FILM-SENEGAL: Curses Fall on ‘Karmen’

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

DAKAR, Sep 25 2001 (IPS) - Screened at the Cannes film festival and feted by critics abroad, ‘Karmen’ should have been Senegal’s film of the year.

But instead, director Joseph Gai Ramaka finds his work banned from Senegal’s cinemas, denounced by Muslim critics as ‘blasphemous’, even ‘satanic’.

Drawing on the original French novella by Prosper Merimee and the opera by Georges Bizet, Ramaka set his film in present-day Dakar, arguing that the Senegalese capital offered a perfect backdrop for a story of turbulent romance and tragic passion.

In publicising the film, Ramaka stressed his efforts “to maintain a strict frontier between voluptuousness and eroticism” and made no apologies for a heroine whose exploits include stealing a husband away from his bride on their wedding-day and seducing a prison governess.

A French, Senegalese and Canadian co-production, Karmen was premiered in Dakar in July. The film’s backers say none of the several members of the government who watched the film raised any objections. Religious leaders, too, did not make any representations.

But, all that changed in September. A screening at the ‘Bel Arte’cinema on the outskirts of Dakar, scheduled for Sep 8, was called off ‘in the interests of public safety’ after Muslim demonstrators staged a vigil outside the cinema, demanding the film’s immediate withdrawal.

Bel Arte director Aissatou Diop, who also acted in Karmen, says she was alerted by friends. “They told me there was a large group of demonstrators, armed with clubs and machetes. I couldn’t believe it”.

The demonstrators were mostly from the Mourides religious brotherhood, which has hundreds of thousands of followers in Senegal, including President Abdoulaye Wade. One of their most vociferous spokesperson has been Maitre Abdoulaye Babou, a lawyer and senior figure in the opposition Alliance of Progressive Forces (AFP).

Babou says his main objection to the film is not the frankness of its sexuality but its inappropriate use of special religious music.

In the film, the prison governess, played by Stephanie Biddle, commits suicide after a doomed liaison with Karmen. Her funeral takes place to the accompaniment of the ‘Khassaides’, chants familiar to all Mourides as special poems written by the brotherhood’s founder, Cheikh Amadou Bamba.

Babou says the juxtaposition of lesbianism and the sacred is contemptible.

“Every day I recite the Khassaides. They were written in adoration of God and the Prophet and they are also the property of the family of Cheikh Amadou Bamba. This sequence in the film is an insult to all Mourides,” he says.

Ramaka, who was en route to a film festival in Toronto when the storm broke, makes no apologies for the sequence and says the film’s strongest critics are “those who have not seen Karmen”.

The director and his supporters have expressed surprise that the storm should have come so long after the film’s release. Diop points out that Karmen also received a screening in Ouakam, a suburb of Dakar, with an audience made up of ordinary residents. “There were Mourides there, enjoying the film. There was no hint of protest,” she says.

The filmmakers say they have always offered opportunities for debate, throwing open the floor after every screening.

Babou says a dialogue is possible, but only if the offending sequence is removed from the film. Babou admits to never having seen Karmen, saying he got word of its ‘blasphemous’ content only after a local radio station urged listeners to take action.

Much of the Mourides protest has been traced back to broadcaster Serigne Moustapha Diakhate, who denounced Karmen on his radio station, Diamono FM.

Diakhate also has not seen the film, relying on the testimony of journalists. Interviewed in the Senegalese daily, ‘Le Matin’, Diakhate says it was wrong and arrogant of director Ramaka to use the Khassaides without consulting the Mourides’ leadership. And that the poems should never have been incorporated into a scene focusing on “someone who has committed suicide, is not a Muslim, and has spent her whole life in perversion”.

Karmen’s future is now under review. Wary of being accused of imposing a ban, the government has revived the moribund National Commission of Cinematographic Control, seeking guidance on whether or not the film should be released and in what shape and form.

Babou rejects accusations of intolerance. “As a lawyer, I can tell you your liberty ends where mine begins. This is not Europe; we have a different cultural reality. We have the right to protest, for this film is satanic – nothing more, nothing less”.