Flashmag Digizine Edition Issue 85 September 2018 | Page 28

Flashmag September 2018 www.flashmag.net

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Although I enjoyed this first experience of co-realization (which will not be the last), I am primarily an actress and it is the game that animates me. There are so many universes and genres to explore. Whether in comedy, drama ... The playground is very vast, and I still want to get lost.

In 2017 you co-directed Sélection Naturelle, a Film, which has been presented in several international festivals including Cannes, Los Angeles, or Kinshasa. How did the idea of this collaboration with director Ngulungu came about?

It was born simply of a meeting! Natural Selection was also my first scenario. I did not see myself going alone in the adventure of the realization and when I made read the scenario to Tito Eluki, who interprets Ismaël Ndiaye in the film, the latter told me that he had already worked with a director to whom the subject could please. That's how I met King-Pierre. We immediately had a good feeling. I could see these previous films, he liked the script and that's how it started. The cinema is often the business of meetings and network ...

How long did it take to make this film?

Actually, there is a real peculiarity to this film. Sélection Naturelle was written as part of a "challenge" within the AFRO FICTION collective of which I am a part, based in Paris, and which works for a greater and better representation of Afro-descendants in the French cinema chain. , whether in front of or behind the camera.

It was a question of answering a specific instruction to integrate a collection called MOVIES MINUTES - GUERIAZ: to realize a film initially of less than 2 minutes, with "the basics means " and the topic was: "your worst nightmares".

This is how I imagined the very short story of Natural Selection with the challenge, in record time, to challenge the public.

In concrete terms, we were therefore in "guerilla" mode, each coming with his skills, his equipment, and above all his passion. If the scenario went through 8 versions - yes yes, even for so short, the shooting was done in one day! Of course, there is the preparation: find the cast, the technicians, the sets, costumes and

accessories ... and the post-production: editing, translation, subtitling (we even have a version in Japanese!)

In short the first lines of the screenplay were written mid-July 2017, the film was shot on a day late August 2017 and November 11, 2017, it was it premiered at the International Film Festival of Kinshasa, French Institute.

The most fun thing is that for me, the challenge was to write and co-direct this film. It is King-Pierre who first registered Natural Selection without my knowledge in festival. For me it was an exercise, I never thought it would come out of the collective Afro Fiction. And yet ...

The problem of the director in general is to find the funding the right synopsis often is not enough. In your opinion as a professional of the thing, what is the solution. Self-production or limited collaboration with the great cinema financiers?

Why a limited collaboration with the largest money investors of cinema? As long as the scenario is preserved, I do not see any objection to working with a budget, on the contrary! Self-production is certainly the best way to have total freedom of speech and art. Today crowfunding is also a way that helps self-productions. But it is obvious, in my opinion, that past a certain financial budget, the use of a production - which in addition should be able to help you then for the distribution - is the ideal solution.

A Jamaican artist we received a few years ago said that between art and money, it is money that often tends to dictate relationships. Would you change one of your scenarios to please the desiratum of investors?

Ah ... I understand better the adjective "limited" of your previous question! (laughs) Basically I'm not against exchanges, discussions, corrections and adaptations to the sine qua non condition that the purpose of the scenario is not changed. Indeed, money dictates a lot ... But out of question for me to denature the essence of a scenario and the message that it defends for a question of big money. For the rest, everything can be discussed ...