irrawaddy bandanna: Pascale Obolo, the 7th art in the plural

Pascale Obolo, the 7th art in the plural

The guest star of our Cultural column, Arts & Entertainment this month is a filmmaker gifted with the masterful tact, Pascale Obolo, in what follows gives us a better view of her person and productions ...
Flashmag: Hello Pascale is a real pleasure to have you as Flashmag invitee, ?this month. The time of this interview our gallery is yours. your? ambition in the film making how ?was it born? what led you to the? seventh art and why this choice?
Pascale Obolo: being activist I used cinema as a weapon to defend my ideas, since cinema is a very strong universal language that touches the entire world. All of us we are more or less fascinated by images. Specially today where the image is omnipresent in the societies in which we live (computer, TV, phone...)
The cinema also represented a means of escape. Tell stories recreate an imaginary world where I could make the African youth dream, by giving them some hope. With the magic of cinema we could, for a moment forget the negative image that overlooked Africa.
Flashmag: as a woman and African Moreover, how do you feel about being filmmaker? Is there a particular key in how you approach the subjects you realize?

Pascale Obolo:it is in the choice of thematic addressed in my work I feel the difference and also the way to realize the films. There is more emotion and poetry in my visual work. I?m more interested and more sensitive, to experience an aestheticizing cinematic language.
Flashmag: also, did the great ladies of cinema as Jane Campion, or Euzhan Palcy have influenced you or influence you in your style? In what school do you belong as a filmmaker, classical drama, impressionism or realism, how do you define your style?
Pascale Obolo: I come from experimental cinema. Artists like Bill Viola, Nane Jun Paik, Barbara Hammer, or Spike Lee, have influenced my cinema
Flashmag: Speaking of your accomplishments with the film Calypso, you seem to pay particular attention to the documentary series about the dances and rhythms of Trinidad and Tobago an island, which is like your second home why?
Pascale Obolo: The Calypso is a music style and not just a dance to start with. I have done a lot

of film in Trinidad because what interested me in this work was: how people travel or emigrate from one country to another with their culture to recreate another form of mixed culture. The calypso is the mixture between the music of slaves (African music) and music of the white masters (the minuet). My last film calypso Rose: the lioness of the jungle is talking about the first female queen of calypso, whom most of her songs were used by the first feminist movement in Trinidad, created by university women. This film is a kind of road movie that takes place in Trinidad &Tobago, New York, Paris and Benin. In each city we discover a facet of the incredible story of a diva who is in sum the cultural ambassador of Trinidad and Tobago.
Flashmag: A graduate from the Conservatoire Libre du Cinema and the French University of Paris (Paris 8), you are one of the very first person who made a documentary on urban music hip-hop, R & B and graffiti art, you settled as a forward-thinking, you like this maxim "I? am in resistance because I? am in phase of activism" what this implies?
Pascale Obolo: I grew up in hip hop culture. So I got started with my mates documenting people with whom I was hanging out. During my university studies, I was filming my group named ?the ladies night ?and my friends were making graffiti.
Flashmag: Speaking of your newest release The Invisible Woman based on the novel of the African American Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, you put forward the existentialist problems of black women in Western society with some bravado, today what do you think of the place of black women in society in general what must be done to make them more visible?

Pascale Obolo: we women we must continue to demand more equality and justice. In front of societies, which are becoming increasingly conservative. We must continue to remain vigilant to preserve the rights acquired. In my film the invisible woman: philosophic visual test. I speak of the invisibility of the black individual, in French society. As in the book of Ralph Elisson, where he deals with the theme of invisibility of the black man in the American society of 1952.
Flashmag:we are used to acknowledge rightly or wrongly that Black women feminist and intellectual are the cause, of unrest in the marital home, by advocating, rebellion of the fairer sex what do you think about? Can one be a woman without being a feminist in my opinion it seems a self-defense as it is not disproportionate How about that?
Pascale Obolo: in my case, it?s very difficult for me to be a woman without being feminist as well. I need both to exist and fully accomplish my task.
Flashmag: In the purely cinematic point, what do you think of the place of blacks in the world of the seventh art today? Many ?believe that the way blacks are portrayed thus gives in general a pejorative vision of the black race what ?can you say about? Would it be bonded to the perception of those who finance the 7th art? Some mention here the perpetual debate between art and its funding what would you say?
Pascale Obolo: all depends on what film industry you're talking about? If it?s the one of the diaspora in France, it is very pejorative a caricature at the limit.
black filmmakers have to take themselves in charge. Write their own scenario if they want to exist in the French cinema. They have to master all the cinematic chain. (Writing, directing, production and distribution). We need to find our own sources of finances. Reinvent a cinema of quality even without large financial means.
Flashmag: what about the rise of cinema in Africa with Nollywood which is becoming a stronghold of the film industry, producing even more films than Hollywood the past year they produced about 500 films while Nollywood produced more than 1,000 during the same period? The digital age would have anything to do with this expansion in quantity and quality? Besides do you think that mastering the technology and methods of funding would finally give black artists, the opportunity to make the films they want? And contribute to give a truer picture of their person and continent of origin?
Pascale Obolo: new technologies have facilitated the evolution of cinema inNigeria. The ?growth of Nollywood in the whole of Africa is very good. This ?proves that Africa can also have a very powerful film industry. Too bad for now it concerns only, the cinema of entertainment. It ?should also support the development of authors cinema ?and documentary of creation.
Indeed, the mastery of technology and new funding mode other than the European one, will allow? ?African artist to develop their own cinema
Flashmag:to close this debate do you have a special mention to the public? A word about your future achievements, and your medium-term program? Where are available your movies?
Pascale Obolo: I just founded with Carole Diop, Afrikadaa an online journal of contemporary art whose goal is to make a spotlight on artists and spaces for contemporary art. This is also the first francophone interactive magazine dedicated to current black productions. This platform is a laboratory, a unique ?virtual art space, where intellectuals, philosophers and artists of today come to talk, compare, and explain their work and offer reflections on art. Its ambition is to realize the richness of the African continent and the black Diasporas in contemporary art, design and architecture. Rethinking contemporary art by building bridges between artists and intellectuals. But also support and discover new artists through the exhibition set up by the magazine.
My movie Calypso Rose the lioness of the jungle opened? the black women film festival in San Francisco on July 20. I hope your readers? within the bay area, attended this fantastic festival. The film is? also scheduled to be viewed during the ?festival of the island of Groix August 24^th.
Flashmag:Pascale Obolo Flashmag its readership and thank you for this interview