THE “WORLD” OPINION – A MUST SEE
We breathe, in the documentary by Raphaël Grisey and Bouba Touré, Crossroads. The story is free, polyphonic, driven by the desire to include a food agriculture project, in West Africa, in a vast political reflection. In 1977, the Somankidi Coura cooperative was created in Mali, around the Senegal River (in the Kayes region, in the west of the country), by fourteen migrant workers – who had gone to France in the 1960s and then returned to the country. .
Scarred by the Sahel drought of the early 1970s, worried about their families going without food, these men were also disillusioned with their working conditions in France, not to mention the unsanitary houses they slept in in Paris. or in the suburbs (Pantin, Aubervilliers, in Seine-Saint-Denis, etc.). The founders of the future cooperative met in activist circles, which then supported independence movements in Portuguese-speaking countries. The film opens with wonderful chases on the Senegal River in a village with children running and looking at the camera.
Crossroads could have followed a linear, structured narrative, but the filmmakers chose to interweave multiple stories and different image textures, placing this collaborative project within a long history of resistance – it would have been built on the site of an old sisal plantation, dating back to the colonial era.
The migration dilemma
Presented at the Cinéma du Réel festival in Paris in 2022, this essay is the result of a collaboration between director Raphaël Grisey, born in 1979, and Bouba Touré (1948-2022), photographer and co-founder of the cooperative. Bouba Touré lived between France and Mali, studied at the University of Vincennes, where he learned the trade of a projectionist – he worked in the former cinema 14-Juillet, in the Bastille (11e arrondissement), as well as at L’Entrepôt (14e), and was also an assistant to director Med Hondo (1936-2019).
Bouba Touré has documented the struggles of immigrant workers, from rent strikes in hostels to more recent protests by undocumented immigrants. His photographs revealed the slums where the men were crammed. The walls of his room on 11e the Paris arrondissement, which he was filming at the time, were covered in photographs. This material feeds the film, shedding light on the migratory dilemma in the background: the choice to leave the country is inevitable, is there a possibility to live with dignity among loved ones?
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