Concerto pour un exil (Concerto for an Exile). 1968. Ivory Coast/France. Directed by Désiré Ecaré. With Hervé Denis, Claudia Chazel, Henri Duparc. DCP. In French; English subtitles. 30 min.
Bushman. 1971. USA. Written and directed by David Schickele. With Schickele, Paul Eyam Nzie Okpokam, Elaine Featherstone, Jack Nance. 99 min.
Celebrated Ivorian filmmaker Desiré Ecaré made his directorial debut with Concerto for an Exile, the first of his comically barbed meditations on Black immigrant life in Paris. Made shortly after he graduated from film school, it features a cast of nonprofessionals working improvisationally. As Ecaré would later observe, “I wanted to speak about my generation. A generation which every day resists cultural assimilation and knows that it has no future in its own country. A disenchanted generation, but also a deeply cultured and courageous one.” In Bushman, David Schickele interweaves past and present (and the organ music of Henry Purcell’s Ground in C minor, tribal chants, and Yoruba percussion) to focus on his friend Gabriel, who straddles two worlds with firm roots in neither. The young Nigerian, having escaped a bloody civil war back home—“entering its second year and no end is in sight”—finds himself adrift in a San Francisco riven by its own cultural antipathies and political violence.