Français
Each year the Ecrans Noirs festival awards a special award to a personality who has marked the history of cinema in Africa, this year the Screen of Honour will be awarded to the Ivorian actor Sidiki Bakaba.
Following Malian director Cheikh Omar Sissoko in 2019, the Ecrans Noirs films festival 2020 held in Yaoundé, Cameroon, will this year award the Screen of Honnour to the famous actor Sidiki Bakaba. Emblematic figure of Ivorian and African cinema, Sidiki Bakaba is a Franco-Ivorian actor, director, filmmaker, teacher and director born June 13, 1949 in Abengourou, Ivory Coast. The man with the imposing build and the hoarse voice has dedicated his life to the stage and now has nearly 40 years of career in both theater and cinema. He will be one of the many guests of the 24 edition of the Ecrans Noirs film festival.
It was at the end of the 1970s after his university studies that Sidiki Bakaba began his career as a film actor with the film Bako, The Other Shore (1979) directed by Jacque Champreux. The film which won the Jean Vigo Prize, already tackled a topical subject today, immigration. He will subsequently interpret several roles in films such as Patenqui (1983) by Yéo Kozoloa, Faces of women (1985) by Désiré Ecaré, […] Un pas en avant les sous la corruption by Sylvestre Amoussou, Yafa-le pardon (2018) by Christian Lara.
But one of the major roles of his career remains that of the silent soldier in the Senegalese film Camp de Thiaroye by Sembène Ousmane. A strong and committed film that looks back on one of the dark episodes that punctuated the relationship between France and African countries: the massacre of Senegalese soldiers (called tirailleurs) in the Thiaroye camp by the French army. In 2019 during an interview with TV5Monde, Sidiki affirms that the role of the deaf soldier that he plays in this film is only a metaphor for this silent Africa to which we never give a voice.
Apart from his career as a film actor, Sidiki Bakaba is also an actor and theater director with numerous performances to his credit. Sidiki is also a director with three feature films to his credit: The healers (1988), Tanowé of lagoons (1994), Free Wheels (2002) and 2 documentaries: Los Palenqueros de Colombia and Victory with bare hands.
Rostand Wandja
Discussion about this post