REWIND & PLAY

The Franco-Senegalese filmmaker Alain Gomis studied art history at the Sorbonne (France). He made his directorial debut in 2002 with L’AFRANCE, a film about the struggles of migrants in France which won a Silver Leopard award at the Locarno Film Festival. His film ANDALUCIA was shown at the Venice Film Festival in 2012. AUJOURD’HUI (TEY), shown in competition at the Berlinale, won a Golden Stalion at Fespaco. He returned to the Berlinale in 2017 with FELICITE. The film won him the competition’s Grand Jury Prize, a second Gold Stallion at Fespaco, and represented Senegal at the Oscars where it was shortlisted for Best Foreign Language Film.

 

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December 1969, Thelonious Monk in Paris. Before his evening concert, he records a programme for French television.

The rushes show a Thelonious Monk who is in the grip of the violent factory of stereotypes from which he tries to escape. The film becomes the crossing of this great artist, who would like to exist only for his music. And the portrait in hollow of a media machine as ridiculous as it is revolting. Here is the machine in action. Deconstructing these rushes as phantasms. To see the factory of caricatures at work. Deaf, smiling, ambiguous, admiring and sickening. To hold the microphone without listening, to marvel without seeing. Trying to overturn the point of view.

Here is Thelonious going through the ordeal, at work, as if he had landed on a strange planet, where a portrait is being made that he cannot do anything about. Tired by the years spent undergoing this painful exercise.

Fortunately, he plays, and in doing so, he makes more than anything else be said.

“It brings tears to my eyes when I see the shit that my father was going through” T.S Monk Jr.

 

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Director Alain Gomis
Sound and Re-recording Mix Matthieu Deniau
Editing Alain Gomis
Colorgrading Julien Petri

Produced by SPHERE FILMS and ANDOLFI
In coproduction with INA

In association with ARTE FRANCE, LES FILMS DU WORSO (FRANCE), SCHORTCUT FILMS (LEBANON), DIE GESELLSCHAFT DGS (GERMANY), STUDIO ORLANDO (FRANCE)

 

Producers Anouk Khelifa and Arnaud Dommerc

Co-producers Michael Henrichs