The macguffin in Diallo’s documentary is a search for what he believes to be the first sub-Saharan film from Guinea, a film called Mouramani, directed in Paris by Mamadou Toure. This is the hook Diallo uses to go on a voyage through Guinea, hunting memories or traces of a lost film which plenty have heard of but none have ever seen. Does the film even exist? At the end of his playful doc, Diallo recreates the received content of the movie, but this isn’t the real raison d’être of his film. His concerns are twofold: the role of cinema within Francophone Africa, and the declining role of cinema in culture per se. The former leads him to excavate disused cinemas and warehouses, where he is told about the glory years of cinema in Guinea, long since past. Now, people watch films on their laptops or TVs. The communal joy of cinema is being eroded, something that is happening all over the world, and leads to him visiting a guerrilla cinema in Paris that has been reclaimed. Diallo, who references Joris Ivens, goes barefoot through the parks of Guinea and Paris, hunting his elusive game. It makes for an affecting insight into a little documented corner of the world, and an engaging meditation on the role of cinema in the 21st century.
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