The film XARAASI XANNE - CROSSING VOICES by Raphaël Grisey and Bouba Touré (France, Germany, Mali, 2022, 123 min, OmeU) will be shown in the series: Ton-Bild-Zeit: Filmemacher:innen und ihr Werk in the exhibition hall of the Kunsthochschule.
With rare material from film, photo and sound archives, XARAASI XANNE - CROSSING VOICES tells the story of the exemplary journey of the Somankidi Coura agricultural cooperative. It was founded in Mali in 1977 by West African migrant workers who had previously lived in hostels in France. The story of this seemingly impossible, utopian return to the Sahel follows a winding path through the ecological and decolonial challenges and conflicts of agricultural practices from the 1970s to the present day. Bouba Touré tells the story by delving into the depths of his personal archive, which documents the struggles of agricultural workers in France and Mali as well as those of migrant workers. But the film also tells of dialog and tradition, friendship and the geographies of cinema. Various voices penetrating the soundscape accompany Touré's narratives. They transfer the story of a forgotten memory into a possible future, sung by a polyphonic griot.
About Somankidi Coura
The agricultural cooperative Somankidi Coura in Mali was founded in 1977 by 14 people with a militant and migrant background. The group first met in Paris in the collective ACTAF (Cultural Association of African Workers in France), which was founded to support the ongoing migrant workers' movement in France and the liberation struggles in Cabo Verde, Angola, Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau. After the repeated droughts and famines in the Sahel region in the early 1970s, the collective, made up of hundreds of members, began to think about alternative economic and farming methods in the villages to challenge neo-colonial agriculture and rural living conditions. After some agricultural internships in the Marne and Haute-Marne in 1975 and 1976 in France, the group returned to the Senegal River near the town of Kayes in a militant way to create an agricultural cooperative. The cooperative still exists today and finds its subsistence between the cultivation of several crops (onions, bananas, okra, millet, sorghum, chili, etc.) sold in local markets and seed production (onions, violet de galmy and okra) with regenerative practices that include agro-pastoral agriculture in the rainy season and irrigated gardens all year round. The Somankidi Coura cooperative is an initiative of the free radio station Radio Rurale de Kayes, the Association of Women of Somankidi Coura, the URCAK, the regional association of agricultural cooperatives of Kayes, and the association of regional seed producers COPROSEM.
This will be followed by a discussion in English with the filmmaker Raphaël Grisey and Anna Berger and Jan Peters.
Date
05.06.24, 6 pm
Location
Exhibition hall
Kunsthochschule Kassel
Menzelstr. 13, 34121 Kassel
Map