Metrograph

Begun by Sylla and completed by her sister, Mariama, after Khady’s death in 2013, A Single Word connects the essay film to the oral historical tradition of the griots—West African storytellers, musicians, and poets who act as repositories of family genealogies and events past and present in their communities. The Sylla sisters’ grandmother, Penda Diogo Sarr, bearing prodigious memory and a deep well of folk wisdom accumulated through the years, is at the center of A Single Word, but it is as much a lyrical document of daily life in rural Senegal as it is the study of a single character, a contemplation of language as the storehouse of memory in which the filmmakers continue, through their own means, the invaluable archival efforts of their subject.

Q&A with Johanna Makabi moderated by author, editor, archivist, and researcher Amy Sall on Friday, June 13th