« To rise in the morning
To say simple things
Like hello to one’s neighbours »
Abdourahman Ali Waberi
(L’il nomade, L’Harmattan 1997)
If youth there is, it can of course be found in the new! As Abdourahman A. Waberi tells us, « youth is not a matter of age ». This « young creators » dossier is thus primarily about creation, about the novelty of its perspectives, about its originality, its experimental nature. As always, we have focused on the things we love, on all sorts of cultural explorations, without claiming to be exhaustive. We our well aware of the oversights, the limitations, in our look at discoveries, at what is emerging, at the yet undiscovered that forms the future…
As Manu Dibango put it, « all creation is a bit vampirish »: in their relentless quest for their roots, the African creators remind us better than anyone else that all creations are no more than the branches of a tree, a small addition to the trunk of knowledge. Even though they draw today’s references from the past, however, they – these open and syncretic nomadic voices – are still torn by the stakes of modernity. It is not without emotion that we have chosen to open this dossier by giving David Achkar a forum to speak for the last time. « A Young Creator » if there ever was, David fought with all his might for his first feature film, which he was about to start shooting when his life was snatched away. He will remain, after so many others, a symbol of both the harshness of all creation, and the extraordinary difficulty of creating in Africa, in the absence of a real cultural market and the vital support of public funding.
Allow me, finally, as Africultures is also a new creation based on the experience of an older journal, to thank all those who have helped make our launch successful. Thank you for continuing to help us make the journal a real tool at the service of African cultures.
///Article N° : 5297
