| Lady from Osogbo |
 La dame d’Oshogbo Camera: Pierre Guicheney, Sound: Malika Lasfar Guicheney, Editing: Emmanuel Gérard Cuesta, Consultant: François Liège, Production: A CNRS/24 Images/Pierre Guicheney coproduction 2007, 77’ In November, 2005, UNESCO inscribed the Osun Osogbo Sacred Groves (Nigeria) in the World Heritage Sites. This international recognition awarded to a site of the Yoruba tradition is a happy conclusion to a half-century of great struggle (a struggle waged, one might say, under the inspiration of African gods) by an Austrian artist born in 1915: Susanne Wenger. Living in Nigeria since 1950, Susanne Wenger has been initiated into the highest level of the Yoruba mysteries’ cult. She was accompanied in her struggle by a group of artists and priests, who re-created with her the temples of the forest dedicated to the cult of the Orisas, the deities and powers of the Yoruba tradition. Osun Osogbo Sacred Groves are one of the last remaining tracts of Nigeria’s rain forest (only 75 hectares), a unique reserve of medicinal and ritual plants, a place of pilgrimage and rebirth of Yoruba culture, and the symbol of an amazing encounter between contemporary European art and one of the strongest African traditions. Portraits and stories of an artist, of her black family, and of one of the last sacred groves on the planet.  “The interior of the house is dark, filled from top to bottom, along the staircases, on the walls and tabletops, with statues of the Orisas – in wood, in metal, in wire, in stone and clay. On the second floor, an iron-work door opens noisily: a very old woman wearing pants and a loose shirt with long shapeless black sleeves appears. She is barefoot. She is wearing a worn-out round hat of indefinable gray. She wears heavy Yoruba jewels, rings, necklace, and bracelets. The hat is dilapidated, its border moth-eaten. The left eye of Adunni Olorisha (this is her initiation name in the Yoruba tradition) is blind; a black line of heavy eye-makeup traces each of her eyebrows from the sides of her nose nearly to her cheekbones, and underscores the wrinkled paleness of an attentive, very attentive, but not scrutinizing face. I am paralyzed and stunned. I realize that this woman is that legendary European woman, “the” person who had been received into the great Yoruba tradition, and about whom I had heard spoken, episodically, over twenty years, by my Masters and colleagues in the quest for archaic cults. Incapable of taking notes or turning on my tape recorder, I manage somehow to explain the reason for my visit – and then I let Adunni Olorisa speak. And she speaks, abundantly, in a rocky English. Her words shape a wave. Adunni does not transmit only words, she vibrates and makes you vibrate.” (Pierre Guicheney, Geo, September, 2001) |