Gendered Resistance and Composition in the Film Timbuktu
Alyne Figueiredo Gonçalves, Middlebury College
Timbuktu is a gorgeous movie, and when I was investigating the use of composition in it, I naively, almost naturally, started focusing on the shots that were the most visually poignant, the most aesthetically pleasing. Something that Roger Deakins said (quoted in “Cinematography in Storytelling,” the video essay that I am “responding” to, or rather, contributing to) came to my mind and completely rerouted my investigation: “there is good cinematography, bad cinematography and cinematography that is right for the movie.” Often, “when reviewers don’t mention [a cinematographer’s] work it is probably better than if they do.” I understood by his words that good or meaningful cinematography is or can be seamless; it does not need to feel like an entity in itself and can blend with the story, with the tone of the scene. So I started looking for poignant scenes, instead of poignantly beautiful moments. Those were scenes that had something to add to the larger message that the director was trying to convey with his movie. It jumped to my attention that women played an important role in Timbuktu and that most of those poignant scenes had women in them, even though they were barely in any positions of power. In spite of that, I felt that they were powerful and they were the characters that I admire the most, and, dare I extrapolate, the audience is invited to admire or connect with the most. It is the merging of these two trains of thought that allowed me to make the connections that I explore in this video essay, where I seek to argue and show that through composition Sissako tells a story of resistance, that is, a reclaiming of power, by the female characters specifically.
This video essay closely explores the stories of two female characters in the film: Fatou, the singer, and an unnamed woman who sells fish. They are not main characters. Yet, their stories contribute closely to Sissako’s mission to portray all people of Timbuktu in the most dignified manner possible, jihadists and common people alike. In 2013, the French army helped the Malian army liberate Timbuktu after a long and difficult time, during which the city and other parts of Mali were under jihadist occupation of AQIM (Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb). Women are particularly vulnerable during such times as increased scrutiny is directed at their bodies and actions. In an interview with Al-Jazeera, Sissako talks about the fact that one of his main goals with the film was to humanize the conflict in Timbuktu. Indeed, he shows a reality that exists in the shadow of the news that circulate around the world about Africa but particularly conflict-areas on the continent. In these narratives, Africans are often shown as helpless. While this rhetoric might help sensitize an international community that is increasingly numbed by exposure to shocking news, it fails to tell the entire story, which is made of smaller personal stories on the ground, stories of daily resistance. Abderrahmane Sissako attempted to correct that by highlighting the small and imperceptible (to an outsider) ways through which women stand up against oppression. This visual essay particularly focuses on the concepts of frame control to show how this mission is carried on visually, through composition.
Author Biography
Alyne Figueiredo Gonçalves is a senior Environmental Studies and Geography major at Middlebury College who thoroughly enjoys film: watching it, being confused or amazed by it, learning about it, talking about it, and, more recently, making video essays. She is particularly interested in film from the African diaspora and its role as a space for the telling of alternate stories and the negotiation of new identities.
