Wie lieben Menschen heute in Afrika? Wie drücken Kinder, Jugendliche und Erwachsene in einer Kleinstadt in Burkina Faso ihre Wünsche und Hoffnungen aus? Die Geschichten, die dieser Film erzählt, bieten intime Einblicke und zeichnen ein ungewohntes Bild von Afrika: Eine lebendige, suchende Gesellschaft mit universalen Sehnsüchten, Problemen, Hoffnungen.


Format: Kinofilm
Länge: 92 min.
Originalsprache: fr, Moré
Sprachen: fr
Untertitel: de, en
Produktionsstatus: sendefertig
Erscheinungsjahr: 2008
Produktionsjahr: 2007

Regie: Christian Lelong, Maria Silvia Bazzoli
Produzent: Christian Lelong
Produktionsfirma: cinédoc
Co-Produzent: Carl-A. Fechner
Co-Produktionsfirma: fechnerMEDIA GmbH

Autor: Christian Lelong, Maria Silvia Bazzoli
Drehbuch: Christian Lelong, Maria Silvia Bazzoli
Kamera: Christian Lelong
Ton: Maria Silvia Bazzoli, Frederic Bassolé
Schnitt: Francois Sculier
Musik: Yoni

Klappentext:
Der Photograph Mila hat zwei Tage vor dem Valentinstag, dem Fest der Verliebten, eine Panne in der Kleinstadt Koupéla. Seine Porträts der Liebe ermöglichen den Zugang zu den verschiedensten dokumentarischen Szenarien von Liebe und Sex. Für die junge Generation ein Thema unendlicher leidenschaftlicher Diskussionen! Ousmane ist 20 Jahre alt. Er ist Romantiker und Träumer. Sein Herz läuft über vor Liebe, seit er während eines Praktikums in der Hauptstadt Balie kennenlernte. Es war Liebe auf den ersten Blick, aber seit diesem Tag haben sie sich nur zweimal wiedergesehen. Sie lebt in Ouagadougou, und er hat nicht die Möglichkeit, Koupéla zu verlassen, die kleine „Stadt des weißen Granits", 137 km entfernt. Aber diese Distanz hält ihn nicht davon ab, an sie zu denken, ihr Gedichte und Liebesbriefe zu schreiben... Jean Marie Zeugmoré, Mitte Sechzig, lebt mit seiner Frau und seinen Kindern in einer Hofgemeinschaft. Das Paar hat ein ganzes Leben miteinander geteilt, und nur der Tod könnte sie trennen. Wenn die Familie aufsteht, ist es noch dunkel. Jean Marie verabschiedet sich von seiner Frau und besteigt sein altes Fahrrad, um fischen zu gehen... In der Stadt organisiert die Association Cinomade eine Veranstaltung mit kostenlosen Filmvorführungen und einer Diskussion zum Thema „Liebe, Sex und HIV". Eine Leinwand wird aufgebaut, und das Team macht sich mit einer Videokamera auf den Weg durch die verschiedenen Stadtviertel, um Statements der Bewohner einzufangen, die dann am Abend projiziert werden... Das Auto des Fotografen wurde abgeschleppt, aber es dauert noch ein paar Tage, bis es repariert ist. Ein Hochzeitsfoto im Büro des Automechanikers bringt ihn auf eine Idee: Hatte das Radio nicht den kommenden Valentinstag angekündigt? Radio Kourita hat einen Dichterwettbewerb für alle Liebenden ausgeschrieben. Junge und Alte, Frauen und Männer unterschiedlichster Schicht und Herkunft tragen öffentlich ihre Liebe, ihre Träume und ihren Kummer vor. Zum Fest der Verliebten gibt außerdem der burkinische Musikstar Yoni ein Konzert in Koupéla. Eugénie, Isidore, Hervé und die Schüler vom Gymnasium Kourita - alle sind dabei. Alle außer Ousmane, der gerade die Stadt verlassen hat, um Balie zu treffen und ihr eine harte Wahrheit mitzuteilen...

Weitere Infos: Eine Koproduktion mit der cinédoc (Christian Lelong)


FESTIVALS / AWARDS
Internationales Filmfestival Montréal 2008
FIFF Tübingen-Stuttgart 2008


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Amour, sexe et mobylette (Love, sex and mopeds) is a film about love, love in a small town in Burkina Faso.
Going to see how a society lives to the rhythm of beating hearts, is basically to try and understand how it sees its future.
Seeing how people love each other somewhere in Africa, is also to hold a mirror up to our own loves.


SYNOPSIS
Ousmane is 20 years old. He is a romantic and something of a dreamer. His heart has been in love since he met Balie, during a training course in the capital. It was love at first sight, but since then, they have only seen each other twice. She lives in Ougadougou and he doesn't have the means to leave Koupéla, the small town of "white granite" where he lives, 137 km from the capital. But this distance doesn't stop him thinking of her and writing her poems and love letters...

