StLouis’ Docs

We are grateful to StLouis’ DOCS for the access provided to trial this methodology, being available to us for the implementation of the Decolonial Test and follow-up focus group, and for the range of spaces and resources shared with us for the purpose of this project. Special thanks to Dominique Olier, Souleymane Kebe, and Sebastien Tendeng, who were our key contacts when contacting them about this research project, to Amina Niang, coordinator of the schools screenings, and to all their brilliant team, guest filmmakers and further participants, for the generous welcome and support during fieldwork.

StLouis’ DOCS is one the first festivals that Estrella Sendra attended in November 2015, while she was conducting the first part of her PhD fieldwork, in a town nearby, Louga. It was the second edition of the festival, and yet with such a remarkable engagement by the cinephile community and the local population. The films started to give life to various walls and squares in the city, in the pop-up screens installed for the purpose of the festival.

In December 2020, while the festival landscape, like the whole world, was impacted by the global pandemic of COVID-19, Estrella Sendra became interested in the way in which this festival rethought its format, respecting social distancing, yet respecting its ethos of going towards the audiences. She contacted a local journalist who is at the forefront of the cultural agenda in Saint-Louis, Laura Feal, one of the film submissions reviewers in the festivals, also invited as a jury member. Together, they interviewed the festival organisers, Dominique Olier, Sebastien Tendeng and Souleymane Kebe, to conduct an interview about the festival, which led to the co-authored publication ‘Nearby the Festival International du Film Documentaire de Saint-Louis: Rethinking Proximity in Times of COVID-19’ (Feal and Sendra, 2021), which was published as part of the special dossier of festival reviews in the second wave of Covid-19 in NECSUS: European Journal of Media Studies.

When the outcome of the funding application was finally public, it was too late for Estrella Sendra to travel as the CO-PI coordinating the research in this project. However, due to Laura Feal’s familiarity with the festival, we decided to launch the pilot implementation of this methodology in this festival, with Laura Feal as the lead researcher. Hosted in May 2022, this first implementation and reflection on the experience was crucial to apply the first modifications of the decolonial tests and send them for approval to the ethics committee. This allowed us to have a version we were happier with for the rest of the festivals. In May 2023, the insights gained from our research collaborator Laura Feal in the previous edition were complemented with fieldwork by Laura Feal once more, as the lead researcher and local contact, Estrella Sendra, and the postdoctoral researcher, Ana Camila Esteves, who is also a director and curator of an African film festival. Estrella Sendra was further invited to act as a jury member, which was also of great pertinence for this project, both because of the access to such inspiring reflections on the films for competition, in a jury presided by Senegalese filmmaker Moussa Sene Absa, but also, as a reciprocity practice, that is, contributing also to the festival, in ways that may be mutually beneficial for researchers and practitioners alike. Because the decolonial test had changed, Laura Feal implemented again the second test with an organiser, in this case, Souleymane Kebe, instead of Dominique Olier, to have further perspectives and narratives on the same project.