An Open Window

An Open Window

Country:Senegal

Director:Khady Sylla

Program:African Panorama

Year: 
2005

Duration: 
52

Summary:

Khady Sylla originally attempted to film a documentary about homeless psychiatric patients who roam the streets of Dakar, but the images were overexposed and unusable. But Sylla returned to the subject when she encountered Aminta Ngom who spends her days confined to the courtyard of her family’s house. Despite the simplistic use of camera, the film is complex and layered, and Sylla relates to Ngom in different ways: as a director who is aware of her film crew as an equal beside her neurotic friend and as a narrator who looks into the camera and describes the mental state of her subject with stylized powerful words. The intimacy of the shared experience is disturbed by the intrinsically unequal relationship between director and mental patient.