Jean Marie Zeugmoré, who doesn't look his sixty years, lives with his wife and children on a large concession. They have loved each other all their lives and "only death will separate them".
It is still dark when the family wakes up. Jean Marie greets his wife, prepares his equipment and sets off fishing on his old bike. On the road, he comes across a photographer who has broken down a few kilometres from Koupéla...

In town, a loudspeaker advertises a special evening organised by the "Cinomade" mobile cinema association, with free showings and a discussion on the theme of "love, sex and Aids". A few moments later, a makeshift screen is set up and the team tours the town with a small video camera, collecting peoples' opinions which will be used during the evening...

It's Saint Valentine's eve and Radio Kourita is running a lovers' competition. Budding or seasoned authors, young or old, men and women of all views and all backgrounds come to publically proclaim their love, their dreams and their sufferings...

The photographer has finally been towed in, but he must wait a few days for his car to be repaired. The wedding photos prominently displayed in the garage owner's office give him an idea. Didn't the radio just announce the arrival of Saint Valentine?

Tomorrow, for the lovers' festival, Yoni, the Burkina music star, will be in concert in Koupela. Eugénie, Isidore, Hervé and the young people from Kourita school just can't wait. Everyone that is, except Ousmane, who has just left town to visit Balie and admit a difficult truth to her...


STATEMENT OF INTENT
"By focusing on images of an exhausted continent, by reducing its peoples to anonymous and malnourished silhouettes, we have forgotten that above hungry stomachs searching for food, beat millions of hearts that feel, like anywhere else in the world."
Virginie Andriamirado, Afrique rose, "Africultures", April-June 2005



Stories of love and lovers
"Amour, sexe et mobylette" is composed of several interconnected stories. There is no love without a story, the two are inseparable.

It is for this reason that this film itself is somewhere between fiction and a documentary. It is created from actual stories, placed in a setting that makes them possible. But the words spoken are in reality a documentary, in the sense that the characters describe their experience of love, their feelings and their life.

We chose not to collect typical cases as though it were a sociological analysis, but to travel through different peoples' individual situations and create a romantic discourse revealing great social complexity in a fast changing Africa.

By means of these stories, "Amour sexe et mobylette" unveils the romantic fabric of a small town in the Sahel. This microcosm, with its many characters, is restless, inhabited by a thousand and one love stories: young peoples' desire and the wisdom of the elderly, widows' nostalgia and the uncertainty of engaged couples... Each represents a facet of the loving relationship, a loving possibility.

A single question animates the film: what do we do with our love stories? They bring enjoyment to everyday life, but we know how often the weight of everyday life overtakes and stifles them.

If these love stories from another part of the world touch us deep within ourselves it's because they tell us about the sort of men and women we are and remind us how much the uncertainties that make, and unravel, our lives are as unforeseeable as they are universal.



NOTE ON THE TREATMENT

An Africa that lives to the rhythm of beating hearts

How is love expressed in Africa today when you are twenty, forty or sixty years old? How is desire expressed, how does sexuality work, what does the family look like, the core at the centre of any society?

It's on the basis of these simple questions that we went looking for the stories of love and lovers that have been woven into this film.

Since the dawn of time, it's these same sentiments that, from one continent to the next, have governed loving relationships, even if down the centuries and via a variety of civilisations, they have not been manifested in the same way, filtered through different ways of expression and social codes.

However, with globalisation love is increasingly being standardised. In Africa, like in so many other places, Saint Valentine's Day is now a festival that punctuates the social calendar, just like the Brazilian "telenovelas" soap operas, inform the romantic dreams of millions of Africans.

Amour, sexe et mobylette brings into focus the complex changes in modern Africa to explore how it pictures love in its imagination, the clothes loves wears to survive, how it is forged in childhood and how it is transformed by everyday constraints and the advancing spectre of AIDS. And tries finally to understand what keeps desire for another person alive in a continent that is searching for an identity and which is doing its best to invent itself.


CAST AND CREDITS

Amour, sexe et mobylette
a film written and produced by
Maria Silvia Bazzoli and Christian Lelong

France - Germany, 2008
Format: 35 mm / 95 min / colour / 1.66 / Dolby D

Image: Christian Lelong
Image assistant: Michel K. Zongo
sound: Maria Silvia Bazzoli, Frédéric Bassolé
editing: François Sculier
sound editing and mixing: Fanny Lelong
original music: Yony
production: Cinédoc films (France), FechnerMEDIA (Germany)

with the support of:
National Cinematography Centre
Rhône-Alpes region
Ministry of Foreign Affairs
European Community Fund for Raising Awareness in the Field of Development
MFG - Filmförderung Baden-Württemberg
Imaginove International (Paradi)
Eastman Kodak company
TV5 Monde, TV Rennes, TV8 Mont Blanc, Trace TV, CFI
Les Machineurs, Studio Chinkel
La Palmeraie hotel