L Escale de Guinée ( Franssou Prenant, 1987)

I spent six months in Guinea (Conakry), between February and July 1986. Nomadic object, I shot, alone, in a super 8, elements of people s lives and fragments of mine. It was two years after the death of Sékou Touré, and the country, after two decades of closure and exclusion, had remained abandoned in time. The film is not a documentary on Guinea, any more than a logbook, it is the combination of travel and memory, the gaze of the voluntary exile and the life on its way. I no longer remember why I wanted to go to Conakry and why I was so stubborn to go there precisely. I was hoping for a mixture of Bamako and Djibouti and that s something else and it fits slowly in my head and in my blood by mosquitoes. (Extract from the voiceover)