Film

Xaraasi Xanne (Crossing Voices)

Raphaël Grisey and Bouba Touré

Date and Time:: Sunday 28 June, 3–5 pm
Location:: Minassa

Using rare cinematic, photographic and sound archives, Xaraasi Xanne (Crossing Voices) recounts the exemplary adventure of Somankidi Coura, an agricultural cooperative created in Mali in 1977 by Western African immigrant workers living in workers’ residences in France. The story of this improbable, utopian return to the homeland follows a winding path that travels through the ecological challenges and conflicts on the African continent from the 1970s to the present day. To tell this story, Bouba Touré, one of its principal actors, returns to the heart of his personal archives. They document peasant struggles in France and Mali, as well as following the personal stories of migrant workers over many decades. Furthermore, the film is a story of transmission, kinship and cinematographic geographies. Throughout the film, voices come to accompany Bouba Touré and bring forth the narrative of a forgotten memory leading towards the future.

Raphaël Grisey lives and works in Berlin. Grisey uses films, editorial and photographic works to assemble narratives about politics of memory, migration and architecture. Through diverse documentary and essayist forms, research, archival practices and collaborations, Grisey’s works adress neo-colonial extractivism and decolonial story telling in agriculture and urban space (Cooperative, 2008 ; Remanescentes; A Mina dos Vagalumes, 2015; Sowing Somankidi Coura, a Generative Archive 2015– 2022 with Bouba Touré). He collaborated with Florence Lazar on the film Prvi Deo (2006), on post-war justice in former Yugoslavia.

Bouba Touré was born in 1948, and died in January 2022. He lived in France in the Foyer Pinel from 1965 and worked at the factory Chausson until 1969. He studied at the Vincennes University and was a projectionist at Cinema 14 Juillet and L’entrepôt, Paris. Photographer since the 1970s and writer since the 1980s, he documented the lives and struggles of migrant workers and peasants in France and Mali. Touré co-founded the farming Co-op of Somankidi Coura in 1977.