Med Hondo – Rebel African Film-maker

A documentary on this important film director recently aired on Al Jazeera World; a series broadcast on Al Jazeera in Britain which offers’ a weekly showcase of one-hour documentary films from across the Al Jazeera networks. [I assume there are equivalents on other Al Jazeera channels]. The documentary is now on the English-language Web pages; it runs for 46 minutes and includes English language sub-titles for the commentary which is predominantly in French. The director is Bassel Samir, a film-maker born in Egypt. His on previous film is a short Life Simply [USA 2017).

Med Hondo (Mohamed Abid Hondo) was born in the Atar region of Mauritania in 1936. He migrated to France in 1959, working in various jobs, first in Marseille and then in Paris. He studied acting and then worked in the French theatre. In 1966 he formed his own theatre company, Griot-Shango; a ‘griot’ is an African story-teller and ‘Shango’ the Yoruba god of thunder’. He also started working in small parts on television and in films; for much of his life he supported himself as a ‘voice-actor’ in films dubbed into French.

His first film was Soleil O (1965). Shot in black and white academy this was a docu-drama that presented the experiences of African migrants in France. It was made on a shoe-string; using friends and acquaintances of Hondo. The film created a stir, was nominated in the Cannes Film Critics week and won the Golden Leopard at the Locarno Film Festival. It set the tone and style for Hondo’s later films; caustic, ironic, politically outright and using distinctive visual and aural techniques.

Hondo made a further eight films before his death on 2nd March 1919. He also continued working as an a actor, especially in voice acting roles and occasionally in theatre. His output is a significant part both of the African film heritage and of European Political cinema. However, his films have never been easy to see, as he works outside the dominant film industry. Thankfully in the last few years some of his films have been restored, partly in the World Cinema Project ‘s  African Film Heritage Project; these titles have been screened at Il Cinema Ritrovato in Bologna and have had occasional screenings elsewhere.

This documentary in part provides a brief biography of Hondo and also discusses his film output. There are a variety of voices: friends, colleagues, journalists, a festival organiser, critics and there are also extracts from several interviews with Hondo himself. He explains that his parents were ‘Haratines’ or freed slaves; and that his grandfather was a griot who went round villages in the region where they lived recounting traditional stories. In the 1940s Mauritania was part of the French colonial occupation in North West Africa with the attendant exploitation and racist oppression. When Hondo, like many  other Africans then and now, left to seek opportunities he smuggled himself on a ship from Morocco to France. He talks about his early job as a chef and then how he came to join a theatrical class run by the French actor Françoise Rosay.  She was both an opera singer and film actor and important in the French Cinema of the 1940s and 1950s. Hondo stood out as the only working class member of the study group.

Hondo described the worlds of theatre and cinemas as world of magic and illusion. He also regarded them,  especially cinema, as a ‘weapon’; fully aware of the exploitation and racism that  were the lot of African migrants in France.  One of his friends and colleagues of the time recalled this theatre group working on radio plays for a Radio France competition.

When we come to Soleil O there are interesting reminiscences by François Catonné. Catonné worked on Hondo’s first film and subsequently on Les Bicots-Nègres vos voisins and West Indies. Soleil O was his first film as a lighting cameraman. Subsequently he worked on a variety of films, predominantly in the French film industry and French television. He also worked with Hondo on theatrical productions as lighting designer.

Les Bicots-Nègres vos voisins / Arabs and Niggers; Your Neighbours (Mauritania / France 1974)  was shot in colour and in Arabic and French. This film has a more developed and sophisticated narrative. Different sequences addresses the representation of Africans on film: the history that over-determines this: a representation of colonial hegemony: the conditions of Africans as migrants: and the role of cinema in this. The film uses dramatic and ironic sequences along with documentary style records. From the opening when an African addresses the viewer direct to camera: through a series of experimental cinematic presentations: on to the analysis addressing past and present: this is a challenging and dynamic film. Originally a three hour epic in 1988 a shorter version was produced and this was the version screened at Il Cinema Ritrovato in 2019.

Hondo’s next film was : The Fugitive Slaves of Liberty (France / Algeria / Mauritania, 1979), in colour and 1.85:1 widescreen. A musical treatment of a central part of French colonial history which benefitted from an unusually high budget. The film was shot in a disused railway station, Gare d’Orsay; also used for  Orson Welles’ The Trial (1962) and now a fine gallery featuring the collection of impressionist art.

Hondo in an interview commented;

“I wanted to free the very concept of musical comedy from its American [i.e. USA] trade mark. I wanted to show that each people on earth has its own musical comedy, its own musical tragedy and its own thought shaped through its history.” (2017 Il Cinema Ritrovato Catalogue).

This is a vibrant film with fine colour and a dramatic presentation; at time finny: at times moving: at time shocking. The plot of the film was adopted from a novel titled “Les Negriers” (The Slavers) which was written by Daniel Boukman. The narrative relates the history of slavery in French colonies to the oppressive treatment of contemporary Afro-Caribbean citizens to the metropolis. The documentary offers stills of the production and extracts. A 35mm print was screened at the 2017 Cinema Ritrovato in the The World Cinema Foundation programme.

