Dakan: the ultimate love story

By -
I know of three films produced by Guinean Mohamed Camara – each of which tackle the taboo subjects of incest and child suicide from an African perspective. Dakan (meaning destiny) is his third, which I watched at South London Gallery as part of Film Africa 2014, and it did not disappoint.

Camara's film Dakan shows that love endures

© Film Africa 2014
The opening scene is arresting. Two lovers in passionate embrace, lips locked and gripped by desire. The pair are in a red car – the colour of passion – enveloped by darkness except for a chink of light. We only see one face, the other is hidden, forcing us to focus on the intimacy and not the gender. It is only when the camera draws nearer that we realise that they are BOTH men.

Brave. Brave. Brave! At this point in the film I was giving Camara a mental standing ovation. 

Pushing boundaries
Dakan is thought to be the first gay film from West Africa and premiered at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival. It is also a film that came to be against all odds. Fellow filmmaker Joseph Adesunloye told us viewers that the film started out with support from the Guinean government. But once it became clear that this was a gay love story, that funding was withdrawn and public protests started to emerge. But Camara carried on regardless.

And thank God he did because this film is as true a love story as the well-worn Shakespearian 'Romeo and Juliet' but without the awful deaths.

Romeo and Romeo
Sori is from a well-to-do family. His father owns a fishing business and fought his way, through hard work, out of the village, while Manga’s family is poorer. Camara captures this antithesis through his application of light. Scenes depicting Manga’s home life are dimly lit; Sori’s relative wealth is captured in brighter scenes.

We watch on as these teenagers navigate through life’s hurdles, dealing with the burden of expectation from being an African child. For many of us that has meant towing the line, and not challenging our elders because we are supposed to make them look good.

I loved the way Camara tackles this issue. Both Sori and Manga’s parents know they are in love. But both parents refuse to accept this. So much comedy runs through the film – surprisingly – considering the subject matter.

 One classic scene that made me chuckle was when Sori announces to his dad (a highly respected member of the community) that he is in love with Manga. His dad responds by turning up the volume on the TV!!!!

For me, this film may be about gay love but the message is universal. It’s about love full stop. It is about a mother’s love for her son that she would risk her life to make his “well”.

It is about a son’s love for his mother that he turns his back on his true love to try in vain to love a woman. But most of all, it’s about love’s endurance to survive against all odds. And this is exactly what Dakan - the story - and Dakan as a ground-breaking film does.
By Kirsty Osei-Bempong

For more film blogs, check
Belle - a new kind of English rose  
Gold Coast: a lucid look into Denmark's colonial past

My hero: the slave
Review of N: The Madness of Reason - a Film Africa London Premiere 

All comments are welcome on this page. If you are having trouble posting on the Google+ page, please share your views via Facebook here or tweet @MisBeee

Please be aware that you may not reproduce, republish, modify or commercially exploit this content without our prior written consent. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

What's your favourite Adinkra symbol?

By -
Image
Screenshot of hand-painted Adinkra symbols from charity Mmofra_Ghana.  I put this question to MisBeee readers after blogging recently about the origins of Adinkra in the post: 'Adinkra - more than just a pretty face'. A dinkra is a series of ideographic symbols from Ghana and the Ivory Coast depicting age-old proverbs that incorporate aspects of Asante culture, flora and fauna. These symbols are strongly linked to religion, language, and geometry but in modern times are used widely in and outside Ghana for their aesthetic appeal. The list includes jewellery, pottery, clothing and architecture.  Below is a snapshot of some of the responses I received, feel free to add your own. All images below come from adinkra.org.  Kwame from Birmingham My favourite symbol is Gye Nyame because everything starts with God, and ends with God. God creates, sustains and destroys and generates again. It is self-germinating. The symbol of Gye Nyame looks like a circle when connected
Read more

Ghanaian sitcom star leaves lasting legacy in Kwahu

By -
Image
The late Gyearbuor Asante, who famously played long-term mature student Matthew in hit British sitcom Desmond’s , was also a royal. Gyearbuor Asante: Image credit Carole Latimer He came from Tafo, Kwahu, in Ghana's Eastern Region but rather than follow tradition and become a chief, the young thespian got himself circumcised instead. The reason, according to details from charity the Friends of Tafo (Kwahu), was to rule himself out of enstoolment. He then left Ghana in the late 1960s to become an actor and the rest, as they say, is history. But life has a funny way of panning out and although Gyearbuor never became a chief, his close friend Humphrey Barclay, who incidentally was the executive producer of Desmond's , did!  "I met Gyearbuor (or Christopher as he was known in UK then) in 1972, when he was doing such shows as Crown Court and so on," he told MisBeee. "I visited Ghana many times as his guest and when he died in 2000 at the age of 58 o
Read more

Vlog: British-Nigerian author's books set for February 2018 revamp

By -
Image
The son of the late British-Nigerian author Buchi Emecheta is leading a project to digitise and re-launch all her works. By February 2018, her most well-known novels: 'In the Ditch’, ‘The Bride Price’ and ‘The Slave' will be re-launched with more titles set to follow, Onwordi told MisBeee at the sidelines of literary festival Africa Writes 2017 earlier this month. The plan to digitise and republish Buchi's entire collection of over 20 books – complete with new book covers - emerged after the Ibusa-born London-based author passed away in January this year. Sylvester Onwordi - son of Buchi Emecheta ©  MisBeee Writes "..one of the consequences was a realisation that lots of people wanted to read her books but unfortunately some of her books have gone out of print,” said Sylvester. “And so the idea came to me, and the other people I have been collaborating with, that we should get together and form a publishing company to re-launch some of those editions.
Read more

Insane in the membrane: Sticking two fingers up to the virginity test

By -
Image
Colonisation from within of the female form © MisBeee Writes There has been a slew of media stories since the start of the year fixated on the supposed potency of the female form and the responsibility women have with making their bodies less desirable to the opposite sex. The idea that a 16-year old girl groomed her married 47-year-old religious education teacher into having an affair, according to UK judge Joanna Greenberg QC , was one that stuck in my mind. It got me recalling the experience of a friend of mine whose mother directed her to wearing a dressing gown over her night dress whenever she ventured out of her room. The extra layer was supposed to act as deterrent against the licentious attacks she suffered most nights at the hands of her stepfather. It didn’t. More recently, fresh efforts by an MP in the Indonesian district of Jember to introduce the controversial 'two-finger' or virginity test to schoolgirls before they can graduate have been denoun
Read more

Testing boundaries: an interview with Gold Coast film co-producer Kwame Boadi

By -
Image
In October, I had the opportunity to speak with Ghanaian TV director Kwame Boadi of inGenius Africa about his move into feature film production. Producers Michael Haslund and Kwame Boadi © Michael Haslund Many of you know may know him for such TV series as Sunshine Avenue, Abiba , and Sun City . Well, he has recently co-produced an arthouse film set in Ghana called Gold Coast that looks at Denmark’s presence in Ghana during the 1830s. The 2015 arthouse film was written and direction by Daniel Dencik and is a depiction of 19th century life three years after the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade was officially but not totally banned in 1833. Slavery was finally abolished in Danish colonies in 1848, according to details from the BBC. The film arrived in London on 11 October and was screened at local cinemas for a week. Some of you will have read my assessment of the film in my previous blog ‘ Gold Coast: A lucid look at Denmark’s colonial past ’.  I caught up with Kwame to
Read more