Title: Sous le Signe du Vaudou (Under the Sign of Voodoo)
Director: Pascal Abikanlou
Year of Release: 1974
Language: French, Gun
Run time: 95 minutes.
“One must never lose touch with the sacred things of one’s land.”
As the birthplace of Paulin Vieyra, The Republic of Benin (or Dahomey, as it was then known) holds a special place in the origins of African cinema. However, Vieyra is more associated with his adopted country, Senegal, the country to which all his films are credited. Thus, although Vieyra was already making films in the 1950s, he is not regarded as the father of Beninois cinema. That title goes to Pascal Abikanlou who, with his 1974 effort, Sous le Signe du Vaudou, gave the country its first feature film.
Although Abikanlou is connected to other African countries, including Senegal (where he completed his secondary education) and Nigeria (he was born in 1935 in a town that borders the country), his career reflects an unrelenting dedication to Benin. He initially trained as an industrial designer, but a passion for the arts led him to seek further training in photography. After working as a camera assistant, Abikanlou began trying his hand at filmmaking, and his first few short documentaries revealed a deep reverence for his country and the practices of his people. When he was ready to make a feature film, he was determined to continue this on-screen cultural celebration, and he accomplished this desire with Sous le Signe du Vaudou.
The story follows Codjo, a young Beninois man who is experiencing a streak of bad luck. After injuring himself on the farm and having his house burnt down by a lightning strike, he visits the village marabout who tells him that he has been failing in his duties to honor the village fetishes. To atone, he is to leave the village and complete several sacred offerings to the gods.
He leaves the village to Cotonou, where he meets his cousin, an established and well-connected man who appears to be involved in suspicious activities. His cousin helps him settle down and gets him a job, and Codjo soon meets and falls in love with the beautiful Assiba. As he gets accustomed to life in the city and his romance with Assiba, Codjo quickly forgets the reason he left the village. Soon, the consequences of his failure to heed to the instructions of the marabout begin to catch up with him, and things reach tipping point when he receives news of an impending final disaster from home.
While it is a work of fiction, there is an ethnographic flavour to Abikanlou’s approach, and the first thirty or so minutes of the film are dedicated to the exploration of the traditional fetish practices. Actual ceremonies and rituals are shown on screen, and most of the dialogue during these early parts are in Gun, a language spoken in parts of Benin and Nigeria. It is not until Codjo sojourns to Cotonou that the audience is reminded that the film isn’t a breathtaking documentary about the ways of the Ogu people.
Abikanlou manages to strike a perfect balance the documentary and fictional aspects of the film, orchestrating a seamless switch from the former to the latter on Codjo’s arrival in Cotonou. Along with Codjo, the audience is swept by the contrasts between rural and city life, and it is easy to understand why Codjo forgot his purpose once he moved to the city. The characters in Cotonou come with a zest that is strange and intriguing to Codjo, and the busy streets seem to always have something interesting going on. For a debut, Abikanlou dances through tones, settings, and themes with a grace that suggests natural talent. Combined with a courageous commitment to authenticity, he delivers a piece of African cinematic history that should serve as a blueprint to filmmakers aspiring to create timeless films across the continent.
Although he was a practicing catholic, Abikanlou championed traditional fetish practices which had been labelled as heathen by western cultures and religions. Erasing these practices amounts to a denial of important parts of the African identity, and Abikanlou refused to denounce his roots merely because he had imbibed aspects of a foreign culture. By shooting a significant portion of the film in Gun, Abikanlou showed that he was unafraid of the challenges that the language barrier could bring to the prospects of international distribution for his film. In fact, he appears to hint at this resolve to use an indigenous language when he subtly pays homage to Ousmane Sembene’s 1968 film, Mandabi (which was the first feature shot entirely in an indigenous African language), by placing the novella from which the film is adapted in a scene.
While Abikanlou deserves high praise for his efforts behind the camera, the performance of his cast plays a major role in the success of the film. A young and towering Gratien Zassou embodies the role of Codjo so naturally that it is difficult to believe that he had very little acting experience prior to the film. It is no surprise that he went on to become a leading figure in Beninois cinema, still working until today. The beautiful Evelyne Domingo plays Assiba with the confident and sultry charm that was customary for the leading ladies on the African screen of the 70s, and all the characters that make up Codjo’s cousin’s network of suspicious elements bring an air of suspense that adds a buoyant colour to the film.
Abikanlou went on to make a few more documentaries, but by the time he died in 2009, Sous le Signe du Vaudou was the only feature film to his credit. It is a fitting lone effort, and it is disappointing that the film enjoys very little popularity even among enthusiasts of African cinema. However, the film was quite popular in Benin at the time of its release, but it somehow became impossible to access in the country and around the world.
Luckily, reels of the films were discovered, and the film was restored thanks to the efforts of the French Cinematheque and the Centre National du Cinéma (CNC) Laboratory. The film received an incredible homecoming in January 2020 when it was screened at the Porto Novo International Festival, with over a thousand spectators showing up to honor this gem of African cinema.
In a rare and commendable effort to make classics of African cinema accessible to the entire world, the French Cinematheque offers a free online screening of the film on its website. The film may be watched here, and if you have not seen it yet, we urge you to!
Let us know what you think about the film in the comment section.