There follows what is in many ways Hondo’s major film work; Sarraounia (Burkino Faso / Mauritania / France 1986). This film was produced in colour and cinemascope; the latter a first for an African film. The narrative presents the resistance of  Azna people, led by Queen Sarraounia, to French military colonialism. Hondo adapted a novel by Abdoulaye Mamani to the screen. This is actual history charting the African resistance to the infamous Voulet-Chanoine Expedition of 1898. Set in what is present-day Niger, the expedition aimed to conquer Chad and unify French possession across north Africa. Most of the African leaders sought compromise with the French military; Sarraounia and her people stood out against this colonial invasion. The film presents the horrific brutality of the French military leading an army of indigenous natives; it dramatises the brilliant strategy of Sarraounia in combating the French with their superior modern armaments; and includes impressively staged battle scenes.

The documentary emphasizes the importance of the support of Burkino Faso and its then leader, Thomas Sankara. He was later assassinated in a coup likely promoted by colonial interests. The film uses both soldiers from the Burkinabè army and local people as extras.

In an interview with Francoise Pfaff Hondo commented:

“I wanted to illustrate authentic historical facts to show that the African continent was not easily colonised and had a history of resistance to colonialism.” (Il Cinema Ritrovato Catalogue 2017).

There were difficulties with the distribution in France and the film has not received the availability it deserves. It did win honour at the Fespaco Festival. In a similar manner records of the Voulet-Chanoine expedition rarely give proper space to the exploits of Sarraounia and her people.

Hondo’s next film waited eight years to accomplish; 1994: Lumière noire (Black Light, France 1994). It was adapted from his own novel by Didier Daeninckx. The plot involves the attempt to find eyewitnesses to the murder by two policemen. This involves travelling from France to Mali; a country which suffered colonial exploitation and continues to endure a neo-colonial relationship with France. The extracts shown in the documentary include the very downbeat ending. There is also illustrative material about how Hondo and his team coped when they were barred from  using some French locations.

The final film treated is Fatima, l’Algérienne de Dakar / Fatima, the Algerian Woman of Dakar  (Mauritania / Tunisia / France / Senegal, 2004). The story is by a Tunisian writer Tahar Cheriaa. The film uses French, Arabic and Wolof [an indigenous language in Senegal]; it was filmed in colour and widescreen. Fatima is raped by a Senegalese officer darting the Algerian War of Independence. But the father of the officer insists that his son fulfil his obligation to ‘his sister in Islam’. The narrative move to Algeria but the son of the union is of mixed race and experiences serious prejudice as he grows up. Hondo was refused production in Algeria and the film was shot in Tunisia. In the documentary, for the only time, there are brief shots of a screening of this film in a cinema. Presumably either in Senegal or Tunisia, the only territories where the film was screened.

There is also coverage of a theatrical production directed by Hondo at the Gerard Philippe Theatre in St Denis, including parts of the performance. Written by the Algerian writer Kateb Yacinne the dramatic work addressed the history of Algeria and included the issue of the occupation of Palestine.  François Catonné worked on the lighting and there was a cast of about fifty. In a now familiar trope the Algerian state funding for the play, as part of a cultural year, was withdrawn and it was only the commitment of the theatre that enabled the play to be performed.

Following the film and theatre work we learn something of Hondo’s career in film dubbing. For much of his career this was his economic mainstay. Among his more well known roles were for Ben Kingsley in Gandhi: Morgan Freeman in Se7en: and, most famously, for Eddie |Murphy in Shrek. It took the intervention of Murphy himself to keep Hondo dubbing for the latter role.

It is worth noting that there are several other films by Hondo not discussed in the documentary. La faim du monde – Sahel, la faim, pourquoi? (1975), a feature length documentary on the effects of neo-colonialism on African agriculture: Nous aurons toute la mort pour dormir (1977), a feature length documentary about the liberation struggle in the Western Sahara against Spanish colonialism: Watani, un monde sans mal (1998) a feature film that deals with the experiences of two very different characters who suffer a similar crisis in life.

Hondo died on March 2nd 2019 in a Paris hospital. His sister, Zahra, recalled rushing to the hospital but Hondo’s life support systems had already been turned off. He left behind his impressive film works; a series of supporting roles in films and on television: and his dubbing work in films. A number of the participants in the programme praised his contribution to international and African cinema but also lamented the lack of recognition he has received. This includes much of Africa which provided the political centre of his cinema. One comment argues that this lack of recognition extends to his home country of Mauritania. This is likely more complex that the comment suggests; quite a number of his films were supported from Mauritania through his own  company Les Films Soleil, M.H. Films Productions; and for at least one title by National de Cinema Mauritanian. But I have not found more details than this.

The documentary is a welcome contribution to Hondo’s legacy. However, it does suffer from some of the limitations common in contemporary television. All the film presented in the programme has been reframed to 16:9; some from academy ratio and some from different widescreen formats. This is especially notable with the extracts from Fatima, where the cinema screening is in 1.85:1 but other extracts from the film are in 16:9. This includes newsreel footage used as back projection behind contribution; it clearly originates in the academy ratio and has been digitised with a flat patina that sometimes results from this process. The other limitation is at time there is a tendency to ‘talking heads’; a series of very short clips from interviews strung together. I find this distracts from what is offered and in many cases it is clear that the participant was making a fulle5r comment which likely was more effective.

Still the commentary is available on the Al Jazeera web-pages; presumably in different territories with appropriate sub-titling. And the World Cinema Foundation has already brought  out a number of his films to public attention and their project on African cinema continues. When Hondo directed these films there were significant interventions in the political discourses in Europe and Africa. And in an age when outright colonialism, and more common neo-colonialism continue in that continent and also continue to oppress the migrant communities in Europe and North America their relevance remains.