Markers: Films that push the boundaries of the documentary form
In the 1960s, artist Bouba Touré was part of a wave of migration to Paris from West African former colonies. Eventually, in the face of maltreatment and a crippling drought in the Sahel, he and likeminded peers underwent training in agriculture and headed to Mali to establish the cooperative farm Somankidi Coura. Xaraaasi Xanne – Crossing Voices is the culmination of a multi-year project in collaboration with artist Raphaël Grisey, dedicated to the collective and its work. Thrillingly dynamic in its construction, material from Touré's film, photo and video archive stretching from the 1960s to the present is paired with stagings of his plays, sourced historical footage, documents and contemporary digital flourishes. Similarly, the film's scope is nothing less than sweeping, cutting between eras and continents to place the project in the context of post-colonial migration and that era's global resistance movements, as well as the ongoing fights against discrimination in France and for food sovereignty globally. Jesse Cumming