STEVE ELKINS: How did you come up with the idea for “Crumbs”? And how did it evolve into Ethiopia’s first science fiction film?

MIGUEL LLANSÓ: In 2008, I went to Ethiopia to work for the Embassy. But I was making underground films on the side. This job allowed me to discover the country. To see how people live and discover magical things.

ELKINS: You’re reminding me that my first day in Addis Ababa, I was awestruck by the giant mountains of trash leading in all directions from where I was staying. I mean, they almost looked like works of art, because they were so exaggerated.

LLANSÓ: It cannot be absorbed, it cannot be integrated so fast. People don’t know what to do, so you’ll see that people - for example - decorate their houses with the worst plastic Chinese cups. And I think - fuck - but you used to have beautiful cups here! Because they were made out of the collective experience of three or four hundred years. And these Chinese cups do have a function, but they’re not connected any more with knowledge.

ELKINS: So is this one of the reasons you began to imagine all this pop culture junk winding up in Ethiopia and almost revered as religious relics?

LLANSÓ: Totally. It made me reflect a lot on what kind of things are being pumped into this place. What kind of culture are they creating? What kind of distortions? What kind of disorientations? But at the same time, people have to cope with that, to continue living. They have to invent and create meanings and uses for all this trash. It’s a recyling culture, no?

In October 2013, I recorded an interview with the first Ethiopian graduate in nuclear engineering, Seifu Yohannes, who said: “All your dreams of wealth and unlimited power, all your dreams of disproportionate ambition; the satisfaction of feeling analogous to the Gods, all your sexual impulses which you deem infinite; all these Pharaonic dreams will be reduced to a series of cheap plastic figurines floating in the stratosphere once everything has finally exploded. The American dream will soon enough end up devastating you. Then you will return to your village with your tail between your legs. And you will wish that your old boyfriend or girlfriend - whose breath always reeked of garlic - will once again cover you in kisses and eternally care for your welfare.” When I finished transcribing these words, “Crumbs” was born.

ELKINS: So why explore this through science fiction, rather than documentary?

LLANSÓ: Because for me, science fiction is how you exaggerate THIS world. It’s about finding the tendencies that are happening right NOW. Deeper truths sometimes only reveal themselves through distortions, when you change the context and the circumstances.

ELKINS: I’ve heard that your films are partially inspired by experimental-punk and “weird music.”  What are some of these inspirations?  

LLANSÓ: When I was a teenager I started playing drums and listening to all the Californian bands from that time: Bad Religion, RKL, NOFX...all Epitaph Records and Fat Wreck Chords. By fortune, I moved into more interesting stuff: The Ex, Flying Luttenbachers, NoMeansNo, Minor Threat, pretty much everything from Dischord Records, Naked City, Los Crudos, The Locust (and all the San Diego bands).

The Locust

Dischord Records

Naked City

LLANSÓ (cntd): Back in time, there were very interesting bands in Madrid such as Grabba Grabba Tape, Ginferno, or Atomizador and Omega Cinco and Les Aus in Barcelona, etc. We used to make tours within the hardcore punk scene of Spain, a scene opened by bands like Aina, or A Room With A View and the label B Core. Back in time, it published the most interesting stuff. It's still active although I don't find it interesting nowadays.

In 2002, I made my first Album with "Ensaladilla Rusa."

Luis Buñuel's "Un Chien Andalou" (1929), "The Exterminating Angel" (1962), and "Simon Of The Desert" (1965)

Maya Deren's "Meshes Of The Afternoon" & "Witch's Cradle" (1943)

José Val del Omar

Kenneth Anger

LLANSÓ (cntd): The American tradition of experimental films: Nathaniel Dorsky (who I met at Rotterdam Film Festival), Jonas Mekas, James Broughton, Stan Brakhage.

Stan Brakhage

LLANSÓ (cntd): And many classics: Jean Cocteau, Pasolini, Fellini, Godard, Fassbinder, Berlanga. Of course David Lynch, Werner Herzog and Harmony Korine.

Jean Cocteau & "Blood Of A Poet" (1930)

Luis García Berlanga & Pier Paolo Pasolini

Federico Fellini

LLANSÓ (cntd): In my 30's I discovered other interesting and young filmmakers that inspired me a lot like Ben Rivers, for instance, or Albert Serra or my very best friend Velasco Broca.

Ben Rivers

ELKINS: So what else is happening in Ethiopian cinema now?

