Original subtitles

NOTES FOR AN AFRICAN ORESTEIA

With the participation of a group of African students of the University of Rome

I am looking through the camera at my reflection

in the window of a shop in an African city.

I have come to film, but to film what?

Not a documentary or a film.

I have come to film notes for a film.

This film would be the Oresteia by Aeschylus,

filmed in the Africa of today, in modern Africa.

I chose, for Aeschylus' Oresteia,

an African nation which seemed typical to me.

A socialist nation, with philo-Chinese Tendencies, as you can see.

But this choice is not yet definitive,

because as well as the attraction to China,

there is another, no less fascinating attraction: America.

Or to put it better, neocapitalism.

You all know the story of Aeschylus' Oresteia.

I'll sum it up briefly, and give only the facts.

We are in Argos,

the city ruled by Agamemnon, who is about to return from war in Troy.

His wife Clytemnestra awaits him, but she loves another man, Aegisthus,

and she awaits him with the sole intention of killing him.

Agamemnon returns to his city exhausted and destroyed,

and Clytemnestra tricks him and murders him.

Cassandra, the slave that Agamemnon brought back from Troy,

had warned him in vain about this murder.

Agamemnon and Clytemnestra had two children' Orestes and Electra.

Electra witnessed the crime, but Orestes was far from home.

But when he grows into a young man and returns to Argos,

he meets Electra in secret by the grave of their father Agamemnon,

and together they decide to take revenge.

Orestes goes in disguise to the Court in Argos,

and, thanks to a trick,

ferociously murders his mother, Clytemnestra.

But as soon as he has murdered his mother, the Furies appear to him,

the Erinyes, the goddesses of ancestral terror.

Orestes flees, but he is protected by the god Apollo.

And Apollo tells him to turn to the goddess Athena,

the goddess of democracy and reason -

that is to say, the goddess of the new city of Athens.

The goddess Athena decides to help Orestes,

but not to help him, so to say, from above, as a goddess.

She wants to help by making men judge him, and sets up the first human law court.

This human court of law, of democracy and reason, acquits Orestes.

And the Furies are transformed by the goddess Athena

from goddesses of ancestral terror

into, let's call them goddesses of the irrational,

which endures alongside the rational democracy

of the new state.

I started out by looking for the characters.

Throughout Tanzania and Uganda, l photographed dozens of people.

This could be an Agamemnon.

So could this one.

The old Agamemnon who returns exhausted from the Trojan war.

Another variant for Agamemnon, more mythical as you can see.

This is a Masai.

This could be Pylades, Orestes' loyal and honest friend,

who is always by his side,

and who only pronounces a few words in the whole tragedy, these ones:

And what will be the words of your god,

the sacred words, the integrity of oaths?

lt is better to have men as your enemies than gods.

This sinister black veil

could be hiding the face of Clytemnestra.

This could be - l won't say Cassandra, she was young and beautiful.

But it could be one of Cassandra's magic gestures.

Electra.

Electra is the most difficult character to find in today's Africa.

Young African women seem to be deprived

of those feelings of hardness, pride and hatred which drove Electra.

And they smile, they seem only to know how to laugh, accept life as a celebration,

with their beautiful, bright headscarves: red, yellow, blue, purple.

Orestes.

l would like my film of the Oresteia in Africa

to have essentially working class characters.

So l would like the chorus to be of huge importance.

ln Greek tragedies, the chorus is static and speaks as one.

Here however l would like to set it in real, realistic situations, in daily life.

Here we are by Lake Victoria, where l started looking for the chorus.

A hut on the shores of Lake Victoria.

And the objects you see are the only objects

owned by its inhabitants.

There's nothing else.

Here is the inside of the hut.

The mother with her little boy.

With the next-door neighbours.

And over there the father, captured by the indiscretion of the camera.

Here however we are on a ferry, to cross an arm of Lake Victoria.

Full of farmers,

on their way to the market of course. The workers.

Here is the other shore of Lake Victoria, which we are drawing close to.

