You composed the soundtrack for Hyenas before the film was made ?
My brother, who was a great music-lover, really wanted food - symphonic food, as he liked to call it. For him, Hyenas was truly a symphony in his heart and mind. He wanted me to work between the lines of the screenplay. We often hung out in bars. My brother liked bars. It’s no secret. His office was in bars. That’s where he worked. That’s where he found the connections that sparked his creativity: in a place where people talk, where wine flows, not that he necessarily drank that much. He was not a big drinker but his natural environment, in the poetic sense, was in the seedy part of town. That’s where you find precious gems. He wanted me to give him the film’s basic themes that I had worked out on the guitar. I gave them to him on a Walkman so he could listen to them on headphones in bars and keep telling himself his story. When Djibril talked about the screenplay of Hyenas, it was even more incredible than the film. He used his discussions to plan his shots and bring it together.

The album is already the fruit of your musical travels and encounters.
Yes, that was also my brother’s influence. I have a bit of a background in cinema. I worked with him as an assistant, painter and little brother. We shared this pretext that was very important to us because it let us respond to things we loved: images, Africa. He was already so into music both as a listener and someone who wanted to create. We had a group from when we were kids and of course he was the leader. I took over when he dropped out because he realized he had better things to do. He was very literary. He wrote beautifully. He was a poet. Brian Eno once said you make ONE album in your life. I don’t know what gave him the authority to say that but he was right to say it because it’s the truth. And this is really my album. This album is the foundation, the lifeblood, of everything I can hope to contribute.

How did cinema come into your life and your brother’s?
Djibril was a storyteller, someone who observed society. He always acted like a judge. He had a costume and it was his favorite outfit. He even wore it to cocktail parties. He walked up the red carpet at the Cannes Film Festival for this film in a magistrate’s robe, a black robe. There is a link between this costume and his outlook on life. The robe is worn by people who judge. What does the robe mean for someone who is not a magistrate? He wasn’t trying to get a reaction. His eye was truly a camera, like a judge examining the facts. He always judged people, good, bad, poets and crooks. When he read La visite de la vieille dame, in which a society is judged, he said it was for him. Before this film, he had already written a screenplay called Katchapan, about a woman who came and handed out money every Friday in the bars in a Muslim town. The starting point for our interest in cinema was fascination. It was a fascination with the stories people tell and fascination for outdoor theaters. Movies were magical in neighborhoods that didn’t have electricity.

You worked in cinema very early on as an actor.
My first appearance in a film was in 1968. I was at primary school and I skipped classes to come in front of this object that I had never seen before: a camera. I saw it made a noise, that it was on a tripod, that it had a battery that hummed. It was fascinating because in my neighborhood, there were still those old western cameras where you had to cover your head so light wouldn’t seep in. We used one in Hyenas. Hyenas was Djibril’s western. He liked wide, open spaces, horses that gallop from the horizon toward the camera and the dust. He liked the lyricism of westerns.

How would you say cinema influences your music?
I make panoramic songs. My songs are screenplays. They’re films with no images. I think we all come from somewhere and it’s difficult to move away from what you really are. When I integrate the songs I’ve written, they’re films. An English journalist said to me the other day, “I listen to your album and from the first song to the last, I feel like I’m in a story. I close my eyes and I’m in the same story from start to finish.” I was really happy an English woman said that to me, someone far from Dakar, from an Anglo-Saxon background. It backs up my impression that there are images in what I do. I get that from always hanging out on Djibril’s sets, finding props, building sets, watching people, finding compelling faces, directing them, holding them in a frame, framing shots and playing with colors. Later, when I got into music, I took all that with me. Maybe that explains why my songs are used in movie soundtracks, even in Hollywood. Until I walked on American soil, I said to myself, “No, you’re dreaming,” but when it was used in a big American film (Thomas Crown (1999) by John McTiernan) I realized I am truly a musician for cinema. Even when I write songs, I make movies. And this was because of the constant contact with my older brother and our conversations.

You wrote a screenplay yourself 20 years ago. Is it something you still want to do?
I no longer say I want to so I don’t get frustrated with it. Making films is expensive. You have to not mind waiting and I’m not someone who waits. I get impatient. When I finished my last album, I wanted to make a film and I wrote a second screenplay, Le Taxi Jaune. I found a producer in Paris. We signed a contract. We had lunch all the time. I think film producers spend more time drinking wine and eating than making films! (laughter). With the rewrites, the meetings, the introductions, I really believed it was going to happen. When I got work in the United States, I went there but for three years, I had put music on standby, saying to myself I was going to make a film. In the end, he didn’t find the money and I didn’t want to wait any longer.

