Senegal: Ablaye Ndiaye, the man who drew movie posters
Audio 01:57
Senegalese artist, Ablaye Ndiaye "Thiossane" © RFI / Charlotte Idrac
Text by: RFI Follow
5 mins
In Senegal, a dean of culture in the spotlight is in the spotlight: Ablaye Ndiaye "Thiossane", 85, musician, painter, playwright and designer of cinema posters.
This little-known facet of the artist is highlighted in the exhibition inaugurated on Tuesday April 6 at the Manège gallery of the French Institute in Dakar.
From the 1950s until today, Ablaye Ndiaye Thiossane has produced more than 2,000 posters, inspired by heterogeneous films.
A certain history of cinema, from his birthplace of Thiès.
Publicity
Read more
With our correspondent in Dakar,
Charlotte Idrac
Ablaye Ndiaye Thiossane designed his first cinema poster in 1949. “
It was: 'He was walking at night', a film by Alfred Werker
, he recalls.
The cinema allowed me to speak French
”.
At the time, the young man lived in front of a cinema;
there were 7 in total in the town of Thiès, all missing today.
He sits in front of the theaters and begins to copy the posters of the films shown there.
The whole Tarzan series for example, American films, but also French, Japanese, Egyptian or Indian.
A gateway to the world.
“
Indian films were very pretty films.
There were also some pretty girls
.
"
Only a small part of Ablaye Ndiaye Thiossane's poster designs are presented at the gallery, several dozen originals and 240 reproductions from the collection of Florent Mazzoleni, co-curator of the exhibition.
“
Sometimes it's poster reproduction, sometimes it's the imagination of films that he has not yet seen,
” he explains.
Sometimes it is his transcription of the film that he has indeed seen.
There was an explosion of cinema in the world in the 1950s and 1960s and Ablaye is, somewhere, a participatory spectator
.
"
Colorful, figurative drawings, classified by theme: "fantastic", "peplums", "love stories".
Only three posters of African films, little shown at the time.
And it is a Brazilian film,
O Cangaceiro
, which brought Ablaye Ndiaye Thiossane to another passion, that of music.
Newsletter
Receive all international news directly in your mailbox
I subscribe
Follow all the international news by downloading the RFI application
google-play-badge_FR
Senegal
Culture
Culture Africa