Caroline de Bendern

In Paris she met Olivier Mosset (with whom she lived for a while), Daniel Buren, Michel Parmentier and Niele Toroni, as well as the members of the Zanzibar group, whose films were financed by Sylvina Boissonas: Daniel Pommereulle, Alain Jouffroy, Serge Bard, Jackie Raynal and Philippe Garrel.  *

À l’intention de Mademoiselle Issoufou à Bilma was made during a trip, also financed by Sylvina Boissonas, that was intended to take the members of the group from Tangiers to Zanzibar, but the group was held up for six months in Morocco by logistical problems and the initial project gradually fell apart: Daniel Pommereulle made his film Vite ! and Serge Bard converted to Islam and disappeared from the scene. Caroline de Bendern continued the journey alone with musician Barney Willen. They crossed into Algeria, where Willen met and recorded Archie Shepp, then travelled south to Sub-Saharan Africa where they stayed with the Bororo Fulani. The film was completed two years later during a second trip. Caroline de Bendern shot the film in 16mm and Barney Willen produced the soundtrack, which also inspired his legendary album Moshi. The film is both an experimental road movie and an ethnological documentary. It features footage of the Bororo Fulani during the Gerewol celebration, a beauty competition lasting six days and six nights during which young men with painted faces and adorned with necklaces of pearls and cowrie shells, amulets and feathers, drink bendore - a concoction of black banohe bark, crushed gypsum and milk – and dance to the point of inebriation. Lastly, the film is also a melancholic testimony to the disintegration of the Zanzibar group.  

 “Serge [Bard] had a new project. He wanted to make a film in Africa. His idea was to cross the continent from Tangiers to Zanzibar. The trip would last six months and a film was to be made. He managed to persuade his favourite producer to finance his project. It was the beginning of one of the craziest journeys in the history of cinema”, says Caroline de Bendern. 

Screening organised on the occasion of the acquisition of Caroline de Bendern's films by the Musée National d’Art Moderne. 

The filmmaker has been invited to revisit the experience of this existential quest across North and Sub-Saharan Africa and offers a rare and valuable insight into her experience with the Zanzibar group on the eve of its disbandment.   

Acknowledgments: Caroline de Bendern and the Cinémathèque française (the 16mm copy of the film À l’intention de Mademoiselle Issoufou à Bilma comes from the collections of the Cinémathèque française).