Desert Rain

One thing Christopher Kirkley can't be accused of is lacking ambition. Since 2008, through his Sahelsounds blog and record label, the Portland "guerrilla ethnomusicologist" has collected and shared music from West Africa that had previously only been traded by locals via cellphone MP3s. A year ago, he took the next logical step: directing a remake of Purple Rain in the Sahara. 

Shot in the city of Agadez in northern Niger on a $12,000 budget, Akounak Tedalat Taha Tazoughai (translation: Rain the Color of Blue With a Little Red in It), starring a young guitarist named Mdou Moctar, is the first film ever made in the Tuareg language. Kirkley spoke to WW in advance of the movie's Portland premiere about translating Prince's finest hour to fit the culture of the region, the challenges of filming there and how bootlegging fits into his distribution plan.

Christopher Kirkley: I think it's a natural extension of what I do, anyway. The label is so much based around looking at something over there, then taking it out of its cultural context and bringing it to a different audience. Making a movie was an extension of playing around with that idea. It was also a chance to do something that would be for both audiences. Making vinyl releases, no one is buying vinyl records in West Africa, but with this movie, it was a new product. Tuareg kids could watch the movie, but we could make it for Western audiences as well.

So did it feel like your way of completing this sense of cultural exchange?

We didn't officially say, "This is a workshop, or something specifically designed with an intention, per se." But I was interested in the idea of doing something low budget, doing something without knowing how it's done, as a way of saying, "This is possible. You can make a movie." I've seen a lot of foreign filmmakers come to West Africa, either shooting documentaries or art-house films that end up not being watched at all in the countries they're filmed, and not really resonating with the population at all. And while a Tuareg language film hasn't been made, there's been a ton of films made about Tuaregs. I wanted to do something that would be actually watched by Tuaregs, too. I thought that would be a challenge, to make something that would actually resonate in the culture.

Why did you choose Mdou Moctar as the lead?

First off, his music is amazing. He's a really solid, shredding guitarist. I first met him because of the Saharan Cellphones compilation. I heard his song on cellphones in Northern Mali, and it stood out because it was this AutoTuned song with drum machines and so completely different from anything else I'd ever heard. I went to Niger and met him, and we really hit it off. He's really funny and sarcastic. He sort of has a different attitude from a lot of people over there, in the sense that we could joke about things. So he's a really strong musician and composer, but he's also an open-minded and funny dude. Choosing a lead for the film was not just choosing a lead—it was choosing a collaborator on the project. I knew it would be a nightmare to shoot, so I needed somebody who was going to be open-minded with the problems that would arise while making it, and we could kind of laugh and get through it.

Is Tuareg culture a serious-minded culture?

I think there's a certain conservatism that runs through the culture that has less to do with religion than just tradition. If you look back 50 years ago, most people were nomads. Urbanization, new media, even television, not even computers—there's this interaction with this global world that is really new in the sense of 50, 100 years ago, it was completely isolated. So I think these traditional values of conservatism are still there in the culture. 

And Mdou's attitude is a little more progressive?

I think musicians in general are a little more open-minded. So there was a certain amount of risk-taking on his part, too, to dedicate his time to this film. It's already paid off huge for him because he's had two tours already and both were helped immensely by the film. Even though it hadn't been made or premiered yet, it was buzzing around the Internet, so that helped him do these two tours. A few other Tuareg guitarists now have talked to me and been like, "When do I get my movie?"

Did he have any semblance of acting experience?

No, but he was a good actor. We had two actual actors in the film, and we didn't know about this until halfway through shooting. There was a little comedy troupe in Agadez, and they have a school where they teach kids how to act. They do a little school program, and some of the kids are featured in the film during the opening scene. They got to be part of it, and were really enthusiastic about it. Just being able to work with a few actors—and I use the term really loosely, but people who act like somebody else and know what that is—it was huge. 

How familiar with the people with Purple Rain or The Harder They Come, which the film also takes some elements from?

The movies never made it over there. Digging for vinyl records in Niger, I've come across a Prince record before, but aside from that, that was the only connection I've seen with Prince. The people don't really know him over there. So when we brought the movie over, it was the first time anyone had watched it. A lot of times, before we started shooting that day, we'd watch the scene that was inspired by it, and that really helped. It helped everyone get onboard. It was like, "When he does this move, it needs to look this way," or "this shot needs to be organized like this." It was fun having the framework to work with.

How much of the film is a direct translation of Purple Rain?

When we started, we were making a remake of the film, but pretty quickly we were having to write in new scenes because things didn't work or weren't culturally appropriate—like, entire plot-lines of Purple Rain. There's this domestic violence plot line, and the father's attempt at suicide. None of that works in Niger. It happens, but it's not something you put in a movie.

Why is that?

First off, it's too heavy of a plot to put in a movie. Actors are really uncomfortable being involved in a project that deals with serious issues, because there could potentially be a backlash in the community. If we talked about some religious thing, and then some local imam gets upset about it—we don't want to have those type of problems. Or if there's an on-screen kiss, or even a hug, maybe the reputation of that actress is going to be sullied by that. We had to walk this really fine line, but it wasn't hard to do that because pretty much anything I suggested was often vetoed by the actors. The idea of us needing to be extra sensitive, a lot of times it felt like the other way around. I had to be like, "No, we really need this scene. I'm sorry, but you guys have to ride on the motorcycle together."

Were the actors able to grasp the general underlying themes of Purple Rain? Were those translatable?

The elements we wanted to translate over make sense. The idea that there's competition between these musicians, that Prince has a conflict with his dad about music and he doesn't want him to play—these are all things every musician there can relate with. That's why we were attracted to this model of a story, because it's universal. And the things that didn't translate, we just didn't translate. We're not going to do the scene where Apollonia takes off her clothes and jumps into a lake.

