The Future of Mud: A Tale of Houses and Lives in Djenne

by Susan Vogel, Director
First Run Icarus Films, Brooklyn, New York, 2007
DVD, 58 mins., col.
Sales, $390; rental, $125
Distributor’s website: http://www.frif.com.

Reviewed by Jonathan Zilberg
Visiting Research Fellow
National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

jonathanzilberg@gmail.com

The Future of Mud is one of a series of films about African art and culture conceived and directed by the eminent African art historian Susan Vogel who created Prince Street Pictures to educate the broader public about African art through the medium of ethnographic film. It compliments two earlier films, Living Memory: six sketches of Mali today (2003) which also includes related sections on architecture and Malick Sidibe: portrait of the artist as portraitist (2006). In Malick Sidibe, as in The Future of Mud, above all, we learn about African art and culture through a dialogic engagement with the artists themselves. Accordingly, Vogel’s films do us the dual service of introducing us to architecture and portraiture in both ancient and contemporary forms. In these two cases, she does so through allowing us a window into the artists’ lives whether they be the men and adolescent boys who continue, or as it may be do not continue, the ancient tradition of plastering the homes and the great mosque at Djenne or the individual talent of Malick Sidibe creatively earning a living instead through the medium of film. In short, The Future of Mud could perhaps best be understood in terms of a larger continuing project through which an African art historian is exploring a more accessible medium for communicating about African art and cultural history than the academic monograph.

As an accomplished art historian and anthropologist, Vogel is able to very successfully use the medium of film as a documentary genre to allow the mud mason Komuso Tenepo of Djenne to discuss the social and ritual importance of his labor just as she did previously with Malick Sidibe who conveys his views of photography as a social art form. Naturally there is a vast difference between a craftsman surfacing the distinctive homes and mosques with mud and the individual quest of a photographic portraitist as a contemporary artist. Yet by and large, these three films on Mali collectively provide us with powerful insights into African art and life, and tradition and modernity, especially in terms of the parallel worlds of old and new technological forms of expression in the larger context of tourism and development in Mali today.

The Future of Mud is particularly strong in terms of how it conveys the aesthetics of mud, that is, of almost sensually allowing us to connect with the embodied and visual aspect of the experience. This culminates in the excited collective resurfacing of the Great Mosque and one comes away from the film with a profound appreciation for the cultural value of this age old craft, and in particular, the power and beauty of this particular historical building. That being said, I found the film rather slow despite the attempt to perhaps ameliorate this by building in a subtext relating to modernity and change in which a wealthy woman relative from town insists on taking Komusa Tenepo’s young assistant Amadou off to the city to pursue a modern education. While this tension and alter-narrative certainly helps so as to be sure that the students who might study this film do not err in terms of imagining Africa as outside of time, it did not strike me as entirely successful. All in all, for those who are familiar with contemporary African film and how much more vibrant the established art form is than the by and large staid tradition of educational anthropological documentary film, the film seems to drag along in the later stream, though this was clearly not the case for Rob Harle who so enthusiastically reviewed this film for Leonardo on-line earlier this year, that is, in April, 2008.

While Rob Harle’s review is useful for the general audience, as he notes including government officials dealing with tourism, culture and change, my concern is rather more that of an academic interested in African film and how this particular film attempts to work in the space between a documentary film about a particular process and a larger story about change in this Malian community. What may well strike one, I believe, is the very stark difference between the emotional and creative potency of African films which deal with such issues of modernity such as La Vie est Belle, Ma Vie en Rose, Touki Bouki, and Wend Kuni and Finzan. In contrast, The Future of Mud is comparatively dull despite the fact that it treats many of the same issues addressed in those films. Though the documentary mode is no doubt the cause for such a dampening effect, Jean Rouch’s famed film on the hauka possession cult Le Maitre Fous (The Mad Masters, 1954) standing apart for its creativity and synaesthetic shock value, I for one cannot help but wonder how much more compelling a future version of a film such as The Future of Mud might be if a director such as Mweze Ngangura for instance journeys to Djenne Jeno to produce a film on mud and history which would have the same intense emotional appeal to the African audience as did La Vie est Belle, a stunningly successful film on music, life and popular culture in Zaire.

In considering this issue of drag and effect, and how to perhaps better conceptualize and produce more engaging documentaries on such anthropological material, critical viewers might want to consider something of the larger history of ethnographic and quasi-ethnographic film in Africa. In doing so, there can be no better place to begin such an engagement than with Rouch and the hauka on YouTube at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_82vHKlnl alongside Paul Stoller’s tribute at http://www.rouge.com.au/3/rouch_tribute.html and Mahir Saul’s "Review of Roy Armes, African Filmmaking: North and South of the Sahara" to be found at http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=144361203696670.

Certainly in the coming years as anthropologists, art historians, and film makers come together to study and communicate about issues of African creativity, I have little doubt that far, far more engaging films than this will be produced. That critique aside, The Future of Mud will be generally useful for social scientists teaching undergraduate courses on Africa but especially useful for architecture classes interested in addressing issues of cultural diversity and energy efficient green technologies.