Tabaski
Director: Laurence Attali
Senegal, 2020
26 minutes
Producer: Ousmane William Mbaye
Distributor: Les Films Mame Yande & Autoproduction Co
o.williammbaye@gmail.com / autoprod@club-internet.fr
A few days before the feast of Tabaski, a painter is shut away in his studio, working on the theme of the ritual sacrifice of the ram. The red paint drips from the sketches hanging on clotheslines. An inscription on the wall: "Tabaski, who's next?". Three characters and a sheep revolve around him and reconnect him with reality.
This hybrid movie, blending fiction, art and politics, is freely inspired by the work of the painter Iba Ndiaye (1928-2008) "The Tabaski round, who’s next?" painting in the 1960s and 1970s. A sort of allegory in which the sheep is presented as the symbol of all victims. Indeed, Iba Ndiaye was not thinking directly about the sacrifice of sheep for Tabaski in Senegal, but rather of the victims of colonization, segregation, and apartheid. "Painting is remembering," he said.