So at no point does Mdou tell a woman to purify herself in any body of water?

No, but we did have to come up with a little joke he could play on the Apollonia character. Something a lot more subdued and harmless. He's talking to her and he says, "You've got to be careful. In the desert, it's really hard, there's a lot of insects and bugs." And she's like, "I love the desert. I was born out in the desert. My family's nomadic." And he's like, "That's good, because the motorcycle is out of gas so we have to sleep out here tonight." She freaks out, runs over and checks the motorcycle. There's gas in it, so she fires it up, and he has to run off after her.

Are there other examples of that, of scenes you had to tweak for the film?

Mdou has a conflict with his father in the film, to the point where his father finds his guitar and burns it. Not exactly Purple Rain, but it's a conflict with his dad. I didn't want them to have a pushing fistfight like in Purple Rain, but at least show some emotion. "Your dad just burned your guitar, you should be angry!" And when we did the scene, he just sort of talked to his father, shook his head and walked off. I said, "We have to do it again. He just burned your guitar!" And he was like, "Yeah, but we don't yell at our parents here." When I showed that scene to people here in Portland to get some feedback, they said the same thing I said, that I should've had him do a better job of showing anger there. So I think that's one of the things when showing it here won't really translate over. "Why didn't the actor do this? Why wasn't it better?" Well, that's why. It made it hard to be a director in that sense, because at times I didn't know if it was the actors being uncomfortable or if it was something where I had to bend. So there was a lot of push and pull.

What's the film culture like over there? 

Films are hugely popular. All the Western movies, there's a huge bootleg industry, but there's also a huge Hausa language industry—not Nollywood [Nigerian cinema] but northern Nigeria, where they churn our 20 films a week. Those films are loosely based on Bollywood films, and that's probably the biggest film industry people are watching. Hausa culture has replaced a lot of Tuareg culture in Agadez, and the language, too. You meet a lot Tuareg kids who don't speak the language, because of this multi-pronged colonization in language and culture and film. So making a Tuareg film, we were encouraged a lot by pro-Tuareg kids saying, "We need a Tuareg film, not another Hausa film. It's one of those other layers, where once you start looking at something, you get hit with all other kinds of reality you didn't even really consider.

In terms of Western films, are there any that are particularly popular?

Anything really gory. The kids where we were, were watching something called Spartacus, like a knockoff Game of Thrones. There's a lot of Russian movies, like Dolph Lundgren, and Czech action movies. A lot of sex, a lot of violence. I thought at times we would shock people showing Purple Rain, meanwhile they're watching people get their heads cut off on Spartacus.

Can you discuss the difficulties of filming over there?

Where to start? We had a lot to do in a short amount of time. We didn't really have pre-production. We got there, and we'd cast actors as we were filming. People moved. So we had done pre-production, but it was about four months earlier, so when we came back, people who said they'd be in the movie, had moved—even our lead actress. I think she got married and moved to Libya. So we didn't have a lead actress anymore. Women were hard to get in the movie. Either they didn't want to be in it, or their family didn't want them to be in it, or their boyfriends. We changed the lead actress during the shoot two or three times. We had to keep putting off the scenes with her and shooting what we could. 

Just logistical problems, too. We had a windstorm start halfway through shooting, and it was going to be windy season for the next three months. Car problems. Our purple motorcycle broke down. We got hauled away by the police a couple times. At times, it started to feel like [the Apocalypse Now documentary] Heart of Darkness. At the end, I was so broken down. When we actually finished it, we were all sort of amazed we had shot everything.

So you ran into problems with authorities?

The first time, they actually showed up with AK-47s and detained us. I think it was a show of force, being like, "You guys are unsafe here, you should hire us to do your security." That was a bit of a problem, but it had more to do with them worrying about our safety than anything else. Like, we could get kidnapped on their watch, and the president would call whoever allowed us to be there. So they really didn't want us to be there.

How did you handle the performance scenes?

That actually worked really well. What we did was organize concerts and have Mdou play, and in those concert situations people are really used to cameras, because there's always somebody filming at a wedding. So we were able to film a lot. And then we went back and would shoot Mdou in an empty concert, so we could do the action scenes. So for the big concert, we rented the place for two days. The first day we had a crowd, the second day it was just him onstage, so we could get good sound recordings and have the actress play out all the action parts, subtracting that element of chaos of all these people, and then putting it together into this cohesive scene. That worked really well, organizing big free parties, and also shooting in real weddings. We also set up a fake guitar competition, which is not really something that happens [in Niger], but we needed something to move the plot forward, something [Mdou] could win.

You've talked about how you want Tuareg people to see the film. Do you have an idea of how you're going to do that?

I was back [in Agadez] in October, and I screened the movie there. It wasn't completely finished, the sound wasn't properly mixed, but we screened it, and [the screening] was full of people. Everyone was asking for the DVD after that. So there's already a really huge demand. I'm interested in doing a thing where we make a bunch of cheap Nigerian DVDs and distribute them across the Tuareg diaspora—send 1,000 into Mali, 1,000 into Libya, and distribute it that way. But I think it's going to be less work than we think. It's just a matter of seeding it into a few different areas, and the bootleg industry of memory cards, DVDs and compressed cellphone versions of the movie will take over and distribute it fine. People are great at distributing stuff. Media will get distributed, especially if they like it. That's sort of the biggest appreciation you can get. If you go and see it's been bootlegged everywhere, then you've done your job.

SEE IT: Akounak Tedalat Taha Tazoughai plays at Hollywood Theatre, 4122 NE Sandy Blvd., on Thursday, Jan. 29. 7 pm. $8. 21+.

WWeek 2015