You Know it but it Don’t Know You
You Know it but it Don’t Know You combines images of students from the Gambia Hospitality and Tourism Institute with a commentary of Mandinka words and their English translations taken from a list Nain (the filmmaker’s grandmother) wrote in 1986. Filmed shortly after the 2016 Gambian presidential election, the work reflects particular moments in time, the student’s gestures and Nain’s list embodying a search for knowledge and understanding through exercises of curiosity and welcome. —Tako Taal
Programmer’s Note
If catering to the rich, white European is a matter of economic survival, the suppression and devaluation of one’s own ways of doing (and being and feeling) is a matter of a psychic battle. The tacit meanings concealed in the representation of the ‘other’ are summoned back into the frame in an act of reverse translation by Tako Taal, who insists on reminding us of the myriad silences effected at the cost of our own curious gaze. —Letitia Calin
Director Filmography
Halo Nevus (2018), Table d’hôte (2017), It’s been a long time (I fa mo ketta, 2017)