LLANSÓ: Well, in Ethiopia, there were not even private televisions until two or three years ago. And the internet is not working well. So the people had no choice but to see Ethiopian films in the theaters. That’s why the industry of cinema was working so well in Ethiopia for about ten years. Since 2005, all these attempts to create a film industry in Ethiopia were attempts to make things social. To have time together with friends. To do more than just showing the film. Like what Maya Deren and Amos Fogel were doing with cine-clubs the U.S. Or what the Echo Park Film Center is doing in Los Angeles. Do you know this place?

ELKINS: Yes, I lived in Echo Park for seven years. It was in my neighborhood, and they screened my first film “The Reach of Resonance” there. That place is amazing. They not only show films, but support community activism, at-risk youth, and give workshops on old analog film equipment like 16mm Bolex cameras Super 8 film splicing kits. So the community can develop their artistic voice.

LLANSÓ: I think that’s the future. What a mobile screen cannot give you is the experience of being with others.

"Dillinger Is Dead" (Marco Ferreri, 1969)

ELKINS: Older generations of filmmakers - like the Italian director Marco Ferreri - have talked about how cinemas changed their societies, because it was the one place where all classes of society met. And they were all staring together in the same direction. All dreaming together in a dark room.

LLANSÓ: The phenomenon in Nigeria is different, because the Nigerian industry grew up around the DVD and home video. Because it was very dangerous to go to cinemas. You could get robbed. So in the ‘90s cinemas started closing down. This is completely the opposite of what happened in Ethiopia. So every country in Africa is facing different issues and circumstances. I’ve seen different movements in Kenya, Mozambique and South Africa also. Sometimes it feels like the beginning of cinema, because people don’t know the rules, so they have to create the rules again.

There are some funny anecdotes. I have a friend that…well, there’s a lot of movie piracy in Africa. You don’t want your film to be copied, but what if you want your film to premiere in, let’s say, twenty cinemas in the country? Instead of sending them DVDs, what my friend did is he bought some cheap DVD players and sealed the DVD inside with glue or tape or whatever. So that you can’t play another DVD in it, just this one. Then after one week, the theaters would have to send the DVD players back. And he said, “If this DVD is broken, I will crush you, because then I’ll know you’ve copied it!” That was his anti-piracy method. It was very cheap to send a guy to the cinemas who could bring the DVD player back afterward to “headquarters.” So they started creating these kind of strategies.

ELKINS: Did that create an entire industry for people, where that is essentially their job?

LLANSÓ: People in Addis are so poor, you can always find a guy you can pay to do this for you. But now, people started getting private televisions about three years ago. And they started watching a lot of soap operas from Turkey for free. So nobody goes to cinemas anymore.

Jim Chuchu (Kenya) and Abba Makama (Nigeria)

ELKINS: What filmmakers in Ethiopia (and elsewhere in Africa) would you most recommend people check out?

LLANSÓ: From the old big figures, I would recommend Haile Gerima, the father of Ethiopian cinema. His last film "Teza" was shot in 2008. The films of Moustapha Alassane (Niger) - especially - "The Return of the Adventurer" (close to the style of Jean Rouch) really blew my mind. I love him.

In Nigeria there are two filmmakers that I follow because they're doing interesting stuff: CK Obasi and Abba Makama. In Kenya, I would say Jim Chuchu and Mbithi Masya are very interesting because they do films but are also activists, so they organize film screenings, play music and shake the scene of Nairobi. I appreciate that very much.

Any film made by Isaac Nabwana and Wakaliwood (Uganda) will make you laugh like hell. Among his multiple productions, I would recommend "Bad Black". Maybe the films are too long, but he's a master in preparing mind blowing trailers…

"The Night Of Counting The Years" (Egypt), "Sambizanga" (Angola), and "Soleil Ô" (Mauritania): Films Undergoing Restoration By Martin Scorsese's World Cinema Project

ELKINS: Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project has made a list of fifty films they’ve targeted for restoration from countries across Africa, as a starting point for reclaiming Africa’s film heritage.

LLANSÓ: I would like to have this list.

ELKINS: Well, I spoke with them recently and asked for it, but they said they won’t make it public yet. Partially because it’s so unpredictable to know which films will have elements available to recover. It might take 35 years to find what they need to restore some of these films. But then other important films excluded from their initial list may suddenly fall into their laps.

For example, they mentioned a Libyan filmmaker whose work was long believed to be lost. Then one night they met his grandson, who had all the original film elements perfectly preserved in his home. So the outcomes of these attempted restorations are so unpredictable that they’re cautious about making definitive lists or public announcements on which films they’re seeking. Those are some of the challenges African cinema is facing.