Directed towards the centre of Africa, towards Kigoma,

on Lake Tanganyika, right opposite Congo.

As well as for characters, l also looked for locations of course.

Just like the characters, the locations should be realistic, true.

Here we are on the road to Kigoma,

to the centre of Africa.

This village is called Kazulu.

lt's still close to prehistory,

these houses have only recently been built.

There was only a simple market here up to a few years ago.

And this boy, another possible member of the chorus,

takes us to the market.

Here it is, poor and abandoned,

underneath the violence of the sun.

And here is another, modest small town,

where there was once nothing but a deserted space in the savannah or forest

where farmers from surrounding villages gathered for the market.

This, in fact, is another market.

l'll repeat the nature of my film: it must be profoundly working class.

These must be the protagonists, here, this woman fetching water from a well.

This baby.

This elegant young man.

The members of the chorus will chat around the petrol-pump attendants,

their clients, the curious children,

the tailors.

The tailors and their clients have big discussions.

They talk of powerful people, they discuss politics.

Big debates are had at the hairdresser's

like everywhere else in the world.

This however is the market of a city - the city of Kigoma,

on the edges of the small city.

Other characters: slightly thuggish young men.

Inquisitive children.

Here however is what we might call an ancient-style market,

just like what many markets in the savannah must have been like,

and where farmers would go now and again to exchange their goods.

This people, captured in their day-to-day business,

and their humble daily lives,

should be the protagonists of my film, the African Oresteia.

lt is they who, because they are so realistic, so true,

carry inside them that mythical, sacred moment,

which will make them say sentences like this one:

God, if this is your name, if you want me to invoke you with this name,

l have weighed everything up.

l know nobody but you

who can truly free me from the nightmare weighing down on my heart.

Of course, l will not neglect the factories in the modern side of Africa.

This is a factory city, of a factory near Dar es Salaam.

A factory city which looks like every other factory city in the world.

With girls, some of whom still belong to the ancient world,

archaic peasants let's call them.

Whereas others are already modern, advanced - like this one for example.

And as well as the factories, l will not neglect the schools.

This school is very modern, as you can see.

lt's near Kigoma.

lt's called Livingstone, because it's near the place where Livingstone met Stanley.

Desacralising Africa.

Marking the start of the new era of modern Africa.

The boys are working.

According to modern pedagogical methods, study should be combined with work.

From fields to reading.

Here is a classroom full of zealous and respectful students.

African students, presented with knowledge which still seems to them like a gift,

are obedient, passive and humble.

So, you have seen some travel notes

which have helped me block some scenes, define some characters

for my film of the Oresteia.

First of all, l would like to tell you why l decided

to set the Oresteia in today's Africa.

This is the essential, profound reason:

l feel l can see analogies between

the Oresteia and Africa today.

Above all in terms of the transformation

of the Erinyes into Eumenides.

lt seems to me that African tribal civilisation

resembles Greek archaic civilisation.

And the discovery of democracy made by Orestes,

which he then takes to his country -

Argos in the tragedy, Africa in our film -

is, in a way, the discovery of democracy which Africa has made in recent years.

So the first two questions l want to ask you are these:

do you think l could set this film in Africa today, in 1970,

or would it be more fitting to backdate the film,

and set it in 1960 Africa,

during the period when most African states gained independence?

l think - in my opinion,

this film would be very valuable

if it was set in the 1960s.

Because today Africa is becoming modern

and is starting to resemble Europe.

lt's losing some of its typically African character.

Do you agree with him?

Africa isn't a nation, it's a continent.

Yes, but what l'm asking you is, firstly,

when do you think it should be set, 60s or 70s,

and in what place? For example, where in Africa would you imagine it?

But l haven't traveled around Africa.

Where are you from?

Ethiopia.

And you only know Ethiopia?

Yes, but it's not that... "Africa" ' when you say "Africa",

it goes from the Mediterranean to the furthest point.

From the Atlantic Ocean to the lndian Ocean.

So you can't say "Africa" .

