Kalanda

This is the main outcome of my audiovisual work on donso hunters in Burkina Faso, during a year of fieldwork for my PhD in Social Anthropology with Visual Media at the University of Manchester. I conceived the project that would later become this film while I was still in Burkina. In order to study donso hunters, I had undergone initiation and become one myself, starting an apprenticeship with my teacher Adama Traoré. The idea I had was then to represent this process of learning donsoya in its different aspects, using ambiguously my point of view or that of some generic novice hunter. So I continuously mixed fiction and autobiography, documentary and reconstruction. I made my closest teachers and friends among the hunters part of the conception and realisation of the film, screening the footage to them and incorporating their suggestions and feedback. In particular my teacher Adama assumed the role of narrator, connecting the various sections with his reflections and memories. The complete film will hopefully be released at the end of 2013, accompanying my dissertation.