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Photo: S. Gopakumar

Inspiring: Naky Sy Savane believes that “theatre and cinema are complementary.”

The African actor was in Thiruvananthapuram last week to serve on the jury of the 12th International Film Festival of Kerala. Born in the Ivory Coast, Naky now lives in Marseilles with her husband and daughter.

Political and social repression of women has been a recurring theme in Naky’s work, both as actor and activist.

Her first film, ‘Bal Poussiere,’ directed by Henry Duparc, was a satirical comedy dealing with polygamy while her more recent ‘Moolade’ deals with the practice of female circumcision in Africa. ‘Moolade’ is considered one of the most important films produced in the African continent in recent times and it won the ‘Un Certain Regard’ at Cannes in 2004.

Naky’s career has been punctuated with several prestigious awards. In 1994, she won two prizes for feminine interpretation at Vue D’Afrique in Montreal, Canada and Festival Du Kouriba in Morrocco. In 1998 she won the Killimandjaro prize for Best Actress for the play Quidproquo, which was also written by her. In 1999, she won the UNICEF prize at Milan.

Today Naky’s filmography spans two decades and she has worked with most of the important directors in Africa.

Naky recognised the power of the stage at a very early age and remains committed to it. Trained by Saidou Boskoum of the Guinea professional theatre, Naky believes that “theatre and cinema are complementary.” Her move to cinema in 1988 was, therefore, but natural.

Her first love, however, remains the theatre and between 1984 and 1996 she played the lead role in a number of important plays. Some of her plays are ‘Opération coup de poing,’ ‘Les Nègres’ (Jean Genet), ‘Britanicus’ (Racine), ‘Noces chez le petit bourgeois’ (Berthol Bretch), ‘Antigone’ (Jean Anouilh), and ‘Cancer positif’ (Edward Bond), some of which also she wrote. She works on contemporary themes that deal with the politics of power using Katogo, which comes from the oral tradition in Africa.

Naky is the founder of Afriki Djigui Theatre, an organisation committed to the cause of women and children. It organises various cultural events including the Festival of Cinema and Mirrors Afriques of which Naky is the president. The organisation is also involved in a number of social activities including the provision of scholarships to young girls and the setting up of micro projects for women.

After trying to familiarise herself with the situation of women in India, Naky felt that the problems of women are universal and that social activists from India needed greater representation on a global platform.

According to Naky, Afriki Djigui Theatre could be useful in popularising outreach programmes in India. For instance, on a trip to Saki, a women’s resource centre in Thiruvananthapuram, she learnt about a woman who was not allowed to light her father’s funeral pyre. Naky said it would make for an inspirational play. “Language is not a barrier for social activism,” said Naky whose first language is French.

Today she is debatably the most socially committed African actor. Naky’s activism, however, has come at a cost. She had to leave the Ivory Coast and now has refugee status in France.

Her nostalgia was obvious as she started most of her days in Kerala with a glass of tender coconut water and pineapple slices, her staple in the Ivory Coast.

“I do not even know if some of my loved ones are dead or alive,” she said with a sigh.

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