Djiby Kebe | L'avance / 2024

selling his family

by Douglas Messerli

 

Djiby Kebe and Ahmadou Bmba Thiam (screenplay), Djiby Kebe (director) L'avance / 2024 [18 minutes]

 

I have certainly seen films that our far more painful about the gay world, and we don’t, in this case, even know that the central figure, Aliou (Saabo Balde) even might be gay, although his sister or at least one the many family figures who inhabit his home is lesbian. But this film about the art world really hit home.

     Aliou, an African living in Paris, has painted, based on a photograph, has created a meaningful portrait of his mother and himself, an almost sacred object for both him and his family. In the beginning, although he has aligned himself with an art dealer, he brings a collector, Marie (Julia Faure) to his ramshackle studio, filled with friends playing card games, to see the work of art.

     The fairly wealthy woman immediately perceives its beauty and, perhaps, its potential value; and, as we later discover, she is devoted to young African-French artists. She argues that if he sells its through the dealer, the work he has struggled to create over several months will be sold with 50% if his price going to the dealer. She is ready to pay 3,000 euro which will go directly into his pocket. Despite the small price, how is a young artist, desperate for the money, to resist? She gives him an advance.

     He might have realized just how temporary her interest in art is when she asks him to deliver it to her home that very evening when she is giving a party.

    But he dutifully wraps it up and carries it through his home community, being stopped along the way by friends, and later angrily greeted by his elder sister who is quite furious for his selling it, at home. Yet, for the first time Aliou has money, some of which he immediately shares with his nieces, which when his sister discovers the gift, she quickly returns to him. To her it is an open sacrifice of their most sacred object.

     He arrives at the party where Marie hails him as a genius, leaning the painting on the wall like it were a small object to display. Soon after she greets back another black artist, hugs and embraces him as she has already forgotten the artist and the painting she has just acquired.

     There is very little dialogue about this exchange of art for money, but we feel from the bottom of our stomachs, helped along with the terribly (and I do mean terrible, almost, at times sickening) by Lyele, that Aliou has made the wrong decision, that he has sold his life to the barbarians instead of holding out to create an exhibition that might lead to further possibilities.

      Living so many years in the art world, I can well sympathize with his decision, and his failure of vision. Dealers, moreover, are not always trustworthy. But we know that, in this case at lease, Aliou has sold himself and his own history short, a decision he will regret for the rest of his life.

      When he asks the other artist at the party, does he also paint, the answer is a vague “Yes, among other things.” Obviously sex is involved. And we suddenly realize that Aliou has been bought, not beloved as an artist.

 

Los Angeles, March 15, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (March 2025).