Namibian Film Premiere: “Tey-Aujourd’hui” by Alain Gomis, Saturday 26 October 2013, 19h00 at Goethe-Centre, Windhoek

AfricAvenir Windhoek invites to the Namibian Premiere of the Senegalese film "Tey-Aujourd’hui" by Alain Gomis, winner of FESPACO 2013, on Saturday, 26 October 2013, 7 pm, at the Goethe Centre, Windhoek. Alain Gomis‘ work is about people torn between cultures, about uprooted people, about people in motion, how they are drifting and being driven. The big difference here is that the protagonist of "Aujourd’hui“ played by famous US rapper Saul Williams is returning home… To the incomprehension of the ones surrounding him he gave up the assumed better future in the USA to return to Senegal. On the day on which the audience accompanies him he wakes up and knows he will die at the end of the day. This will be his last day. A day on which he intensively perceives his environment for one last time… There will be cheerful and disturbing encounters: reunions with old friends and his first love but also confrontation with the evilness and greed of human beings and the realization that memories nurtured in exile are not always proven to be true in reality. n"This is great cinema: a film reminding of the dream-like works of a Djibril Diop Mambéty in the way in which it plays with contrasts and counterpoints and in the co-existence of established and amateur actors. And in the way in which the movie gently, torn between pain and tenderness, resurrects a subtle image of the trembling and shaking times of our present world." Olivier Barlet, Africultures  nSynopsis
Today is the last day of Satché’s life. Mysteriously, he knows it although he is strong and healthy. He accepts that he will die more astonished rather than fearful or sad. He walks through the streets of his home town Dakar where he perceives the past as if he was seeing it for the first time: his parent’s house, his first love, childhood friends, wife and kids. He keeps hearing the same accusation over and over again: why did you not stay in the USA, the country where you had a future?nDirector Alain Gomis turns a theme of Senegalese cinema upside down: Unlike many films about emigration and neocolonialism, this film is about a man who returned to his home country from the USA. On his last day of life, on which he is being accompanied, lovingly in the beginning and treated like a saint, he also discovers the wickedness and greed of his fellow human beings. That which from afar seemed like transfigured and idealized memories, now emerges as banal reality – yet, a reality in which Satché finds peace and rest despite of everything.nPress reviews
"Aujourd’hui is about the return home – and the longing for the expectations that come with returning home. But no moment in time can be kept forever, every one of them is precious, a piece of time, already gone once perceived. "Aujourd’hui“ shows these moments in colourful, detail rich pictures and close-ups.“ 3SATn"A metaphysical film equipped with a rare, all senses inspiring power. A wonderful initiation-fabel.“ Le Monden"In the spirit of the simultaneously innovative and social cinema of Djibril Diop Mambéty, Aujourd’hui questions our relationship with the world and others, here and now, under the cover of a philosophical fairy tale of endless beauty.“ Carole Milleliri, Critikat.comn“You don’t watch Aujourd’hui simply with your eyes but with your skin. No one single sense can be fully separated from the totality of human perception, you never only “watch”, “taste”, “hear” in isolation. (…) Now it is obvious that the traditional guiding sense in cinema, the eyesight, was combined with the hearing with the invention of the sound movie. The other senses become active mostly in the shadow of the visual. Only rarely do films manage to attribute equal richness to all senses, to tell their story through smelling and feeling as well as seeing and hearing. Aujourd’hui (Tey) is such a film. And pupils and hands are the leitmotifs in Alain Gomis’ fantastic competition entry for the Berlinale 2012.” Nino Klinger, critic.den"Intense constellations of perceptions of the movie offers exactly that receptive surface, that mixture of otherness, astonishment and effort for connectedness which equally arises within the spectator. Aujourd’hui realises the incredible ability cinema can develop, to experience a different perception, to live another world with your own body. And so the film only really starts when you leave the cinema.” Nino Klinger, critic.den“With that an exceptional and documentary like film develops, filmed by Alain Gomis with great tenderness.” Les Incrockuptiblesn"An independent work of huge beauty, often filmed with genius by the filmmaker, who knows better than anyone how to capture the small magic vanities of reality and to integrate them into his mystical story. Alain Gomis is a bright spark in a greyish world.” L’Humanitén"Alain Gomis’ lilting film is an