The Cemetery of Cinema is Thierno Souleymane Diallo’s first feature-length documentary. It was part of Final Cut programme at the 79th Venice Film Festival and is part of Panorama Dokumente at the 73rd Berlinale.
Thierno Souleymane Diallo is a vision. He opens his directorial documentary debut with an image of himself. He is walking down a red African dirtroad carrying a camera, wearing headphones, with a boom microphone strapped to his back. The one thing he isn’t wearing is shoes. This like many other questions he asks in his debut feature are answered in their own time. Nothing is rushed. The question of time is dominant throughout Diallo’s The Cemetery of Cinema – a documentary in which he searches for the reels of the reputed first African fictional film, Mouramani. But really, he is in search of identity, pride and even hope.
To set up his story, Diallo walks home to his mother to explain his task and ask for her blessing. She gives it kindly even if she doesn’t completely understand what her filmmaker son is trying to do. “Whatever brings you joy,” she wishes for him as he sets off on a donkey. It takes a while for the brain to catch on to the fact that if Diallo is on screen someone else must be filming him. The scenes with Diallo comprise most of the film and are doused in calming warm tones as if in a perpetual sunset. The captured faces are more expressive and the rooms seem cosier. When the scenes are sometimes intercut with Diallo’s own footage, his frames seem cold and amateurish. None of which could be said about the film as a whole.
As he traipses around Guinea’s abandoned cinemas, Diallo shows how thin the line is between person and artist. Thanks to his curiosity and generosity, the subjects he interviews are given space to roll out their thoughts and memories. Many of the former cinema managers talk about the profound loss that the closure of the cinemas brought onto the communities. “When we used to go to the movies,” one elder explains, “people were upstanding. Now cinemas are gone, videos of perverted acts are debasing our cultures.”
Another remembers how a boy in charge of guarding old movie cameras sold them off to the aluminum traders. The cameras have probably been melted into pots. “He has no idea of their importance,” she sighs. And with that captures the point of the film. The value of the celluloid reels that the subjects of the documentary decipher with interest and awe has been forgotten. And the bridges that can pass it on to the future generations – cinemas – are being continuously diminished. And not just in Guinea, but all over the world. A cinema manager in France echoes similar concerns. Without a sense of community, he believes that a layer of the experience is lost. “Showing revolutionary films on a MacBook is absurd,” he scoffs.
Perhaps the reason why Dill is so stubbornly obsessed with the idea of finding a copy of Mouramani is because he feels indebted to the feature. Motifs of lineage and tradition permeate The Cemetery of Cinema. This is why it feels natural that Dill’s quest is intercut with scenes of teaching and inspiring the next generations od filmmakers. In the attempt to find the first African feature film that can be archived and preserved to inspire future generations, Dill communicates an urgent message that surpasses the scope of his topic. He succeeds in creating a film that is flickering with warmth, humour and hope just like its author. And it captures that elusive feeling that only crops up when you watch a movie together with a room fool of strangers – it captures the joy of cinema.
