{"id":2131,"date":"2019-02-06T13:11:16","date_gmt":"2019-02-06T13:11:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/francophone.port.ac.uk\/?p=2131"},"modified":"2019-02-06T13:11:16","modified_gmt":"2019-02-06T13:11:16","slug":"the-disidentification-of-mahamat-saleh-haroun","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/francophone.port.ac.uk\/?p=2131","title":{"rendered":"The disidentification of Mahamat Saleh Haroun"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"po-sr-sb po-sr--c po-sr-sb--c prt-x\">\n<div class=\"po-sr-sb__container\">\n<p><em>2019 marks the twentieth anniversary of Chad&#8217;s first feature film, &#8216;Bye Bye Africa.&#8217;<\/em><\/p>\n<p>It is a blessing and a curse to bear the title of a country\u2019s \u201cfirst feature film.\u201d As we saw in the past decade with Haifa Al-Mansour\u2019s\u00a0<em>Wadjda<\/em>\u00a0from Saudi Arabia, a country\u2019s first feature can generate attention and momentum to inspire a future generation of filmmakers.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/aside>\n<div class=\"po-cn wp po-wp\">\n<section id=\"\u00a70\" class=\"po-cn__intro po-wp__intro\">In 1999, Mahamat Saleh Haroun\u2019s\u00a0<em>Bye Bye Africa<\/em>\u00a0debuted as\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.africanfilmny.org\/2012\/bye-bye-africa\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">the first feature film<\/a>\u00a0from the country of Chad. The film is to an extent autobiographical, enlisting techniques of both fiction and nonfiction filmmaking to tell the story of an exiled filmmaker returning to Chad to make a movie, identical in many ways to Haroun\u2019s own journey. The film was a runner-up for Best First Film at the Venice Film Festival and launched Haroun onto a string of feature-length dramas set in Chad:\u00a0<em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/culture\/2002\/nov\/22\/artsfeatures5\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Abouna<\/a><\/em>,\u00a0<em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2007\/04\/06\/movies\/06dara.html\">Daratt<\/a><\/em>,\u00a0<em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2011\/04\/13\/movies\/mahamat-saleh-haroun-directs-a-screaming-man-review.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">A Screaming Man<\/a><\/em>, and\u00a0<em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.indiewire.com\/2013\/05\/mahamat-saleh-haroun-on-grisgris-and-his-original-film-noircrime-drama-idea-for-it-167672\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Grisgris<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Despite its richness in philosophy, buttressed by Haroun\u2019s careful dialogue as well as his deliberate alternation between Arabic and French, the film has been remembered as simply Chad\u2019s first feature film, the one that helped launched Haroun\u2019s career. Yet if one digs deeper than the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/variety.com\/2000\/film\/reviews\/bye-bye-africa-1200462452\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">surface-level film reviews<\/a>, they may expose Haroun\u2019s very personal statements of cultural disidentification throughout\u00a0<em>Bye Bye Africa<\/em>\u00a0as he navigates his own complicated relationship to Chad since his exile in France.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<aside class=\"sr-at__slot sr-at__slot--left prt-x\"><\/aside>\n<section id=\"ch-1\" class=\"po-cn__section po-wp__section\">\n<h3 class=\"po-cn__subhead po-wp__subhead\">Autobiography and disidentification in\u00a0<i>Bye Bye Africa<\/i>\u2018s narrative<\/h3>\n<p>\u201cOnce I get a flight, I\u2019ll be on my way,\u201d 37-year-old Haroun says in a Chadian dialect of Arabic, sitting up in bed in the middle of the night in France. So begins\u00a0<em>Bye Bye Africa<\/em>, in which Haroun is both directing and starring as a lightly fictionalized version of himself. His character has just learned of the death of his mother in his birth country, which he left to study filmmaking in France. Here is our first indicator of Haroun\u2019s complicated self-identification: a switch from Chad\u2019s trade language, Arabic, to Chad\u2019s colonial language, French, for an off-screen narration: \u201cShe died yesterday over there. So far away. And now suddenly, I feel lonely.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>This return to family and birthland is a catalyst for the film\u2019s narrative crux: Haroun wants to make a movie. The evening of his arrival, Haroun sits with his father and the two watch 8mm film from his mother\u2019s youth. His father comments in Arabic, \u201cI remember this! This was at your sister\u2019s engagement ceremony. I remember every moment. [\u2026] Your mother was such a beautiful woman!\u201d Haroun\u2019s nephew Ali, a peppy ten-year-old, leans into the light cast by the projector, his silhouette blown up on the screen in front of them. \u201cWhen I grow up, I want to make films too.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>By <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/africasacountry.com\/author\/bentley-brown\">Bentley Brown<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Read more on <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/africasacountry.com\/2019\/01\/the-disidentification-of-mahamat-saleh-haroun\">AfricaisaCountry<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>2019 marks the twentieth anniversary of Chad&#8217;s first feature film, &#8216;Bye Bye Africa.&#8217; It is a blessing and a curse to bear the title of a country\u2019s \u201cfirst feature film.\u201d As we saw in the past decade with Haifa Al-Mansour\u2019s\u00a0Wadjda\u00a0from &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/francophone.port.ac.uk\/?p=2131\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[58,696,380,159,475,694,693,252,697,695],"class_list":["post-2131","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorised","tag-africa","tag-bye-bye-africa","tag-chad","tag-colonial","tag-cultural","tag-disidentification","tag-film","tag-france","tag-language","tag-mahamat-saleh-haroun"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/francophone.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2131","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/francophone.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/francophone.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/francophone.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/francophone.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2131"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/francophone.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2131\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2132,"href":"https:\/\/francophone.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2131\/revisions\/2132"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/francophone.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/francophone.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/francophone.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}