Culture
Directors: Amath Mbaye · Pape Kalidou Diop
A lockdown in Kigali, a forgotten hard drive, and four years of Dakar that refused to disappear.
- Type
- Documentary
- Released
- 2020
- Episodes
- 3
- Language
- Dakar, 2016–2020
- My role
- Directors · Pape Kalidou Diop
Five episodes shot in Dakar between 2016 and 2020: the creative scene, the nights, the studios and the courts, narrated by Pape Kalidou Diop over music by Amoniac.
Kigali, 2020
The world stops. At Westerwelle, no more events, no more founders walking through the door. I bring the office home, and with it a hard drive I had never really opened.
What nobody else had
Inside: four years of Dakar. Footage shot on cameras borrowed from friends, on mine when I had one, on trips, at night, in studios, at the parties of Wakh’Art, a creative house that no longer exists and that I still miss.
I had kept it the way you keep family photos. Watching it again, one thing was obvious: nobody else had these images. They were raw, sometimes rough, but they had what no shoot can manufacture: the truth of the moment.
The people who make the culture are rarely the ones you see. This film is for them.
Learning by editing
I didn’t know what colour grading was. I had never thought about sound. I had gigabytes of memories in no order and one question: how do you turn this into a story people live, not just watch?
For months, from morning to night, I cut, moved, started again. I have never edited so much in my life. That is where I learned.
A voice, a sound
From Kigali, I sent the first cuts to Pape Kalidou Diop in Dakar. He heard a voice in them straight away, his own: he wrote and recorded the narration, and brought in Amoniac for the music. The last episodes were finished once I was back in Dakar, including one on Basketball & BBQ.
What happened next
When it came out, the messages arrived. People who recognised themselves, others discovering a Dakar they didn’t know. Then another question, more and more often: “Can you film our project?”
Culture wasn’t meant to be a beginning. It became one.
The project, in its own words
Culture: socially transmitted patterns of action and expression. Material culture refers to physical objects, such as dwellings, clothing, tools, and crafts. Culture also includes arts, beliefs, sports, knowledge, and technology.
Through these videos, made between 2016 and now, we will try to show you the energy, the vibe, all that we, as youngins, have seen and experienced, in the rawest way possible, in Dakar (Senegal).
What I took from it
- The best gear is the gear you already have.
- Editing is writing a second time.
- Publishing before you feel ready is often what opens the door.
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