On the subject of this film, l would like to remind its author

that you shouldn't make too much of the issue of tribalism in Africa.

Because Europeans generally made too much of tribalism

to justify their crimes.

So if we talk about Africa,

we're talking about a race, not tribes,

When we say ltaly, we don't mean the people of Cagliari,

and when we say France, we don't mean the Bretons.

That's all l wanted to add.

Let's not be afraid of reality.

lf there are still tribes in Africa,

if the Libo tribe feels it is different from the Hausa tribe,

this is a reality which we must have the courage to address.

People talk too much about the issue of tribes.

When someone commits a crime in Nigeria,

they talk about the Biafra tribe.

ln Congo, they talk about the Katanga.

l ask that if we discuss the Congo,

let's talk about the Congolese.

lf we refer to Niger, let's talk about Nigeriens, not the Biafra.

Because when we say "ltaly" ' we talk about Italians.

What you're saying is very interesting, but let me ask you:

who defined the borders of Congo or Nigeria?

The colonialists did.

So the Nigerian reality is a false reality,

constructed by European leaders.

They drew lines on a map,

but these do not correspond to Nigerian reality.

l think there is a danger when you talk about democracy.

For many Africans,

l don't know if European, modern civilisation

has really brought us democracy

as a historian would understand it.

You've made a very interesting observation,

which really speaks to me.

When l say "democracy",

l don't mean real democracy,

l mean formal democracy.

When Orestes arrives in Athens

and Athena sets up the first human court of law -

for the first time, men, through elections -

the judges are elected -

and they, not the gods, are the ones to judge this man -

a great step is made in the history of mankind.

But it is a purely formal one.

Then this form is filled out by real democracy.

l'm not a filmmaker, but l don't see the connection.

Do you all agree with him?

ls there maybe someone who sees a connection,

a possibility of connection?

l think the idea could probably work.

But it would just remain a little. . .

something imaginative.

To make a reality out of it would be quite difficult.

At least a daily reality.

Maybe if you set the film in the 60s or 50s.

But you can find the link.

There are still other characters to find: the Furies.

But the Furies cannot be represented as humans.

So l would decide to represent them in a non-human form.

These trees for example.

Lost in the silence of the forest,

monstrous somehow, and terrible.

The awfulness of Africa is its solitude.

The monstrous forms that nature can take there.

The profound, threatening silences.

irrationality is animal.

The Furies are the goddesses of the animal moment of man.

This wounded lioness, too, could be a Fury,

lost in her blind suffering.

The Furies in Aeschylus' Oresteia

are destined to be defeated, to disappear.

Thus, with them, the ancestral, ancient world disappears.

And in my film, destined to disappear with them,

is a part of ancient Africa.

But it's time to begin our story.

This could be the guardian who, at Clytemnestra's request,

on the tower near Argos,

looks out for the return of Agamemnon's army.

This must be announced, as agreed,

by a line of fires going from Mount lda, near Troy,

up to the area surrounding Argos.

But let's read a passage from Aeschylus' Oresteia.

Who can have alerted you so quickly?

lt was the God of Fire, burning on Mount lda.

Behind him, a whole luminous chain

lit up little by little until it reached us.

Mount lda sparkling with burning wood.

The incandescent sign which flew from Lemnos to be reflected on Mount Athos,

on Zeus' kingdom.

And the third stage:

from here, leaping over the sea,

the beacon bearing the message exults in its fiery power.

From one beacon to the next, until this night-time sun burns

over Mount Macistus.

Another light, even stronger, capable of travelling the longest distances,

is made, sweeps over Lake Gorgopus,

arrives at Mount Aegiplanctus,

pushes the new fire not to stop for an instant,

lighting a wild, ardent brassier.

A beam of flames so bright that its light

jumps over the promontory at the Saronic straits,

swoops down,

touches Mount Arachnaeus, close to Argos now,

and falls on this roof of the House of Atreus,

the last link in the chain starting in Troy.

These are notes for a possible flashback

to the Greek army by the Wall of Troy

and to the Trojan War,

following the words of the chorus.

