Director: Sitou Akolly
Cast: Sekina Tadja, Gabriel Apedjinou, Aubin Apedjinou
Running time: 11mins
From the very beginning of Zāgbéto: Les Murmures du Masque [The Whispers of the Mask], director Sitou Akolly sets himself a grand task. Two opening text-cards – which feel ever so slightly like a surprise reading-test – pledge to provide “a whimsical bridge between past and present”, and that while “ancient customs often find themselves cast into the shadows of the occult, stigmatised by the very society they once nourished”, this film will invite us to “explore the enchanting space between the spiritual and the occult” to ask if the ancient customs of his community can “still illuminate the human experience”.
It’s a big, bold promise, and one which might lead many a filmmaker to underwhelm in their delivery – especially a first-time director. But in his bid to live up to the opening paragraph, Akolly – whose biography notes roots in Togo, the USA and the Netherlands – has chosen the perfect subject matter. Delving into one particular aspect of West African oral tradition, this is the retelling of the legend of the zāgbéto.
Explaining what these intimidating figures were, the film centres on two traditional storytellers, Gabriel and Aubin Apedjinou, as they captivate an audience of children, in an Ewe village in Togo. As the fire crackles, lighting up the two men against the pitch-black of the endless night behind them, the pair address the youngsters, seated behind Akolly’s camera – reeling us in in with them.
The two men humorously lambast the “ungrateful children” for never asking their elders questions, or wanting to learn ancient wisdom from them. And the tale they chose to explain the folly of that apparent lack of interest (a lack of interest which seems to fade by the moment, as shots of the children show they are utterly absorbed in the narrative) is of Ahuefa – described as a kind of great-great grandmother to their village – who once sought out a zāgbéto.
The zāgbéto (which you might also find spelt zangbeto, or zambeto) are the guardians of the night, according to traditional stories told across Benin, Togo, and Nigeria. According to the Apedjinous, they are gigantic, hairy spirits, which spin and twist in the breeze – a creature so fearful that if you encountered one, “you would piss your pants”. But Ahuefa, a famously stubborn girl, ignored warnings to avoid zāgbéto, and sought one out for herself.
With cutaway sequences, Akolly helps recount the tale, as a towering zāgbéto stalks Ahuefa (played here by a determined Sekina Tadja) through a field of maize, before peering down at her menacingly. As the zāgbéto notices Ahuefa’s “strength and courage” (Tadja breaks into an infectious grin), and instead entrusted her with “values of resilience, and cultural preservation”. At that moment, Ahuefa learned that a zāgbéto was not an aggressive spirit, but in fact protected people from danger in the darkness of the night.
It is here that the tale ends, in the conventional sense, anyway. But even after the credits roll, and the players depart from the frame, the film seemingly refuses to take its leave. For just under a minute, the camera dwells on what appears to be an empty frame – the embers of a dying fire sparking out its final gasps of light against the void of the night. This is a move which will no doubt divide opinion, but I think is key to Zāgbéto: Les Murmures du Masque’s realising that grand promise at the start.
A conventional film might seek to cut away quickly, to make itself as little of a ‘nuisance’ as possible to film festival programmers. But Akolly’s film is brave enough to stand its ground, to unapologetically linger in a bid to have its narrative to burst forth from the screen. Rather than serve up a convenient product to consume and move on from (as appropriative anthropological filmmakers often do) this film pushes us to think about it, and incorporate it into our lives, in our own bid to make sense of the world around us, and stave off the darkness for another night.
In that respect, the tale Akolly has chosen to preserve and emphasise is especially interesting. This is not the kind of black-and-white lecture we are primed to expect from a fable. The story here is not instilling a particular moral in us. The courage of Ahuefa standing up to something frightening is praised, but it is secondary. The message of the narrative is the importance of narrative. When she finally understands what the zāgbétois, it gifts her with the skills and understanding to protect herself and her loved ones. While it is said that the zāgbéto stood watch over the village for centuries after, that in reality it is the wisdom which Ahuefa and her people passed on in their stories.
Since the dawn of human history, we have crafted myths and legends to help us make sense of the random and often cruel world we live in. Non-literal narrative constructs can offer us a safe environment to address the anxieties, helping inoculate us against trouble that we face in our everyday lives – and they can offer an easy way of passing that opportunity down.
Akolly not only preserves that legacy through Zāgbéto: Les Murmures du Masque, though. He also finds a way to deliver on the idea of presenting it in dialogue between “tradition and modernity” by translating the story into a filmic form – the form of storytelling which has become the most prominent in much of the world, and which serves the same function, helping us to come to terms with an increasingly nightmarish modern world.
As argued by Slavoj Žižek in The Pervert’s Guide To Cinema, “In order to understand today’s world, we need cinema, literally. It’s only in cinema that we get that crucial dimension which we are not ready to confront in our reality. If you are looking for what is in reality more real than reality itself, look into the cinematic fiction.”
In committing the story of Ahuefa and the zāgbéto to film, Akolly ties one historic narrative tradition into another, emphasising their similarities, and underlining how they both help us to find meaning, and survive in a hostile world. Stories still have a role to play when it is time to “illuminate the human experience”, however desperate and dark the night may seem.
This is a truly remarkable debut on the part of Sitou Akolly, who both engages and challenges his audience throughout the film. While a text-heavy opening, and a deliberately slow closing passage might test the patience of some viewers, this is a thoughtful, culturally important documentary, which I will be proud to present as part of Indy Film Library’s annual Amsterdam showcase – taking place at Filmhuis Cavia on the 19th of April.