LLANSÓ: I’m glad someone is working on it, because it would be so easy for these films to be lost.

Souleymane Cissé’s “Yeelen” (Mali), Nacer Khemir’s "Wanderers of the Desert" (Tunisia) and "Bab'Aziz - The Prince That Contemplated His Soul"

ELKINS: I rarely encounter anyone who has seen a single film from Africa. Not even one. When I watch my favorite African cinema - like Souleymane Cissé’s “Yeelen” (Mali), Djibril Diop Mambéty’s “Touki Bouki” (Senegal), Nacer Khemir’s “Desert Trilogy” (Tunisia), or Cheick Oumar Sissoko’s “Guimba the Tyrant” - it feels like the stories they have to tell, and the ways in which they tell them can demonstrate to the rest of the world that we haven’t even come close to fully exploring the possibilities of cinema.

[For more on some of these films, visit: http://jesselatour.blogspot.com/2016/01/the-cinema-of-mali-and-tunisia.html]

But the filmmakers I’m talking about are from the early generations of African filmmakers. Do you think younger filmmakers in Africa now have different concerns than, like Ousmane Sembène (Senegal), or Abderrahmane Sissako (Mauritania), or Haile Gerima (Ethiopia)?

Abderrahmane Sissako (Mauritania), Ousmane Sembène's "Moolaadé" and Djibril Diop Mambéty's "Touki Bouki" (Senegal)

LLANSÓ: Yeah, for sure. Things are changing a lot in Africa, and there are different cultures of cinema. You know, in the 60s the problematics were more around post-colonial times and adapting to sudden independence. Like: now what? How will we understand and define ourselves in political terms? And there was a lot of hope. These filmmakers represent the diaspora of African filmmakers who learned how to make films abroad and were shown at international festivals. So yes, this resulted in very original cinema, but usually within the culture of international cinema. Now I think younger African filmmakers concerns are more about the future, technology, and new ways of life.

ELKINS: And they don’t necessarily need to rely on the colonial powers to fund their films anymore, like Portugal, France, England and Russia.

Wakaliwood (Uganda)

LLANSÓ: Totally. It’s changing. France still has a lot of influence in West Africa, but I think the African film industries are growing by themselves now. There is an explosion of grassroots cinema in Africa. I don’t know whether you have seen these Wakaliwood films, which is happening now in Uganda? Kung Fu films…

ELKINS: Kung Fu films?

LLANSÓ: It’s incredible, and very funny. There are grassroots underground films coming out of Wakaliga - a slum in Uganda's capital of Kampala - that are basically bad copies of Hollywood films. But precisely because they’re so bad, they started to become something very original. Which again, is kind of the culture of recycling. And the distortion between the original and the copy is so big that it has its own style, it’s own art. They are finding a new path by themselves. You can call it cheap, but for me it’s amazing. They inspire me a lot.

Nollywood (Nigeria)

LLANSÓ (cntd): And then there’s the phenomenon of what’s happening in Nigeria, called “Nollywood.” The people who were selling home appliances, like vacuum cleaners, they started to make films to sell more. And because the films were so cheap to produce and so funny, the people started to give them out as gifts, saying: “If you come to my shop and buy this washing machine, I will give you my film!”

ELKINS: That’s incredible! And now aren’t they the second largest national film industry in the world?

LLANSÓ: In terms of film productions, yes. And it became important in exporting films to neighboring countries, like Ghana. From this experimental way of selling, it became a super big industry. But it was also very much supported by evangelist churches.

ELKINS: Really?! Why?

LLANSÓ: There is a very good documentary that is called “Nollywood Babylon.” It explains how Nollywood started, and how the churches took over the industry as a propaganda tool. Something similar happened in Latin America: all these old cinemas are turned now into churches. I think churches are becoming the cinemas of the 21st century. They have the same function: to supply people with dreams and expectations. They take your money and sell a story to you. It’s no different from cinema.

ELKINS: Jean-Luc Godard had a similar idea, but flipped. That cinemas were the churches of the 20th century.

LLANSÓ: Yeah, but maybe because he said that in the 80s. Now, the film industry in the West is going down again. So the churches are coming back.

ELKINS: That’s a good point.

LLANSÓ: I mean maybe he had too much hope in cinema, in the 70s and 80s. I think cinema is going down, really. Streaming services are getting together with mobile phone companies and creating monopolies. Everything’s changing very fast.

ELKINS: Yeah, it’s hard to imagine how films are going to be made 10 years from now. Artists once served kings, cinema once served colonial powers, and now filmmakers are increasingly serving the cell phone industry. How will this shape future of cinema?