This could be the Greeks' camp.

And this a parade of heroes, of chiefs:

Agamemnon, Menelaus, Achilles, Ulysses.

These could be Greek soldiers training.

Under the command of a Thersites, of course.

These images were not filmed by me.

They were gathered from archive material

filmed during the Biafran war.

But this war should not be understood as a specific war, as the Bafrian war -

but as an abstract war.

Its images are metaphorical images

of what should be the actualization

of the war between the Greeks and the Trojans.

As l have repeated,

the great protagonist of my film,

for which these are mere notes, should be the people.

So, during this war, the humble soldiers,

who are wounded, ripped apart, killed.

This could be an image of Troy burning.

These could be images of the sack of Troy,

of the massacres and destruction it suffered after it was conquered.

Nothing is further from these images

than the idea we usually have of Greek classicism.

However - pain, death, mourning, tragedy,

are eternal, absolute elements

which can very well link these images burning with actuality

with the fantastical images of the ancient Greek tragedy.

But an unexpected idea forces me to interrupt this sort of story,

breaking this style without style, the style of documentaries and notes.

This is the idea:

to have the Oresteia sung rather than recited.

To be more precise, to have it sung in jazz style.

And in other words, to choose as singer-actors

American negroes.

This will not be without meaning.

Because if black singer-actors from America

take part in shooting a film in Africa

about the African renaissance,

of course this must have a precise meaning.

lt is clear to everyone, in fact,

that the 20 million black sub-proletarians of America

are the leaders of any revolutionary movement in the Third World.

We are here in a semi-clandestine studio in a western city.

And here we will take down the first notes for our new project.

The scene chosen at this point

is Cassandra's great scene at the beginning of the tragedy.

Those that speak are Cassandra and the Chorus.

This is the situation:

Agamemnon, taking the slave Cassandra with him,

has just returned, exhausted and discouraged.

He has seen too much to still believe in honors.

And in fact the city gives him a sorrowful greeting,

because everyone knows the new reality that awaits him.

His wife Clytemnestra, who has already prepared his death,

welcomes him in, making him walk over precious carpets.

Thus husband and wife enter the Royal Palace,

and disappear from sight.

lt's at this point that Cassandra

has a vision of the murder taking place behind the wall.

Let's return to Africa.

Here is a note for the violent death

prophesied by the visionary Cassandra.

But here l have no words to communicate with.

This clod of overturned, fresh earth,

rectangular shapes, like at the angles of the tufts of grass,

is a grave which l found close to the hut.

A grave like this could be the grave of Agamemnon

in my film on the African Oresteia.

l asked those that live in the hut next to this grave,

a father and a daughter,

to repeat the same gestures and say the same words

as are used when they go to give offerings and say prayers at the grave.

And they diligently assisted me.

And this is a note on what might be

the arrival of Electra to pray at her father's grave.

Let us reread Aeschylus' verses.

God of Hell, king of the living and the dead,

make my prayers be heard

by the spirits that dwell under the earth,

terrible witnesses of the murder of my father,

of the earth itself,

the mother of us all,

who has nourished us, and gathers in herself new shoots of life,

while, pouring this sacred water to the dead,

l pray to my father:

Father, have pity on me and on your son Orestes.

Make it so that we return as rulers to our house.

Now we are no more than two disinherited and hopeless children.

Our own mother reduced us to this,

who married Aegisthus, the accomplice to her murder.

l am alive and a slave,

Orestes is alive and in exile.

And those two triumph, made rich by your riches.

May divine chance bring Orestes back here,

this is what l ask of you - hear me, father.

And here is a note that is different to the others.

l filmed this scene as though it was the real scene in my film.

Orestes arriving at his father's grave.

God, God, look down on our misery!

See, the children of the eagle are without a father,

he died in the coils of a viper.

A terrible hunger tortures these orphans,

for, still almost in their down,

they are not yet able to bring to the nest their father's quarry.

One same fate for me and for her, Electra.

