31/10/2010

In the 1970s, Pier Paolo Pasolini and Alberto Moravia set down Africa in authentic and essential pages and photos. Today, another writer tries his hand at it, Gianni Celati. Through patience, observation and participation, for over three years he captured the Senegal of the new millennium in Diol Kadd. Vita, diari, riprese in un villaggio del Senegal, one of the documentaries in competition in the Extra sidebar of the Rome International Film Festival.

The film offers no facile exoticism or filters, just the daily lives these polygamist families who have 17 children and a 104-year-old grandmother who stills dances the seductive dance typical to the region. Where animist beliefs mix with the readings of the Koran. Where time has a different meaning and where desertification is consuming the Savannah.

Celati enters the community and with actor-director Mandiaye N'Diaye also captures the famers’ comic desires for wealth, the kind of "disastrous wealth that blinds people".

Co-produced by Pierrot e la Rosa and PaoFilm, international sales on Diol Kadd are handled by Italian company Vitagraph.