Moustapha Alassane

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Moustapha Alassane (* 1942 in Djougou , Dahomey ; † March 17, 2015 in Ouagadougou , Burkina Faso ; also: Mustapha Alassane ) was a Nigerian film director . He is considered a pioneer of African cinema and is best known for his animation and feature films on political and historical topics that he made in the 1960s and 1970s .

Life

Moustapha Alassane came from a Nigerien family with Yoruba roots living in Dahomey . His father was a trader. In his childhood he entertained the village community with a self-made and painted puppet theater. In 1953 he moved with his family from Dahomey to Niger. Alassane continued his training in the capital Niamey and learned the trade of mechanic. He made the acquaintance of Jean-René Debrix , the former deputy director of the Paris Institut des hautes études cinématographiques . Debrix got him a job in the 1960s at the Institut Fondamental d'Afrique Noire (IFAN) in Niamey, which later became the Nigerien National Museum .

There Moustapha Alassane met the French ethnologist and film director Jean Rouch and became friends with him. In the meantime he had made his first attempts to produce animated films, which he showed to Rouch. He was impressed and accepted him as a technical assistant in his film team. There he learned the basics of film production. Alassane made his first short film as a director , Aouré (1962) , which was immediately successful at European film festivals. Jean Rouch gave him access to the film training program of the National Film Board of Canada in Montreal , where he learned animation and cartoon from 1963 . After returning to Niger, he worked on a number of animated films. In the absence of a corresponding film tradition, he had to set up his own studio and develop his own film camera. Alassane nonetheless became a very prolific director who was instrumental in the success of Nigerien films in the 1960s and 1970s.

In the 1970s Alassane was appointed director of the Film Academy at Niamey University, a position he held for 15 years. He moved the center of his life to the city of Tahoua , where he founded Niger's first cinema outside the capital and ran a hotel. In 2004 he organized a screening of Jean Rouch's films in Tahoua. On the arrival of Alassane and Rouch, his wife Jocelyne and the actor Damouré Zika - with Alassane at the wheel of the car - there was a rear-end collision on the evening road, in which Rouch died, while the other passengers were not seriously injured.

At the 2007 Cannes Film Festival , Moustapha Alassane was named Knight of the Legion of Honor. In 2009 he became the first African to Asifa Prize of the International Animated Film Association Asifa . He died in 2015 at the age of 73 after a long illness.

plant

overview

Moustapha Alassane made a series of films that are considered pioneering achievements in African cinema. His short film Aouré (1962), the ethnographic document of a Zarma wedding, is not only considered the first genuine Nigerien film, but also, even before Borom Sarret (1963) by Ousmane Sembène , the first African film with an African leading actor. Alassane's turn to animation was atypical for African cinema in the 1960s. His first work in this film genre, La mort du Gandji (1965), is about a village inhabited by toads and their king fighting against an almost invincible monster. The film is a parable on powerlessness and resistance against the backdrop of the colonial history of Africa. In the animated film Bon voyage Sim (1966), he made fun of pompous state visits by contemporary African presidents. Alassane created the medium-length real film Le Retour d'un aventurier (1966), the first western to be produced in Africa . Critics criticized this parody about Nigerien youths who emulate heroes from American westerns, technical defects, but emphasized the witty plot.

Alassane's first full- length film was FVVA: Femme, voiture, villa, argent (1972). In it, African nouveau riche become the object of sharp parody. In denouncing corruption, unproductivity and selfishness in the now independent Niger, he resembles the film Le waazou polygame (1970) by Alassane's compatriot Oumarou Ganda . FVVA , like Alassane's feature film Toula or The Spirit of Water (1974), which is based on a Songhai legend, developed into an important reference work in Niger's culture. Alassane also worked as an actor in Toula and in films by Jean Rouch and Djingarey Maïga from the 1970s. His directorial work Samba le Grand (1977), in which he combined the stylistic devices of puppet films with drawings directly on film material, is considered to be the first African animation film to be shot entirely in color.