Look at us, orphans, banished from our own home.

lf you let the eagle's fledglings die,

you will no longer be able to send signs from the sky,

and this royal race, this small root of greatness,

will no more be able to consecrate your altar.

Save us. You can make this house great again,

which now is no more than a great ruin.

Thus, Orestes is preparing to avenge his father,

and to kill his mother with his own hands.

But as soon as he has killed his mother, the Furies will appear,

and force him to flee from his home.

And there he goes, and the Furies follow him,

singing their ancestral song of terror and remorse.

Whether l move my feet towards the mountains or the valley, it is in vain.

Whoever flees out of remorse, his suffering has no remedy.

But here is the god that protects Orestes, Apollo,

who speaks to him.

Flee, and never tire!

They are looking for you,

they will follow you wherever you go in this wide world,

even across the sea, even in cities surrounded by water.

But never tire of enduring the sentence you must endure,

before you have reached the country of Athena.

Orestes leaves, roaming the world,

hounded, terrified, but also determined

to achieve his purification.

This is Kampala, the capital of Uganda,

which could represent the ancient and modern city of Athens.

Now Orestes is before the Temple of Apollo.

How will l metaphorically represent,

in my film of the African Oresteia, the Temple of Apollo?

l will represent it using a university.

To be precise, the University of Dar es Salaam,

which, seen from afar, immediately displays disquieting signs

of resembling typical Anglo-Saxon, neocapitalist universities.

Its external aspect, defined by elegant and confident design,

its internal organization, make of it a typical university,

such as you see all over Black Africa.

These, l repeat, conform to the neocapitalist, progressive model.

They are the seat of the future local intelligentsia,

of the culture of knowledge of the young African nations.

And these, in fact, represent all the internal contradictions

of these young African nations.

Here we are in the college bookshop.

And here the contradictions l mentioned

are declared, manifest, explicit.

See this plaque placed above the bookshop.

lt reads that this building

owes its existence to the help

of the people and government of the People's Republic of China.

But inside the books displayed in the bookshop window

is the other alternative:

the neocapitalist, Anglo-Saxon alternative.

Teaching English, An introduction to Teaching,

Handbook for History Teachers in West Africa,

The Social Education of the Adolescent - all works of popularization.

Tales for children.

Or a work of popular history, Julius Caesar.

The New Africans.

Townsmen or Tribesmen.

The Rise of Nationalism in Central Africa,

Poems, of course in the Swahili dialect of Kenya.

and new grammars. Here, also, a book about Russia.

And Jesus Christ.

And on American education.

Following Apollo's advice,

Orestes reaches Athens, the new city,

which l have temporarily represented here using mixed materials

collected in Kampala,

in Dar es Salaam, and in Kigoma.

A new city that astounds Orestes,

who has come from barbaric, feudal, religious Argos.

The goddess Athena, the goddess of the new Athenian democracy,

the goddess of reason,

thus decides to help Orestes.

And according to Aeschylus' text, here are her words:

The only solution is for me to appoint judges.

They will swear an oath, and the court thus instituted

will forever have authority.

You, gather your evidence,

your witnesses bound by oath,

l will return, bringing with me the best men in the city,

for them to issue their serene, impartial judgment.

The first elections in history, then -

represented imaginatively by the first elections in independent Africa.

Here we are before the court,

in reality the court of Dar es Salaam,

where Orestes will be judged.

Citizens of Athens, hear what l have decided.

You who, the first in the world, have judged a crime.

From now on and forever, this people

will have the right to its own assembly.

With these words, Athena institutes the first elections of history,

and continues: May neither anarchy nor tyranny

govern you, citizens. But do not fully banish authority.

Nobody does his duty without some fear.

lf you always respect this order,

you will live in peace within your walls,

like no other people in the world.

The assembly l am now founding will stay incorruptible, revered, pure,

guarding the country's peace.

This is my wish for you, citizens, for the future as well.

Now rise, cast your ballots,

and make your judgment, faithful to your oaths.

Thus Orestes is judged.

The Furies accuse him in the name of the ancient, archaic, feudal world,

the religious world.

