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Ground-breaking film school gets down to work in Senegal
Housed in a beautiful old office building, a new film school in Senegal hopes to unlock Africa's movie-making potential.
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Toumani Sangare (R), director and founder of the Kourtrajme Dakar film school, stands with his collaborators, Ladj Ly (2nd R) and the students during the press conference at the film school in Dakar on January 19, 2022. (AFP/Seyllou)
I
t's the tale of a boy who cheats on his fiancee -- one misdeed too many in a selfish life -- and in desperation turns to a genie for help.
The genie gives the errant lad five magic cowrie shells to wipe the slate clean... but these will only work if he uses them wisely.
This is the idea for a script pitched by Kine Niang, a 30-year-old student screenwriter at new film school in Senegal that hopes to unlock Africa's movie-making potential.
Housed in a beautiful old office building converted into a cultural space in the capital Dakar, the school is the first venture in Africa by a ground-breaking collective which offers free training in filmmaking.
The scheme is being pushed by Ladj Ly, a French director and screenwriter who won the jury prize at Cannes in 2019 for Les Miserables -- a film about urban violence, set in the gritty Paris suburb of Montfermeil where he grew up.
His collective, Kourtrajme, has already helped set up two other such schools, one in Montfermeil and the other in Marseille.
They offer training in cinema and other audiovisual professions, free of charge and without conditions of age or academic qualifications.