Did the music for Hyenas launch your career?
Before Hyenas, Wasis Diop didn’t exist. I was just a musician, composer and producer. But after Hyenas, my name was on an album. It had nothing to do with me. By chance, Universal Music heard a few numbers. They came to see me and bought what I had done. I wasn’t planning a career. It’s not my thing. It happened by chance because they heard it and they wanted it. It’s always worked that way for me.

Was it the same with Thomas Crown? One day the phone rang and Hollywood was on the line?
Honestly, that’s how it happened. When they called to get my permission to use it, I was in a train and I gave the number of the hotel where I was going. I was playing in the countryside and I found a fax when I arrived. I didn’t know what it was about. I didn’t understand a thing they said. I knew they wanted to use a song from my album. I signed the fax and sent it back and never heard another thing about it. Three months later, a friend said, “Wasis, I don’t get it. I’ve just watched a film and you’re in the soundtrack!” Cinema and me, we’re like old lovers. We watch each other from a distance.

You’ve worked with very different types of music. You’ve often confronted different sounds. Where do you get this taste for mixing things?
I’ve always loved the world. When I was a kid, I was by the sea and I watched the horizon. Beyond the horizon, things happen. For me, Africa cannot be a closed continent. Africa has to be at the avant-garde of the world. It is Africa’s mission to save the world and Africa has to go beyond all that. It’s like Djibril, who made a film based on a book by Dürrenmatt because he thinks the story has a universal significance. My parents never went to school but they’re intellectuals. My parents are into nighttime, stars, beautiful stories, myths and legends. They made us and they handed down that innate universality. We weren’t looking for folklore through that opening. We didn’t want to replace the folklore by another folklore. It wasn’t romanticism either. It was simply humanity. We always felt we had relations all over the world. We believed what our parents told us about the cycle of births and deaths. On that front, we were close to Buddhists. We even said we had Chinese relations, brothers, who had gone to live on the other side of the ocean.

Interviewed by Olivier Gonord in August 2008.

Read the Pick of the week by Wasis Diop.

Though often disregarded or ignored in movie history, Mitchell Leisen played a significant role in American film history before living in oblivion. First working successfully as a costume designer then on sets decoration for filmmakers such as Cecil B. DeMille, Allan Dwan or Raoul Walsh, Mitchell Leisen produced as a director a brilliant work -ethereal and sophisticated-, working with the most brilliant people of his times -whether writers and actors. From Hands Across the Table or Arise my Love to Easy Living or the exhilarating Midnight, Mitchell Leisen developed his talents as an actors director, an artistic supervisor, showing a precise way to direct his films and rewriting the scripts of the films he worked on, which caused him to be hated by people like Preston Sturges or Billy Wilder. But no doubt Mitchell Leisen‘s films would never have been the same without this rewriting work: they probably wouldn’t have been so light and elegant and even though he is now ignored, his films would never have been so influent in this golden age of the American film comedy. The upcoming release in France of two of his major movies (Midnight and Hands Across the Table), the tribute to his work this year at Deauville American Film Festival and the current retrospective that is showing now at the French Cinemathèque in Paris until November 2, are major opportunities to rediscover the brilliant work of a unique director.

See the programme of the Mitchell Leisen Retrospective at the French Cinemathèque in Paris.
See the programme of the Tribute to Mitchell Leisen at Deauville American Film Festival.

The Band’s Visit (2007) by Eran Kolirin.

“It’s about an Egyptian band that comes to Israel to give a concert but the musicians can not find the place and they meet some Israelians. I loved the movie, I loved the story and I loved the two main actors (Sasson Gabai et Saleh Bakri). Their acting impressed me, I never saw them before but I’ll look at their work from now on. I had heard about the film before and I was very surprised and pleased to be able to watch it on a plane while I was flying to Australia. Of course I prefer big screens and I was disappointed to discover it on such a small one -I probably would have had different impressions in a theatre- but at the end even if the plane was full and the screen so small I got caught into the film so I think that if the film is good, it remains good wherever you watch it.”

The Band’s Visit will be released on DVD in France on October 7.

Arta Dobroshi was born in Kossovo where she studied dramatical arts. While looking for their lead actress for Lorna’s Silence, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne noticed her in a couple of Albanian films and immediately felt like meeting her and eventually work with her! In Lorna’s Silence, Arta Dobroshi leaves a strong impression and confirms the Dardennes’ talent to discover pure gems. A career to follow.

Scampia is a suburb to the north of Naples, and a crossroads for global drug trafficking. Gomorra follows the lives of a dozen characters involved in the activities of the Camorra at different levels, all bound by the economic system of the most important criminal organisation in Europe.

