What if the script for a successful film was being written in Africa right now…? This would not displease the multi-award winning French director Ladj Ly who has just opened in Dakar with the French collective Kourtrajmé the first free film school on the continent.
The story might be that of a bad boy who, following “doing too much stupidity, by cheating on his fiancée”, turns to a genie to get out of trouble, which genie gives him five cowries, seashells allowing him to erase his faults. It’s up to him to make good use of it…
This “pitch” is the one imagined by Kiné Niang. The 30-year-old is one of the students who started classes this week at the Kourtrajmé school, specializing in screenwriting.
The school is the third to open since that of Montfermeil, in the Parisian suburbs. Ladj Ly had realized there, in 2018, the dream of giving back what he owed them to the poor neighborhoods where he had grown up and made his debut by filming the urban violence of 2005.
Since then, another establishment has been inaugurated in Marseilles (south-eastern France), with the same profession of faith to offer, free of charge and without condition of diploma or age, training in the cinema and film professions. ‘audio-visual.
In 2018, at the same time as he opened Montfermeil, Ladj Ly edited the long version of the short film “Les Misérables”. For school, he was already thinking of Africa, where his Malian parents are from and with which he has strong ties.
The success of “Les Misérables”, the jury prize at the Cannes Film Festival, the selection for the Oscars and the millions of admissions have not diverted him from ancestral horizons.
– Notoriety and relativity –
The Dakar school, in an old and beautiful professional building converted into a cultural space close to the heart of the capital, is the first in Africa. Ladj Ly has a dozen projects “a bit everywhere” on the continent, “in Mali, Abidjan, Burkina…”
Ladj Ly and Toumani Sangaré, co-founder in 1995 of the film collective Kourtrajmé and co-director of the school, do not hide the fact that their first African teaching might have taken place in Mali, where they have their roots. The turmoil in which the country is caught did not allow it.
Even in more peaceful Senegal, Ladj Ly and his partners would have appreciated a few “cowries” to make the task easier.
The period was “complicated with the Covid”, recalls Ladj Ly. Raising the funds was not easy and bureaucratic red tape hampered the undertaking.
Notoriety, “it opens a lot of doors”, he says, “but it remains the obstacle course to say to yourself that you want to create free schools, open to all”.
The artist was caught up in February 2021 by an investigation in France for breach of trust and money laundering, targeting the association which oversees the school. He and his brother were heard by the police.
The investigations are complete and the Public Prosecutor’s Office says it is examining the possible follow-up.
– Essence of the profession –
“The investigation is over,” said Ladj Ly. He speaks of attempted “sabotage” and “nonsense” written by a former employee: “Our school, it disturbs a lot of people, they did everything to destroy it”.
“The important thing is that the school exists and we continue to open them everywhere”. Montfermeil, Marseille, now Dakar, soon Madrid…
“Senegal has become essential in terms of audiovisual production, in particular series”, says co-director Sangaré. Many international productions are filmed there, the technicians are “of quality” and the spaces “incredible”, all of this “five hours from Paris” by plane, he explains.
They should be 14, seven young women and as many men, all Senegalese (not by bias but by temporary convenience), to be trained in the trade for five months. After the student screenwriters, chosen from hundreds of candidates, the school will welcome 18 apprentice directors in June.
A year following being selected, Kiné Niang, the apprentice screenwriter, was regarding to start a management internship when she was called back. Graduated in statistics but “passionate regarding writing”, she saw that “it was a chance and that I should not miss it”.
She and the others started work on Tuesday.
“We started the course with the question: why do you write?”, says their trainer, screenwriter Dialika Sané who has worked on several television series. The responses were “very inspiring, sometimes absurd, sometimes poetic”. But all “have understood the job of screenwriter, the very essence of the job, which is to project on the screen what cannot necessarily be said by other means”.