Filmography

Director
  • 1962: Aouré
  • 1962: La bague du roi Koda
  • 1962: La Pileuse de Mil
  • 1964: L'arachide de Santchira
  • 1965: La mort de Gandji
  • 1966: Bon voyage, Sim
  • 1966: Le retour d'un aventurier
  • 1967: Malbaza
  • 1969: Les contre Bandiers
  • 1971: Jamyya
  • 1972: Abimbola ou Shaki
  • 1972: FVVA: Femme, villa, voiture, argent
  • 1973: Siberi
  • 1974: Soubane
  • 1974: Toula or The Spirit of Water (Toula ou la génie des eaux) (also actor; director together with Anna Soehring )
  • 1977: Samba le grand
  • 1978: Zaboa
  • 1982: Agwane mon Village
  • 1982: Gourimou
  • 1982: Kankamba ou le semeur de discorde
  • 1985: Kokoa
  • 2000: Les Magiciens de l'Ader
  • 2000: Soolo
  • 2001: Agaïssa
  • 2003: Tagimba
actor
  • 1970: Petit à petit
  • 1976: L'étoile noire
camera operator
  • 1977: Babatou - The three pieces of advice (Babatou - Les trois conseils)

literature

  • Sada Niang: Nationalist African Cinema. Legacy and Transformations . Lexington Books, Plymouth 2014, ISBN 978-0-7391-4907-2 , Chapter Five: The Challenge of Moustapha Alassane. Animation in Nationalist African Cinema , p. 91-104 .
  • Gaël Teicher: Moustapha Alassane. Cinéaste . Les Éditions de l'Oeil, Paris 2003, ISBN 2-912415-66-7 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ [1]
  2. ↑ a b c d e f Abdourahmane Idrissa, Samuel Decalo: Historical Dictionary of Niger . 4th edition. Scarecrow, Plymouth 2012, ISBN 978-0-8108-6094-0 , pp. 44 .
  3. ↑ Griots and Agitators: Sub-Saharian Cinema's Pioneer Generation. (No longer available online.) Subversive Film Festival, 2011, archived from the original on September 23, 2015 ; accessed on March 22, 2015 (English). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.archive.subversivefestival.com
  4. ↑ a b c d Sada Niang: Nationalist African Cinema. Legacy and Transformations . Lexington Books, Plymouth 2014, ISBN 978-0-7391-4907-2 , Chapter Five: The Challenge of Moustapha Alassane. Animation in Nationalist African Cinema , p. 92-93 .
  5. ↑ a b c d Elizabeth Heath: Alassane, Moustapha . In: Kwame Anthony Appiah , Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (Eds.): Africana. The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience . 2nd Edition. Vol. 1. Oxford University Press, New York 2005, ISBN 978-0-19-517055-9 , pp. 148-149 .
  6. ↑ a b c d Jolijn Geels: Niger . Bradt, Chalfont St Peter 2006, ISBN 1-84162-152-8 , p. 37 .
  7. ^ A b c d Paul Henley: The Adventure of the Real. Jean Rouch and the Craft of Ethnographic Cinema . The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 2009, ISBN 978-0-226-32714-3 , pp. 328 .
  8. ^ A b Paul Henley: The Adventure of the Real. Jean Rouch and the Craft of Ethnographic Cinema . The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 2009, ISBN 978-0-226-32714-3 , pp. 358-359 .
  9. ↑ Biography de Alassane Moustapha. In: African Success. June 25, 2007, accessed March 22, 2015 (French).
  10. ↑ ASIFA Prize Laureate 2009 - Moustapha Alassane. Association Internationale du film d'animation, January 26, 2010, archived from the original on April 2, 2015 ; accessed on March 22, 2015 (English).
  11. ^ Décès de Moustapha Alassane, père du cinéma nigérien. In: aNiamey.com. March 19, 2015, accessed March 22, 2015 (French).
  12. ^ Sada Niang: Nationalist African Cinema. Legacy and Transformations . Lexington Books, Plymouth 2014, ISBN 978-0-7391-4907-2 , Chapter Five: The Challenge of Moustapha Alassane. Animation in Nationalist African Cinema , p. 91 .
  13. ^ Sada Niang: Nationalist African Cinema. Legacy and Transformations . Lexington Books, Plymouth 2014, ISBN 978-0-7391-4907-2 , Chapter Five: The Challenge of Moustapha Alassane. Animation in Nationalist African Cinema , p. 102 .
  14. ^ Sada Niang: Neorealism and Nationalist African Cinema . In: Saverio Giovacchini, Robert Sklar (Ed.): Global Neorealism. The Transnational History of a Film Style . University Press of Mississippi, Jackson 2011, ISBN 978-1-61703-122-9 , pp. 200 .
  15. ^ Sada Niang: Nationalist African Cinema. Legacy and Transformations . Lexington Books, Plymouth 2014, ISBN 978-0-7391-4907-2 , Chapter Five: The Challenge of Moustapha Alassane. Animation in Nationalist African Cinema , p. 97 .
personal data
SURNAME Alassane, Moustapha
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Alassane, Mustapha
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Nigerien film director
DATE OF BIRTH 1942
PLACE OF BIRTH Djougou , Dahomey
DATE OF DEATH 17th March 2015
Place of death Ouagadougou , Burkina Faso