by Jean-Olivier Tchouaffe, PhD, Radio-Television Film, University of Texas at Austin
Black Dju or Black Jew: is that the question? Director Pol Cruchten’s answer is, “What importance does it have?” The film BLACK DJU is a treatise on our common humanism which works quite effectively in the narrative because, at the end, we get the sense that people from different cultural and linguistic backgrounds can come together to share this wonderful, little, and fragile village called Earth in peace. In that sense, it is not differences that make us humans but our commonality stemming from the central fact of the uniqueness of the human species, among many others, and nothing else must lead us to empty out our minds from that quintessential fact.
Within this context, BLACK DJU intends to demonstrate the universalistic aspect of Diaspora. The movie begins, mainly, as the story of Dju Dele Dibonga (Richard Courcet) traveling from his native Cape Verde to Luxembourg with the goal of reconnecting with his father, Adama Kouyate (Joseph Toure), who has disappeared without explanation. The movie, however, is a broad study of simple small town African immigrants caught up in the net of Western immigration politics and its legal injustices shaping and maintaining them in perpetual lower-status position in the host society.
On the other hand, BLACK DJU is also a movie expressing the complexities of immigrants’ lives by examining possibilities for important affective connection with the locals which is highlighted by Dju’s friendship with a depressed policeman, Inspector Plettschette (Phillipe Leotard), worn down by years of suffering at the hands of an inept immigration bureaucracy, his recent divorce from his wife, and a high volume of alcohol consumption.
The movie goes on to explore the chains of connections it creates in order to capture the postcolonial reality of traveling from Africa to Europe. It argues, however, that traveling is always a form of exchange and bargaining and how both Africans and Europeans are negotiating these bargains in the light of the legacy of European colonization of the continent. The principal cause is that most immigrants are not considered full-members of the host society unless they gain full-citizenship keeping them from being perpetually subjected to the all controlling authority and surveillance of the immigration system. BLACK DJU, therefore, opens up the opportunity to discuss colonial and postcolonial ideologies underpinning these migrations, Europe’s constantly evolving manipulations of civil and criminal codes against these African immigrants and why these legal challenges must also concern ordinary citizens of the host country because abuses against immigrants also highlight how the host society is structured in general. It has to be realized that, at heart, laws must be humane for everybody and that a just and democratic society must not allow itself to have a second-class citizenry in its midst. The real lesson here is to recognize that even welcome and legal immigration is packaged with contradictions. Immigration brings a necessary dose of diversity and cultural changes which, at the same time, are hard to deal with because it also comes packaged with anxiety about displacements bringing conflicts and resistance from conservative quarters of the host society.
BLACK DJU intends to be a story about self-liberation and how the politics of immigration often fail to understand that immigration is, first of all, about human beings and families, real people not just numbers. Within that context, folks who are doing the right things must not be subjected to abuse, wherever they come from, because freedom does not make sense if some people living in the community are not free and that is why immigrants’ stories matter because they are the true barometer of society. Thus, the primary function of the movie is not to make political points but to get people to participate in their own communal lives and keep themselves informed.
There is something equally sharp about BLACK DJU in the earnest way in which it quietly juxtaposes raw feeling and the use of silence as a subtext for its strength of conviction avoiding the traps of the self-righteous sanctimony and pomposity of most issue-driven films. Thus, for a movie trying to make a bold statement about immigrants’ exploitation, law enforcement and public indifference, its obvious gravitas comes from the quiet dignity of Dju and his father. It is to demonstrate that these characters are bigger than what they let on. They are bigger than their somewhat miserable circumstances. This is exemplified in the ambulance scene after the father has been rescued from a psychiatric hospital where he was unjustly confined. That silence hides the complex symbolic of exchange between the father and the son while moving away from filial blood to highlight the new symbolic filiation between Dju’s blood father and his new symbolic father Plettschette. This scene is at the center of the movie because it highlights the balance between lost and found present in the migration trip to point out that at the end of the day immigration is always rich because it adds families to families. Thus, immigrants are humans with enormous qualities and potential. They have families and friends they care about and who care about them too. In the case of BLACK DJU, these families sharply reduce the distance between Cape Verde and Luxembourg, which instantly melts away. Consequently, BLACK DJU is an inspiring movie about our humanity and our essential goodness.