Athena defends him, and Orestes is absolved.

Now the question l want to ask you is not a serious one,

it's funny. Answer it as you like, maybe even with a joke.

This is the question: you have seen a young man

leaving his ancient world,

with its old gods, its old beliefs,

as a chief's son, since Agamemnon is basically a tribal chief.

He arrives and experiences the western, modern world:

law courts, big buildings, hotels, and above all the university.

You are university students, so. . .

The question l want to ask you is this:

Do you feel a little like you are Orestes?

Yes, because we came here to study, to discover the western world.

Now we have - how do you say it?

We have discovered many things in terms of civilisation,

in terms of progress, of study.

l mean, how to put it...

Orestes was a man who discovered something.

So...

in a way we could represent Orestes.

So you think you might resemble this character

because you have been pushed into an era of knowledge,

satisfying this need for knowledge in a different world.

l would say that...

As my colleague put it, we feel like Orestes,

but not all of us are the sons of a tribal chief.

No.

We can go abroad,

or we have discovered western civilisation...

We have come here to study.

Maybe one of us might be the son of a tribal chief.

But in a way yes, we are all, well...

Orestes. We can represent Orestes. lt's just the tribal chiefs...

You don't have a tribal chief in every family.

l spoke of tribal chiefs to say that Agamemnon was a chief.

Anyway, all of you, in general, or at least in 90% of cases,

come from a family with certain possibilities.

Or this conception could give you the conception of a person who is...

tired of his life, and who wants to explore a new world,

who wants to discover a new civilisation.

Who wants to improve, let's say.

For me, anyway, it could give rise to this conception, to this idea.

Your first answer seems to imply that

by coming, like Orestes, to a modern world,

you are discovering something new and, in a way, positive.

But are you sure that everything you see in the western world is positive,

and what you have left behind is not?

l don't think the world we have left behind is completely negative.

Our resemblance to Orestes is rather...

Let's call it a formal one.

We haven't come to discover a better world.

We are discovering a new world, which has...

Some better properties, not...

l think that Orestes' experience

in the western world

could be useful in the case that, when he went home for example,

he was not able to combine,

or to assimilate his experience

with the ancient ways of his home.

For example, what l mean is...

Cultural alienation. He shouldn't be alienated.

lf he is alienated, in that case,

his coming to the western world would be negative.

He would need to -

transpose, but in a more humane way,

what he learnt in the western world to his home.

This seems to me a very just, intelligent observation. l want to ask you:

lf the way of not being alienated by consumer society,

by modern western society,

could be given to him by the fact

of being African?

l mean by opposing the western form of knowledge

with his own original soul,

which means that the things he learns do not become consumerist notions,

but rather personal, real notions.

l didn't understand the question very well, but l think that

what he learnt -

for example, could help him to -

deepen the ancient knowledge.

l mean from the rural environment he used to live in.

This leads me to the second question:

The film finishes, as l told you,

with the transformation of the Furies into Eumenides.

And this is a kind of synthesis.

How could you represent

the transformation of Furies into Eumenides?

l don't know. This transformation...

Like that, from one into the other -

l don't think it can be completely achieved.

Because both one and the other exist.

And they will always exist, l think. Because African man, fundamentally...

is a man who is so...

who has a very profound interior life.

A very profound spirit.

So when you talk of Furies

which change into...

- Eumenides. - lnto Eumenides.

l don't know. You could probably...

Create Eumenides without the Furies disappearing.

l don't think they could completely disappear.

My film will be very appropriate.

As we've seen, 1960:

the year in which most African states,

in just a few years, make up for a delay

you might say, of centuries or millennia, by achieving independence and democracy.

Even the conclusion must be dated,

l mean it must refer to the African ideology of those years,

which probably had its symbol in Senghor, the president of Senegal.

This is the idea that the new Africa, the Africa of the future,

must be a synthesis

of modern, independent, free Africa,

and of ancient Africa.

How can l represent this transformation

of the Furies into Eumenides?

