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Screen 2007 48(4):443-461; doi:10.1093/screen/hjm047
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© The Author 2007. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Screen. All rights reserved

Exile and longing in Abderrahmane Sissako's La Vie sur terre

Isabel Balseiro


  Abstract

This essay is a study of Abderrahmane Sissako's La Vie sur terre/Life on Earth as conceptual cinema, focusing on the theme of displacement. Part of the series ‘2000 Seen by’, organized with support from the ‘Mission for the celebration of the year 2000’, La Vie sur terre is Mali's contribution to French commemorations of the new millennium. Ten independent directors were invited to make a film about the last day of the twentieth century in their countries of origin. Born in Mauritania, trained as filmmaker in the Soviet Union and residing in France, Sissako responded by creating a film on both the nature of exile and the life cycles of the inhabitants of his father's village. The challenge was to produce a feature that captures Africa's connection to and isolation from Europe. To the richly portrayed West African setting, Sissako injects the political and poetic spirit of Martinican Aimé Césaire and his critique of colonialism. In approaching La Vie sur terre as conceptual cinema in which exile becomes the locus for intense creation, this article strives to articulate how Sissako mediates the tensions posed by the experience of separation from and entanglement with the native land.


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