With their disappointed and broken hopes and destinies, the characters in Gomorra are subject to a law that, although it is not overt, governs the lives of the people who live in the suburbs of Naples. The Camorra takes charge of its members from an early age, after a rite of passage that is as brutal as it is symbolic, and accompanies them after retirement with a pension scheme. Trafficking in drugs of all kinds, control of the rag trade, both legal and otherwise, the “management” of waste – we are spared nothing of the organisation’s activities, and the film, adapted from the bestseller by Roberto Saviano describing the organisation’s activities in Naples which earned its author a death sentence from the underworld, relies on its documentary skill. The director’s desire to address the subject comprehensively is palpable, as he uses the experiences of the individual characters to relate the tangible reality of everyday life in this suburb to the north of Naples. What interests the director is the everyday lives of ordinary people and the direct effects of the Camorra’s activities on the population of Scampia. But –and this is really one of the strong points of this remarkable film– the functioning of the Camorra in Naples never takes precedence over the dramaturgical aspect or the awesomely effective directing.
Gomorra is not only a brilliant documentary study – it is also a truly great genre film. Indeed by concentrating too much on the informative aspect of the film there is a risk of overlooking what makes it a great film. The filming and the photography are brilliant, staying close to the characters, sometimes seeing the world through their eyes, sometimes merely following them, but always there, with dynamic, inspired directing. Breathing palpable life into the characters, the director avoids the pitfall of turning them into major representative stereotyped figures and, beyond the documentary aspect, he makes us experience and feel with them the pregnant presence of the Camorra and the influence it exerts on everyone’s lives, whether they like it or not. At no time does the director use the mythology and iconography typical of the Mafia film. There is no indulgence in describing the underworld, or in the way of handling the other aspect of this ordinary war –violence– which is dry and cold, harsh and summary. In a word – ordinary.

One of the films in the official selection at the last Cannes Festival, where it received the Grand Prix, Gomorra is an exciting lesson in the cinema and proof of the rediscovered vitality of European cinema which, in Italy, Spain and Germany, is once more producing films for the general public that are both intelligent and technically brilliant.

Olivier Gonord

The Big Lebowski (1998) by Joel and Ethan Coen
“I’ve seen this film more than six times. And each time it makes me laugh like the very first time. The plot is crazy and delirious as often with the Coen brothers. What’s particulary outstanding in this movie though is the characters. “The Dude” (Jeff Bridges), Walter (John Goodman) and Donny (Steve Buscemi) embody three attaching and realistic characters while being incredibly dumb! The absolute loser, the nevrotic and the punching bag -three characters we all met in a school yard! Basing their storyline on this trio, the Coen brothers created a unique mix they’re the only ones to know about: realism, surrealism and absurd. Dialogues are fabulous, the dream sequences taken from the musicals of the 70s are perfect ; the direction is simple, consistent and always under control. It’s a very American movie but also very universal, sexy, made up like a good song with a very strong visual aspect. Also, the directors dare everything, like that amazing end when the wind blows Donny’s ashes on the Dude’s face. The punching-bag takes a revenge on Walter, his torturer, but the three still stick together! This is also eventually a film about friendship.”

Synopsis: Jeff Lebowski, a.k.a. “The Dude”, is a lazy man, who spends most of his time drinking shots and playing bowling with his buddy Walter. One day, two burglars hit him down. It seems like someone called Jackie Treehorn wants to recover a pile of money to a guy named Lebowski. But the burglars made a mix-up: the Lebowski they were looking for is a millionaire from Pasadena. The Dude decides to meet this wealthy man to obtain a refund for his damaged carpet…

About director Hany Tamba: Hany Tamba was awarded a Cesar (French Academy Award) in 2006 for his short film named After Shave. On August 13, his first feature film is released in France: Melodrama Habibi. The movie relates the story of Bruno Patrice (Patrick Chesnais), a star singer of the 70s, invited in Lebanon for the birthday of the wife of a rich billionaire, who didn’t forget about his past hit… In a gentle, funny and nostalgic way, the director keeps on with his exploration of the Lebanese society, its wounds, vitality and memory blanks…

After Battle Cries, Made in the USA and Stormy Weather, in which you worked on more “serious” subjects (even if it didn’t exclude a light tone), nobody expected you back on the side of the screwball comedy. How was born the idea of Back Soon?
Jean-Luc Gaget, my co-writer, and I had spent two years working on a script that never became a film -Patrick Sobelman, my producer, was the one who introduced me to him. Jean-Luc had just finished the writing of a TV movie produced by Patrick’s company and directed by Lucas Belvaux. Working with Jean-Luc is like playing ping pong: his thoughts help me progress and vice versa. So, we thought: let’s do something totally crazy where we’ll have fun. I actually wanted to let myself go in an extravagant script, have no limits and rush totallt fearless, write for people I love. I imagined roles for people I had met, especially some musicians from the Icelandic scene I met in Reykjavik. I took pictures, talked with many performers, actors, musicians, writers… and little by little, each one of them brought something to the script of the movie. Also, I wanted to make people laugh. In my previous features, people were often moved and they would come after the screening to talk to me about their emotions. Here, I wanted to hear their reactions, to hear their laughs. It’s the first time I work with this genre even though I shot many “comic” documentaries: Barbara tu n’es pas coupable (Barbara You’re Not Guilty), Nobody Move! etc… I think I want to keep on telling funny stories that are also sad in a way because it’s what life’s made of in the end.

