SUSANNA KNITTEL
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STREAM LIFE PRODUCTIONS

waiting for the seeds to sprout

5/20/2023

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I feel very stretched out… many unknowns / planted but not showing yet.

We have a title now:  drumming bodies dancing !

I am in contact with the musicians, Seckou Keita and Omar Sosa, master kora and piano players. they delivered a fantastic performance a few weeks ago, best of Africa, supremely  playing their respective instruments and playing off each other, pure full body joy together with Gustavo Ovalles the calabash player who played directly to me, since i got the seat right by the stage, satisfying my request. “I had to be able to make eye contact with the musicians”. The Invitation to dance came not to early, the front row was grooving with the musicians. Everything is about participation / engagement, getting everybody moving, feeling the lightness move in like a sweet breeze on a hot day. Fingers crossed we can come to an agreement to have a few minutes of their music in the film - the sound of the African harp is the perfect counter balance to the sabar drums.
Seckou Keita is from Southern Senegal, the Casamance. I was there on my first trip to Senegal. We were in a land rover type vehicle through
the jungle just after rainy season, when we came around a bend, to be faced with a group of young guys playing, spinning a monkey around its tail. That monkey ended up on my shoulders for the rest of the trip, all the way back to M’Bour! When i was called to Dakar to work on the island of Gore, I had to leave him behind. Upon return, i walked the sandy streets looking for him, until ignorant white woman realised that monkeys are food for the locals.
The french government had installed their own people to govern the people of  the Casamance, but they preferred to deal with their queen, who lived in a large tree, surrounded by women servants and their children.


I just received the video from the final pick up shoot, my dancer star looks gorgeous in her tie dyed boubou and long braids, like a young Native American woman. She introduced us to the assortment of sabar drums, so different in tone and function


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Zoom with My Friends in Senegal

3/16/2023

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It had been five years since we saw each other,  now we are face to face on zoom. Mané is one of the outstanding dancers of the Xalaas, the band i filmed during my Senegal trip, she now holds a six months old Ibrahim on her lap, her husband Xoro next to her. She wears a loose red scarf, I a red necklace.

I feel myself leaning into the screen, in an effort to be closer. We all speak french, it is neither of us first language. Many variations on pronunciation. I seek to bridge our worlds, the American goal oriented society I live in and the Senegalese world that moves with fluidity, less dictated by the clock. Mané sits in the center, framed by my camera man whose studio we are in and her husband, but it is not easy to reach her. The men are quicker in their response, more used to talking to white folks… i now remember how hard it was to get to the women.

It also becomes apparent that the Sabar I learned in my research is vaguely similar to the sabar they have in their bones. Details. I quickly learn not to insist.

Lost in translation is a real thing, flexibility and humor are a way. My Senegalese friends, the family M’Baye, used to call me “la grande dame” - I better live up to it!

During my stay, i dreamed of the true grande dame, Jacqueline  Kennedy, with all her hair cut off, i probably did have some fears about being in M’Bour, surrounded by many men, day and night.
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    Susanna Knittel

    I will be updating this journal with notes, news, and visual/textual artifacts periodically. 

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  • Home
  • About
  • Moving Image
    • LEAPS OF JOY, 2023
    • FALLING FOR THE MOUNTAIN
    • THE LAST VAQUERO ON TASSAJARA ROAD: A REGRET, 2019
  • Writing
  • Contact
  • Journal