unusually serene, non-Western meditation on the inevitability of death. (…) For a film about a day of atonement and reckoning in anticipation of impending death, Alain Gomis’ Today (Aujourd’hui) is laced with surprising moments of lightness amid the melancholy tenderness. Unfolding in a vein that might be described as impressionistic heightened naturalism, the French-Senegalese drama is somewhat earnest and draws attention to its quite studied visual aesthetic. But there’s a spirituality and soulfulness to the simple allegorical story that keep it captivating.” David Rooney, The Hollywood Reportern"This is a quiet film, modest and dreamlike, full of extended silences punctuated by bursts of talk or lazy drumming. What’s refreshing is that unlike so many France-based directors whose excursions into Africa are marred by the patronizing quaintness of colonialist guilt, Gomis (who was born in Paris to a French mother and Senegalese father) balances respect for his cultural setting with healthy observational detachment and emotional economy.” David Rooney, The Hollywood Reportern“Having filmed in luscious colours, Gomis elevates naturalism through his visual diction to a kind of serene poeticism, which feeds the films impressionistic, magical realism. Stretching time in each scene, he allows the content to linger, asking the viewer to consume the film instinctively, emotionally and in fragments. Gomis allows the narrative to suspend itself in a collection of moments, a gentle cradling of the film’s unique temporality, as we explore Satché’s eulogy.” Jonathan Duncan, filmafrica.org.ukn“As the third fiction movie by Alain Gomis following L’Afrance (2001) and Andalucia (2007), Aujourd’hui continues the poetic and thoughtful work of an inspiring director. Between the lines we also find all these ideas again which are important to the French-Senegalese director: the tortures of migration, the melancholy of nomadic life, the stability of exile. Due to a wonderfully open search for identity Aujourd’hui deserves our full attention. It is when the seriousness is surrounded by dreams to talk about the role of death in life that cinema becomes a magical instrument.” Carole Milleliri, Critikat.com  n“The spectator is called to distance himself from the text and the search for meaningfulness in order to being able to better perceive the audio visuals in all their sensitive vibrations. Showing without saying everything, letting people see without explaining everything. This is the main principle of this intelligent work that swings back and forth between comedy and drama.” Carole Milleliri, Critikat.com n"With this wonderful Aujourd’hui, an anthem to life, with a calming message and great spiritual intensity, Gomis succeeded in creating a masterpiece. Alain Gomis found in Saul Williams the perfect actor for a role which relies completely on its charismatic effect. Saul Williams: poet, actor, rapper, singer and musician from the USA known for his mixture of Slam and Hip Hop, thus the contrary to the character of Satché, the quiet, shy, introverted hero of the film.” Jean-Claude Raspiengeas, La Croix nAwards
•Main Award (Etalon d’Or) at FESPACO in Ouagadougou 2013
•Main Award at the African Film Festival in Milan 2012
•Audience Award at the festival of La Roche sur Yon 2013
•Audience Award at the festival of Carthage 2012
•Emerging Master Honoree at the Seattle International Film Festival 2012
•Selected for the official competition of the Berlinale 2012 (World Premiere) n
Director: Alain Gomis
Alain Gomis was born in 1972 in Paris as the son of a French mother and a Senegalese father. He studies art history and film at the Sorbonne before he takes over the management of video workshops in the city of Nanterre. Already these early works are about uprooted people torn between different cultures, about their feelings of societal exclusion and inner divisions… His first fiction film, which wins the audience award at the "Festival del Cinema Africano, d’Asie e America Latina“ in Mailand, tells the story of a Senegalese student whose world crashes when he loses his French residence permit. In 2008 he produces "Andalucia“, a film about social exclusion and racism in France which reminds of Spike Lee‘s "Do the Right Thing“. His most recent film "Aujourd’hui (Tey)“ is selected for the official Berlinale competition 2012 and wins the Golden Etalon at the FESPACO in Ouagadougou. nFilmographie 
Short films:
•1999: Tourbillons
•2003: Petite lumière
•2006: AhmednFiction:
•2001: L’Afrance
•2008: Andalucia
•2011: Aujourd’hui – TeynAlain Gomis, fiction, France/Senegal, 2011, 86 min, Starring: Saul Williams, Djolof Mbengue, Anisia Uzeyman, Aïssa MaïganDate: Sat.. 26 October 2013 
Time: 19h00
Entrance is 30,- N$
Venue: Goethe-Centre, AuditoriumnThe film series African Perspectives is supported by the FNB Foundation, AfriCine, WhatsOnWindhoek, and the Goethe-Centre Windhoek.n© Copyright AfricAvenir 2013