A few years ago, I came across an almost apocalyptic setting in Saint-Louis, in the north of Senegal. I wanted to understand how this terrible but cinematic setting was created. The atmosphere was heavy. Houses and everyday objects were being eaten by the sea. Men and women were struggling in vain. I listened to the places. I listened to the women, who were the most active in these moments of distress. I met and talked with this family of three generations of women. They told me how the sea was advancing on this piece of land wedged between the Senegal River and the Atlantic Ocean. A few months later, I filmed the traces of this shock that remained on the walls and also in the heads. These settings resemble the Pasolinian images of these films that revisit mythology. I am a historian by training. Myths interest me as the philosophical aftermath of history. The work on myths in Pasolini's cinema is carried out by the female protagonists. They inhabit, as in Xaar Yàlla, the strength of the image and the imaginary.

Mamadou Khouma Gueye
Filmmaker, programmer and coxer
 

Presented in dialogue with Notes Toward an African Orestes by Pasolini