This article is published in issue 17 of Vanity Fair on newsstands until April 23, 2024.
«I don't think of myself as black. Sometimes it's others who make me think, because that's how they see me. Racism exists in the eye of the beholder. If no one tells me: “Baloji, how tall are you”, I don't see myself as tall, I am what I am. Certain statements, in reality, are questions for those who say them. I also understood this by being a musician. When I read a bad review I realize that it reveals more about who wrote it than about the songs he's talking about. We must learn to distance ourselves from judgment. We don't live by what others think of us, but by our experiences, by what we create.”
May words be a mirror that reflects the image that others have of us, Baloji he learned it as a child because of his name which in Swahili means “sorcerer”. And what it means to be labeled and discriminated against, he tells us in his first film as director, **Best wishes – Back to the origins **which, after winning the New Voice Prize at Cannes, where it was presented last year in the section A certain regardarrives in cinemas on April 18, with two special screenings on 4/21 at the Prada Foundation in Milan and the following day in Bologna at the Cinema Modernissimo.
Koffi, the protagonist, after having lived in Europe for a long time, returns to Congo to introduce his future wife to his family. The welcome, however, is not the best, amidst misunderstandings, cultural differences and mistrust. A stigma that affects him and brings him closer to other marginalized people in the same community.
A huge smile, very long fingers covered in countless rings, painted nails, Baloji has a manner as tapered as his physique, and a soft, seductive way of speaking. Forty-five years old, Congolese by birth, naturalized Belgian, he made his name as a musician, first with the hip-hop group Starflam, then, since 2008, as a soloist. The road to his directorial debut was long and tiring. Another effect of that mirror mentioned above.
Augur is it a very personal film or am I wrong?
“It is. But not in the autobiographical sense. Koffi is not my alter ego and I don't tell my life story. But I have always been obsessed with how society pigeonholes us, assigns us a certain role from birth. It all starts with my name. Baloji originally meant “man of science”, but, with the arrival of the Christian religion, he became associated with black magic. Since then it's a bit like if in America someone was called a devil.”
Why name a child that way?
«My father chose the name in good faith. For him it was a tribute to a healer who had treated him when he had become seriously ill. For most of my life I hated calling myself that. I started accepting it ten years ago. Paradoxically because of the rejection that people in Congo felt towards my name. At the airport, when I showed my passport to security, people were so incredulous that they passed it on. On the radio, the hosts refused to say my name, fearing that it would evoke evil spirits. A refusal so strong that it triggered my reaction: “Fuck you, Baloji is my name, this is me”».
She, however, lived in Europe.
«Yes, I arrived in Belgium when I was three years old. I remember very little about my early life in Congo. They are the fruit of a one-night stand. My father didn't want to pay my mother maintenance, so, one day, he came to pick me up from kindergarten and, without saying anything, he took me away with him. When I was older he explained to me: “Here you can study and one day, when you turn 18, you can go back to Congo to help your mother. This is my way of contributing to your maintenance.”
How did you experience that tear?
«From one day to the next I found myself in a new family, with seven brothers for whom I was evidently a stranger, just as I was for my father's wife who always saw me as the son of someone else whose have to take care. It took me years to understand that her resentment was not towards me but towards her husband.”
And his mother?
«I didn't know anything about her again until I was 26. Then she wrote me a letter. She said she saw me on TV. I admit that at first I thought she was a boaster. But I had to change my mind, because she knew details of my childhood and she sent some photographs of me as a child. I went to Congo to meet her. That letter changed my life. It was she who inspired me to write her first solo album, Hotel Impala, which I dedicated to her. She said to me: “Tell me about yourself”. But how do you summarize a life spent elsewhere? I thought it was easier through songs.”
What was it like returning to Congo, meeting your mother and family?
«It took time to find my balance. At the beginning you try to be a Congolese among Congolese, to integrate, but it doesn't work. Only when you accept that you are different, because you grew up in a different culture and society, then things become easier and you start to be accepted. For our first meeting I took her to eat at a very expensive restaurant. She told me: “With the money from a single dish here, we can buy a bag of rice to feed everyone for a month.” The protagonist of my film and I are similar in this, he too struggles to adapt to the reality of Congo. To understand that he is no longer at the center of the world as a European. Nobody cares that you have returned to your country of origin. For about twenty years Europe has no longer been seen as the El Dorado, idealized as it once was.”
At 14 he left school after his father disappeared and went through some difficult years: a boy who had to fend for himself. Is it true that music saved her life?
“I said it? I do not believe. If anything, it's the people who saved my life, including those I met while making music. But even before. Over the years I have experimented with different ways of expressing myself. I practiced various types of dance, I became passionate about street art, from there to design, then to music and cinema.”
Augur Was he conceived after his father's death?
“Yes. I started thinking about it in 2019 to deal with the sense of loss, the forgiveness. Writing it was pretty easy, I finished the script in a couple of months. The hard part started next. Nobody wanted to finance the film. So, in the meantime I made four music albums, each of which explored one of the protagonists of the story. They helped the actors understand their characters better.”
Why was it so difficult to find funding?
«It's a world that has its rules, if you want to break them, mix different art forms, it's not easy to be accepted. I didn't study cinema, I had a background as a musician. They told me: “You're a rapper, be a rapper”. Since 2012, I tried several times to propose screenplays, but they expected stories told from a European perspective. They objected: “But why do the characters do or not do certain things?”. They didn't understand that there are cultural differences. Furthermore, when it comes to African cinema, a naturalistic style is expected. If you don't comply, they think there's something wrong. For Augure I somehow got around the problem by starting from a classic of Western storytelling: the immigrant who returns to his country. But, then, the center of the story shifts from Koffi to those who will never be able to leave Congo. To the true victims, like his mother and sisters, conditioned in their choices by a misogynistic culture that they made, by the patriarchal society in which they grew up. Just as racism is a white problem, feminism is a men's problem. The problem is that a world that puts the male at the center is not good for anyone: it doesn't help women, but it doesn't help men either.”
She often wears skirts and dresses. Is it a position?
«Many are still shocked by this choice. Even one of the actors in the film asked me: “Why are you doing this?”».
And what did she answer?
“Because I feel comfortable.”
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Source: Vanity Fair
I’m Susan Karen, a professional writer and editor at World Stock Market. I specialize in Entertainment news, writing stories that keep readers informed on all the latest developments in the industry. With over five years of experience in creating engaging content and copywriting for various media outlets, I have grown to become an invaluable asset to any team.
