Au cimetière de la pellicule

The 1953 film Mouramani by Mamadou Touré is believed to be the first film ever made in Guinea. Interested in the conditions of its production – and the whereabouts of a film print – Thierno Souleymane Diallo sets out to find people who can tell him about the film’s history and its reception. Shots of the young filmmaker himself run like a thread through the film. Equipped with a video camera, microphone and headphones, he travels through the country, sometimes on the back of a donkey, sometimes barefoot, and films everything he experiences on the road and during his conversations with archivists and those who remember the period. Increasingly, the film turns into a journey through Guinea’s film history that takes him to deserted cinema halls and abandoned film archives. In the process, it alternates between observational scenes of everyday life, performative elements and re-enactments. The result is a multi-layered portrait of a country that is thought to have played a pioneering role in African cinema, but which is only slowly rediscovering the importance of films and film archives for its cultural identity and its history.