Begun at the dawn of his eightieth birthday, completed to the day, five years later, this portrait of the musician Manu Dibango, tireless defender of the mix of cultures, takes us to three continents. Rhythmic by a diversity of exchanges and the convictions of personalities, this sensitive and modest portrait is interspersed with moments of musical grace where the Great Manu creates instants of pure emotion from his saxophone.
From Yannick Noah - who calls him Uncle Manu - to Charlélie Couture and Ray Léma, their testimonies reveal the multiple facets of this art lover with a great A.
"Happy Birthdays"
Manu Dibango is eighty years old. Smiling like a kid, he blows out his birthday cake candles, followed by applause. An hour and half later, he is eighty-five years old.
Between these two milestone birthdays, the film directors followed in the day to day footsteps of this smiling, debonair giant; for whom the expression, "quiet strength" seems to have been coined.
Composer, musician, journalist, an ambassador of the Francophone world, honoured and distinguished around the world; Manu Dibango has remained himself wherever he may find himself. To the greats of this world, he speaks without flattery, and addresses the lowly with respect, without any condescension.
During these five years, from Paris to Douala, from Kinshasa to Rio, from New York to Saint Calais, a small village in La Sarthe where he spent part of his childhood, a curious, open, joyful, honest and caring Manu Dibango crossed fellow brethren.
"A dream bigger than him"
He sometimes evokes the past, but with no place for regret or nostalgia. Manu Dibango is a man of the present, a man in motion, who has a dream greater than himself: to be a bridge between cultures, between generations, between continents. His multiple roots tell the story of his vision of the world, that of mixing, of horizons that cross and enrich each other, of cultures that marry to give birth to a more generous, more human world.
He can be both warm and modest. To testify, there are those who love him and surround him, those who have met him and who will never forget him.
From Yannick Noah - who calls him Uncle Manu - to Charlélie Couture and Ray Léma, their testimonies reveal the multiple facets of this art lover with a great A. The art he says is all that remains after man: "After all, who remembers who was a minister in Beethoven's time? No one. What's left is Beethoven's work! »
"Behind every note is Africa"
Manu Dibango is a man in a hurry who knows how to take his time. The film is in his image, giving way to long musical tracks, rehearsals, concerts, improvisations, moments of sharing with fellow artists in music, moments of grace where the unique voice of his swinging saxophone flies, swings, sways, exults or murmurs like a confidence.
His love of mixing is also expressed in his practice: this adventurer of music continues to clear unexplored spaces. He is now working to combine his music with that of a symphony orchestra, helping to bring together two worlds that have always been ignored.
Again and again, this unceasing quest for sharing, for sharing the world's cultural treasures, because once and for all, "we must stop being alone together"...