Filming with my camera

along the streets of Tanzania and Uganda,

l stopped here, for example, in this small village lost in the savannah.

We are with the Wagogo tribe,

one of the many tribes making up the nation of Tanzania.

And l filmed this dance.

This ancient dance -

ancient, so to say - let's say, up to just a few years ago -

was, of course, a rite,

with a precise, religious meaning,

perhaps even cosmogonic meaning.

Now, though, as you see, the Wagogo people

in the same places where they once performed this dance in earnest,

imitate it, in jest, to divert themselves,

divesting these gestures, these movements,

of their ancient sacred meaning

and making them almost out of pure joy.

Here is a metaphor of what might be

the transformation of the Furies into Eumenides.

Let us reread Aeschylus' text once more.

The Furies, as soon as Orestes has been absolved, scream in pain,

their sacredness has been offended.

They protest against Athena.

And Athena tries to convince them, with these words:

l understand your anger. You are older than me.

But though your experience is greater,

God has given me the gift of reason.

Go, go, leave for another land, but you will weep for this one.

l know that the days to come will bring greatness to my people,

and if you are here, in the glorious centre of this city,

you will see processions of men and women bringing you gifts

like no other people in the world can do.

The Furies let themselves be convinced by Athena's words,

and agree to co-exist with her, the goddess of reason -

they, the goddesses of irrationality,

in the new world.

ln the new, independent, democratic, free world.

Here we are in Dodoma, a city in the heart of Tanganyika.

And here we are in the centre of a situation

which, like the dance of the Wagogo, could very well represent poetically,

metaphorically, the transformation of the Furies into Eumenides.

ln the very sense that l was referring to before.

lndeed, these hair-styles,

this way of walking,

these dancing scenes, these gestures,

these tattoos on the face,

are all signs of an ancient, magical world.

Here is a symbol which still today

remains chilling and sinister.

But this magical world appears here, as you can see,

as a tradition, an ancient spirit,

an autochthonous spirit that does not want to be lost.

Here, we are watching a wedding ceremony,

and all these people dressed luxuriously, in their finest clothes,

are going to celebrate the newly-weds.

Here is the mattress on which the newly-weds will sleep.

Dancing gaily and loosely,

the procession nears the house of the newly-weds.

ln an inner courtyard, here are some women,

hired of course,

who, even more than the others, stand for the ancient spirit l mentioned.

Here, this could very well be, in my film,

the Furies transformed into Eumenides.

But let us hear again the words that Athena addresses to the Furies,

as soon as they have been transformed.

l express my rush of love for this city

by welcoming you here as patrons.

Great, restless, mysterious powers.

You will guide all human relationships.

Whoever does not understand that it is right to welcome in

these immortal deities,

does not understand life's contrasts.

And the barbary of the fathers, which is atoned for before them,

and an unwise sense of calm,

despite the cries of his conscience,

can lead him to dark ruin.

Here however we are in the inner courtyard of the house.

As you can see, a more modern party is underway.

A party similar to those in Europe, to any wedding party

you might see in our culture as well.

But here as well, with these modern attitudes

with this modern music,

you can sense that the ancient spirit l spoke of endures.

lt is transformed, as you see,

into desire for happiness, celebration,

into grace, lightness,

traits very typical of the African spirit.

There is a great freedom, a great openness to the future, in Africa.

These are the gifts that the guests bring to the newly-weds.

We are outside the door of the newly-weds' house,

and the guests continue to bring them their gifts,

picturesquely and with great elegance.

Here are useful notes for a conclusion.

The new world is established.

The power to decide its own fate, at least formally,

is in the hands of the people.

The ancient, primordial divinities

co-exist with the new world of reason and freedom.

But how to conclude?

Well, there is no ultimate conclusion.

lt is suspended.

A new nation is born; its problems are infinite.

But problems are not resolved, they are experienced.

And life is slow.

Going towards the future

cannot have its solution in continuity.

The work of a people

knows neither rhetoric nor delay.

Its future is in its fear of the future.

And its fear is a great patience.