FILM REVIEW + VIDEO: “Dakan” – The First West African Gay Film 

 

The film opens in the most bold way you can imagine. We see two young masculine Guinean men, Sori and Manga, passionately making out in a car parked out in the woods. You can tell this is no “hookup,” these two men care for one another. What a way to immediately show the audience what this film is about. Keep in mind that this was released in 1997 and was filmed in Guinea, a West African country that’s just a bit smaller than the state of Michigan. Imagine the controversy that director Mohamed Camera faced while filming this love story, angry mobs even disrupted filming on several occasions.It’s quickly established that there’s trouble in Sori and Manga’s relationship. The origins of that conflict are not immediately explained until we meet the respective parents of the men. Manga’s poor single mother seems to suspect her son’s attraction for men, even knowing that he may be dating his best friend Sori. Manga outright asks her, “Is it wrong to be attracted to men?” She responds, “It never happens. Since time began, it’s never happened.” The odd thing about it, she doesn’t seem that surprised about her son’s sexuality. She’s a woman of traditional values. She seems more concerned about Manga’s responsibility to bring her grandchildren, continuing the family line (a pressure that many gay men of color face all over the world). Manga’s all she has left in the world and she feels him slipping away from her.Next we jump to Sori’s home where his wealthy father (played by director Mohamed Camera) is pressuring him to better his grades so that he can go to college and eventually continue the family fishing business. The problem is that Sori’s a horrible student and has dreams of living a simple life on a farm with his lover Manga. His father also seems to suspect that his son is gay and not be too surprised about it upon confirmation. However, unlike Manga’s mother, he’s less concerned for his son and more concerned about what Sori being a known homosexual could mean for his own reputation and growing business.

So we have the foundation for a Romeo and Juliet star-crossed lovers type story. On face value one as cynical as myself might think: Here we go again, even African gays only tell stories about looking for love. The difference here, these men seem to have fleshed out lives and families that extend beyond “being gay.” The tale of two men facing the odds to be together is still a pivotal part of the story, but the journey to get there is an epic one.

This is also where some of Dakan started to fall apart for me. As students in school, Sori and Manga seem to be known lovers by their fellow male and female classmates. Even other boys outright flirt with Sori in the hallways and parking lot, given that he’s both wealthy and handsome, which causes Manga to grow increasingly jealous. This is obviously where fantasy is woven into the film, which is fun to watch but momentarily takes you out of the realism the film effectively creates with the characters’ pressure to keep their affair under wraps. If the parents continually stress the negative implications that could come with the young men becoming known homosexuals, why is it heavily implied that everyone already knows and its no big deal?

Quickly things get more complicated for the men. Sori succumbs to his father’s pressure and gives Manga the cold shoulder, avoiding him at all costs. This separation causes them both depression and sickness. Manga’s mother Fanta then decides that its time to confront Sori. There is a heart-wrenching scene where Fanta, tears streaming down her face, screams to Sori, “I want my Manga! Stay away from him!” Their parents forbid them from seeing each other ever again.Suspecting her son has mental issues, Manga’s mother goes to extreme measures and seeks the help of witchdoctors to cleanse him of this gay sickness. This extended sequence provides some very interesting insight into Guinean tradition and culture that I’m sure many people still believe to this day, no matter how exaggerated it may have been portrayed in the film (I suspect that Allah still reigns supreme in Guinea though). The African Gay Conversion Therapy separates Manga from Sori for well over a year and seems to have worked. However it also affects the health of his mother, confining her to a wheelchair indefinitely. Young and confused, Manga blames himself for this, further pushing him to live a straight life for her sake.As he cares for his sick mother, Manga meets a beautiful young Caucasian French woman named Oumou who is caring for her own African mother, a nurse maid that adopted her when her parents were killed as a child. Soon, they become very close friends, even falling in love with each other and getting engaged. This makes Manga’s mother ecstatic at the prospect that her son will soon be married and give her grandchildren. Meanwhile, Sori is settling into straight life as well. He’s even got a job working directly with his father.

Believe it or not, this point is only halfway through the film. There’s so much layered into this story that, at its foundation is about homosexual love, but is also about the expectations of men in a given family and society. I won’t spoil the ending but it is as touching as it is surprising. It leaves open the question: At what point do the individual’s dreams and aspirations equal or supersede those of others?

This question brings me back to emails we get from men in Africa or those with direct African family ties, the majority of them deal with this dilemma. Discreet masculine gay men all over the world (with the “burden” of blending in) face this problem, but it seems most evident for first and second generation Africans, given their extremely close family bonds. These men deeply worry about the reputation of their family, how it would hurt their family or the disappointment they think it would cause in them.

That dynamic is threaded all throughout this film as Manga and Sori try to resist and bury the innate love they have for each other, not for fear of how society will view them, but for the benefit of their family, the ones close to them. At one point Sori’s father exclaims that his sexuality could literally erase all of the progress he’s made as an entrepreneur since it would blacklist him with customers. That’s an extremely heavy burden to bear for a young man struggling with his sexuality.

Dakan is by no means a perfect film nor is it the best acted at times. However there is a complex story told with the use of some very artistic cinematography. Mohamed Camera, even with the budgetary limitations and protests, managed to create a very much needed addition to the VERY small pool of films dealing with black homosexuality in a non-salacious and raunchy manner. Unlike American gay black films, in Dakan there are no long discussions on anal sex preparation or scenes of gay clubbing or shirtless muscled tattooed men casually posing for the camera while not seeing the camera. This film is merely about love not sex, proving that some gay men thankfully know the difference between the two.

Dakan is currently available for streaming on Amazon Instant Video as well as on DVD for purchase.

See a preview of the first few minutes of the film below: