Theory as a way of life: Sissako, filmmaking, and the postcolonial interview

Abstract

ABSTRACT Cinema, said Abderrahmane Sissako in an interview, is a form of communication that affords him the opportunity “to tell my story, to tell the story of my country”. While much emphasis has been placed on examining his films as vehicles of social and political communication, much less effort has been afforded to examining the many interviews he has given over the years regarding those films as a complementary form of social and political communication. This article will give an overview of his cinematic oeuvre, and examine the role that interviews have played in Sissako’s formation as a major postcolonial theorist, exploring how these interviews mediate his postcolonial theory as compared to their mediation in his major films. For Sissako, postcolonial theory is a way of life, which is a specific approach to literary and cultural theory that is on full view in his films and in his interviews about them.