The movie is an ode to Didda Jónsdóttir, whom you directed in Stormy Weather and even portrayed for the series Faces from Europe. Did you write the movie for her? Is Anna actually Didda?
Didda isn’t Anna but what they have in common is an energy, a strength and an enthusiasm that move people who surround them in a way only Icelandic winds can do. I met Didda five years ago, in a bar in Reykjavik. She ended up playing Loa, co-starring with Elodie Bouchez in my previous feature: Stormy Weather. She had never acted before, yet she won the Icelandic Academy Award for Best Actress for this role.

The characters of Back Soon look a bit like Northern “cousins” of the women burglars from Nobody Move! -some kind of “nice outlaws”. You seem to share a genuine tenderness for people living outside the social system.
Since always… Seeking inside a person, who seems far from us, what is, deeper inside, the same reason they are close to us. To connect. Maybe it’s because my origins are so “fragmented”, plural.

The movie seems to be very spontaneous, were the actors able to improvise or was everything already written?
There was an original structure as far as the script, the plot and the dialogues were concerned. And then I allowed myself some time at the end of the sequences to let improvisation jump on stage. For example by not cutting right away or by saying “I have what I need but let’s make one more shot, in which you guys can let yourselves go”. Even if these “free” shots are not always shown, this method provided a real drive during the shooting, a joy of being there.

How was born the idea of the musical theme?
It was one of the very first ideas, which was developed with Martin Wheeler, who composed the score of almost all my features.
Whether with my documentaries or my fictions, Martin follows the films as from the writing stage to work on the soundtrack. Not to emphasize the image but to move along with it, to trouble it, to disturb it, to make it vibrate.
The original idea of the soundtrack of Back soon was to weave different sound elements that will little by little assemble to create the final song of the film, an Icelandic/Jamaican song, a piece of Scandinavian reggae music, written and performed by Sigurdur Gudmundsson and his band Hjalmar…
Those different elements (voice, drums, bass line, etc.) spread out into the film space. The very notion of space is important because the movie is partly a road-movie, and the characters are displayed in large landscapes, where the road and the cloudy rainy skies contribute to the rhythm of the story.
The goal of this work is to create a very specific atmosphere around the main character, Anna, according to the principle and the rhythm of a pregnancy. So, that music we hear all through the movie will give birth to the Icelandic reggae song of the end.
I think that that desire to “gather”, for each film, musicians, whose roads wouldn’t have crossed otherwise is linked to my “fragmented” origins (Iceland, USA, Central Europe). The fact that those meetings and understandings are made concrete in a song played live in the kitchen where the different characters of the movie get together embodies that desire.

Olivier Gonord

SYNOPSIS
Anna Hallgrimsdottir a poetess, dish washer and marijuana dealer in her late thirties lives in Reykjavik with her two sons, Krummi and Ulfur. Anna is tired of her lifestyle and the coldness of Iceland and wishes to show her sons more of the world.
Finally she decides to do something about it, move on, and somewhat change her lifestyle. The first step in her revival is to sell her business which consists of her mobile telephone which includes her big list of clients.
The sale is an unusual one and the potential buyer promises her the asking price within 48 hours.
During those 48 hours Anna gets into all kinds of “Icelandic familial adventures” as her kitchen fills up with customers/friends, partying, while waiting for her to come Back Soon.

More details about Back Soon: http://www.zikzak.is/back-soon

ABOUT SOLVEIG ANSPACH
Sólveig Anspach was born in Vestmannaeyjar (Iceland) from an American father and an Icelandic mother.
She graduated from French film school FEMIS in 1989.
She directed many documentaries, among which Nobody Move!, Made in the USA, Faux tableaux dans vrais paysages islandais (Fake Paintings in Real Icelandic Landscapes). But it’s Battle Cries starring Karin Viard and Laurent Lucas that contributed to her international notoriety in 1999. In 2003, she directed Stormy Weather starring Elodie Bouchez and Didda Jonsdottir, which was selected at Cannes Film Festival in Un Certain Regard section.
Sólveig Anspach is currently shooting Louise Michel, a TV movie for France 2 starring Sylvie Testud, and also writing Soon Coming, the sequel of Back Soon.