meta_pixel
Tapesearch Logo
Log in
Arts & Ideas

Touki Bouki

Arts & Ideas

BBC

Society & Culture

4.2599 Ratings

🗓️ 21 January 2022

⏱️ 46 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

A motorbike adorned with a zebu skull is one of the central images of Djibril Diop Mambéty's classic 1973 film, whose title translates as The Journey of the Hyena. Listed as one of the 100 greatest films of all time in the Sight and Sound magazine poll, it mixes West African oral traditions with influences from the French New Wave and Soviet cinema. Mory and Anta are two young people growing up in a newly independent Senegal who fantasise about leaving Dakar for a new life in France, but how can they realise those dreams and do they really want to leave? Matthew Sweet is joined by New Generation Thinker Sarah Jilani, Estrella Sendra Fernandez and Ashley Clark.

Sarah Jilani is a lecturer in English at City, University of London and has written on neocolonialism in Francophone West African cinema. Estrella Sendra Fernandez lectures in film and screen studies at SOAS, University of London. She directed the award-winning documentary film Témoignages de l’autre côté about migration in Senegal. Ashley Clark is curatorial director at the Criterion Collection. He is the author of the book Facing Blackness: Media and Minstrelsy in Spike Lee’s “Bamboozled”

Producer: Torquil MacLeod

Image: Mareme Niang (Right), and Magaye Niang in a still from the film Touki Bouki Le Voyage de la Hyène, 1973 Senegal. Director : Djibril Diop Mambéty. Image credit: Alamy

In the Free Thinking archives you can find a series of programmes exploring silent film, star actors including Jean-Paul Belmondo, Marlene Dietrich, Dirk Bogarde, and classics of cinema around the world including Kurosawa's Rashomon, Satyajit Ray's Pather Panchali, the films of Jacques Tati and Charlie Chaplin.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Can I just say?

0:01.5

You're about to listen to a BBC podcast.

0:04.0

It's such a wonderful listen.

0:05.6

So nice.

0:06.5

There are loads more like it on BBC sounds.

0:08.8

Different paces, different heights.

0:10.6

The roof is buckling.

0:11.9

Where you can also listen to live sports commentary.

0:14.2

It's right foot goes for goal.

0:16.7

And then enjoy even more podcasts full of analysis and reaction to the big stories.

0:21.7

The stat that is astonishing is they ended with the lowest amount of possession.

0:25.2

And she's had to live with that.

0:26.8

So if you love sport, a passion, it's almost like a religion.

0:29.7

Listen on BBC Sounds.

0:31.7

Sort of expecting that every week now.

0:34.3

This is the Arts and Ideas podcast.

0:36.8

I'm Matthew Sweet and this episode is totally Tuky-Buki, which is the Arts and Ideas podcast. I'm Matthew Sweet and this episode is totally

0:39.4

Tuky-Buki, which is the title of a thrillingly imaginative Senegalese film of 1973. So take

0:46.5

your seats after this message. Hello, my name's Ian McMillan. And before you slide into the

0:51.5

podcast you were expecting, let me tell you a little bit about my program, Theb, Radio 3's Literary Festival, Language Cafe, and Journey to the Centre of the Sentence. We'll hear new poems and stories, specially commissioned for the show, and we'll ask the kinds of questions that writers really like to be asked, like, do you use a pen or a pencil? No, I promise, we won't ask that one. I use a pen,

1:12.9

by the way. Subscribe to the verb on BBC Sounds. I wrote that with a pen.

1:19.0

BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. Tuki, booky. I'll say it again, Tuky booky. If it means

...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.

Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.