EDITO

 

Images and Critics

 

For the occasion of Fespaco ’93 in Ouagadougou, with cut-out images of film stills ; in rythm with Bissau, in carnival images frozen in photographs, Revue Noire once again dedicates one of its issues to the arts of reality ; cinema and photography.

Film-makers, most of them making their first film, answer the question « Why do you make films ? » Without any doubt they represent the African cinema of tomorrow. A cinema whose preoccupations evolve noticeably towards the problems of a world in the grips of urban development in crisis. From Moscow to London, from Dakar to Ouaga they show us another world : Bissau, which seemed until now to have remained untroubled, now channels all its worries and creative desires into the ephemeral life of its carnival.

Celluloid or electronic images even more so than paintings or sculptures need no commentary illuminated by the pallid light of a commentator rendered powerless through having commented on the commentary of the commentary. They clearly illustrate the death of a certain sort of writing which believes itself to be the only way of objectivizing reality. They clearly illustrate the autonomy of images, the autonomy of shapes.

 

Revue Noire’s primary concern is to prove that only the choice is critical, from now on speech matters little since our eyes’ freedom to see has been restored. Revue Noire’s true gamble is there as an illustration simultaneously modest and pretentious of a renewed way of thinking by a new knowledge of images from all over the world. Within this structure and this alone we work with the forms of literary texts, photos, films, paintings, sculptures, costumes, furniture...

Therefore we will act to rekindle the fires of sight and minds.

 

by Jean Loup Pivin

 

 

Contents of RN 08 :

 

ART / BISSAO / Braïma Injaï, Lacerda, Galoga, Guilhermo Semedo Tavares

 

CINEMA / Abderrahmane Sissako, Djibril Diop Mambéty, Félicité Wouassi, Jean Pierre Bekolo, Pierre Haffner, Gai Ramaka, Régina Fanta Nacro, Saint-Pierre Yameogo, Mansour Sora Wade, Black audio Film Collective, John Akomfrah, Angela Ngozi Onwurah, Sotigui Kouyaté, Isaach de Bankolé, Bouna Medoune Seye, Mansour Diop, Moussa Touré, Gordon Parks, Spike Lee, Raoul Peck, Henri Duparc, Flora Gomez, Jean-Luc Godard

 

ART /Frédéric Bruly Bouabré, Aboudramane

PHOTO / John Kiyaya, Bouna Medoune Seye

LITERATURE / X. Ebony, Oumar Sall, Daniel P. Kunene, Dave Wilson, Sony Labou Tansi

FASHION DESIGN / Oumou Sy

RITUAL ART / Tchamdok

TALKS MEMORIES / Simon Njami, Gaston Kaboré, Françoise Balugun, June Givanni, British Film Institute, BFI, Jean-Pierre Garcia

NEWS / Dak'Art

 

 

Few PAGES from MAGAZINE RN 08 :

.