{"id":5813,"date":"2014-11-12T08:59:13","date_gmt":"2014-11-12T08:59:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.saic.edu\/cate\/?p=5813"},"modified":"2025-01-09T22:48:34","modified_gmt":"2025-01-10T04:48:34","slug":"on-mati-diop-what-were-we-left-with","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.saic.edu\/cate\/2014\/11\/12\/on-mati-diop-what-were-we-left-with\/","title":{"rendered":"On Mati Diop"},"content":{"rendered":"

For the final installment of our\u00a0SAIC student writing series, Natalia De Orellana examines\u00a0the\u00a0boundaries between documentary and fiction\u00a0in Mati Diop’s <\/em>A Thousand Suns. She suggests that Diop creates a world where imagination and reality intermingle.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"
Still from A Thousand Suns (Mati Diop, 2013). Courtesy of the artist.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Even as tougher immigration laws are proposed by\u00a0European leaders–jeopardizing the long-gone fantasy of free movement<\/a>–immigration has remained one of the principal worldwide issues shaping policy-making for the past half-century. Hidden among the\u00a0facts and figures quoted by\u00a0politicians\u00a0are the complex stories and experiences of those who make this trek.<\/p>\n

The issues\u00a0around migration are just some of the themes\u00a0embraced by the cinematographic narratives of Mati Diop (1982), daughter of the musician Wasis Diop and niece of Senegalese film director Djibril Diop Mamb\u00e9ty.<\/p>\n

In 1972 Mamb\u00e9ty\u00a0directed the film\u00a0Touki Bouki <\/i>which followed\u00a0two youngsters in Dakar–Magaye Niang and Myriam Niang–who dreamed of\u00a0leaving Senegal. The film has since become a classic of African cinema. Forty years later, Diop\u00a0revisits\u00a0this work and Magaye Niang\u00a0with the film\u00a0Mille\u00a0Soleils\u00a0<\/em>(A\u00a0Thousand Suns<\/em>).<\/p>\n

A\u00a0Thousand Suns<\/i>\u00a0is a unique and compelling example of notions of presentness and inner conflict. Diop’s camera follows Niang,\u00a0a denim-jacket-and-cowboy-boot-hero who had once the chance to ship away to Europe and yet whose feet remained anchored on the Senegalese coast: “At that moment,” Niang narrates, “I became very frightened, I wondered why I was leaving. What am I going to do in France?”\u00a0Neither victim nor heroic figure, Niang is the present-day individual, the one that emblematizes the complex context where the West’s siren call is entangled with loss and fear.\u00a0Indeed, Diop\u2019s narratives are relevant for the attention she pays to\u00a0conflict between passion and dreams and\u00a0belonging and identity.<\/p>\n

Diop’s films\u00a0also transcend the definitional boundaries between documentary and fiction, creating a space between the imagination and the real, where “nothing is true and nothing is false.”<\/a>\u00a0The spectator finds herself in the in-between space of assurance and doubt, history and fantasy.<\/p>\n

In intermingling the real and imaginary,\u00a0Diop updates her uncle’s film and examines\u00a0its legacy within the context of Senegal’s history. Questions from Touki Bouki<\/em> are reformulated in A Thousand\u00a0Suns<\/em>: “Should I go?” becomes “Why didn\u2019t I go?,” the “what will I do” is transformed into “what have I done?”<\/p>\n

\n

Natalia de Orellana is a second year graduate student in the dual degree program Arts Administration\u00a0and Policy and Modern Art History, Theory and Criticism (2016). She holds an MA in Art History from The\u00a0University of Edinburgh.\u00a0Since 2010 she has collaborated in a number of curatorial projects in the United Kingdom for Tablo Arts,\u00a0a non-profit London based organization. She is presently a curatorial fellow for the 2014\u201315 MFA Show\u00a0at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For the final installment of our\u00a0SAIC student writing series, Natalia De Orellana examines\u00a0the\u00a0boundaries between documentary and fiction\u00a0in Mati Diop’s A Thousand Suns. She suggests that Diop creates a world where imagination and reality intermingle. Even as tougher immigration laws are proposed by\u00a0European leaders–jeopardizing the long-gone fantasy of free movement–immigration has remained one of the principal […]<\/p>\n

Read More… from On Mati Diop<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":204,"featured_media":5805,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[872,403,436,450,530,615],"class_list":["post-5813","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-19","tag-essays","tag-mati-diop","tag-natalia-de-orellana","tag-non-fiction","tag-senegal","tag-usa"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.saic.edu\/cate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5813","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.saic.edu\/cate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.saic.edu\/cate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.saic.edu\/cate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/204"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.saic.edu\/cate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5813"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/sites.saic.edu\/cate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5813\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9922,"href":"https:\/\/sites.saic.edu\/cate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5813\/revisions\/9922"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.saic.edu\/cate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5805"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.saic.edu\/cate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.saic.edu\/cate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.saic.edu\/cate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}