As elsewhere in Africa, it is impossible to develop a film industry
without foreign financial and technical assistance, and
co-productions are the order of the day. The major problems facing
African film-makers are training and distribution, since like other
independent cinemas, that of Africa is overshadowed by the power of
American distribution networks.
.
 Dôlè
Country:
Gabon
Year: 2001
Length: 80 minutes
Language: French with English Subtitles
Genre: Feature
 To
many people in the Caribbean, the Africa of their imagination is
still predominantly rural, pre-colonial, undeveloped, traditional.
Dole reveals a different Africa, that of the fast-paced cities of
the West African coastline, home to many millions who have left the
ancestral village forever. The inhabitants of Lagos, Accra,
Libreville or Dakar are as much a part of global culture as those of
Kingston, New York, Paris or London. The four young men of Imunga’s
film are instantly familiar in their espousal of hip-hop and their
disaffection and aspirations. ‘The main character, Mougler, seems
almost to be a sociological study of a ghetto youth slipping into a
life of petty crime…(with) an absent dissolute father…a strong,
long-suffering mother…he finds an alternative to family and school
among his peers.’ In a bid to raise money for his mother’s
medicine, Mougler decides to rob a lottery kiosk, a symbol
recognizable from other African films as a sign of economic
exploitation of the urban poor. Though the robbery mis-fires, the
film takes off in a new direction, as though the director is not
prepared to consign his characters to a pessimistic ending. The
flight from realism and the use of film to create an aesthetic of
hope and possibility is typical of African cinema.
(Summarised
from California Newsreel’s Library
of African Cinema catalogue, 2002, 15.)
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