Werner Herzog has been ranting for decades that we don’t have adequate images for our time. He thinks we are literally going to die off like dinosaurs if we don’t have adequate images; that it’s as serious a catastrophe as global warming or overpopulation. Because our images are where we embed the stories and symbols that mediate our relationship with the world. They both reflect and transform our inner mythologies that guide us through life. I think that’s part of my interest in what Africa and African filmmaking has to offer cinema as a whole. Different types of images that communicate very different types of things. And I feel like what you’re doing there is already accomplishing that, in your own way.

LLANSÓ: Well, a lot of people go to Africa to capture a preconceived image of it. An image of beauty, or poverty, or mystery, or war. But for a long time, our ideas about Africa have often been constructed from images produced by NGOs. And those images are designed to raise money for their projects. Each of them is a bit of a lie if you don’t understand the actual processes that are happening there.

ELKINS: What would be an example of what’s “really” happening there?

LLANSÓ: In Ethiopia, for instance, they’re suffering a construction boom right now. Their infrastructure is being developed by China, in both beautiful and monstrous ways. No one is making films about how this construction boom is changing daily life. Both the media and independent filmmakers are still going in there making films about topics and ideas they had about the country in the 1970s and 80s. This would be like a filmmaker going into Spain to explore the effects of the 2008 financial crisis and making another damn film about bullfighting.

ELKINS: Yet another reason why cinema and other art forms are so important for helping give you a bigger picture of what’s happening. I wanted to ask about your experiences filming in Danakil, Ethiopia. It’s such an extreme place that not many people here are even aware of.

LLANSÓ: You’ve been there, right?

ELKINS: Yeah, I filmed there for my own documentary I’m finishing now: “Echoes of the Invisible.” (Teaser: https://vimeo.com/386179496)

Danakil Depression, Ethiopia

LLANSÓ: It’s very tough, as you know. It’s one of the hottest places on Earth, hot enough that at night you have to sleep in temperatures over 100 degrees. And there’s been tribal warfare in that area, and border conflicts with Eritrea. In 2008, eight tourists were killed. I wanted to film there because it really feels like the end of the world. And to capture the beautiful yellow and orange colors there, from all the sulphate.

There is still a certain poetry in such places that humans are not able to conquer. I think we somehow need it. That experience of being small, of being powerless. You know, to cope with the universe, or nature and realize: “Well, I’m not God.” And since you’ve been to Dallol, you know what I’m saying. You feel vulnerable, because if your car crashes, you’re going to be fucked. Or if you run out of water, you probably have two or three hours before you’re dead. But now they want to build a road through it, because that place is so rich in minerals. So even the end of the world isn’t safe from the claws of capitalism. We’ll probably have to go all the way to Mars now to experience just how small a human being is.

ELKINS: What are you working on next?

LLANSÓ: Ah, I’m finishing a film called “Jesus Shows You The Way To The Highway.” The next Afro-futuristic sci-fi. It’s a film shot in Ethiopia, Latvia, Spain and Estonia. I wanted to do something international, where Ethiopia is not the entire focus this time, but it’s included in an international spy plot.

Japanese and British Editions of Philip K. Dick

ELKINS: I actually live within walking distance of the apartment where Philip K. Dick used to live. Where he wrote Valis, A Scanner Darkly, The Divine Invasion, and several other of his later novels. 

LLANSÓ: That’s incredible!

ELKINS: I recently went there just to see if anyone remembered him. I was hoping there would be some old manager who had been there for decades and maybe known him. But it turns out there’s no rental office, and no one had ever heard of him. But, of course, the residents I spoke with had heard of Bladerunner.

LLANSÓ: So they remember the film, but not the writer?

ELKINS: Exactly.

LLANSÓ: Oh, Jesus. Wow, that’s strange for a small city, right?

ELKINS: Fullerton has a strange relationship to its own history. The Fender guitar was invented here. Richard Nixon and Jackson Browne went to high school here. PKD wrote his greatest novels here. Many seminal early punk bands came from here, like The Adolescents, Social Distortion, DI, The Mechanics, and The Middle Class. But none of these things are widely known or commemorated in Fullerton, outside its underground art scene.

I actually grew up right up the street from the Galaxy Roller Rink, which helped foster bands like Black Flag and Circle Jerks in the early '80s. Raymond Pettibon used to do flyers for the place. In high school, I used to run into Mike Ness of Social Distortion all the time downtown, and I still regularly see Tim Maag from DI and The Cramps there.

LLANSÓ: Wow, so much interesting research to be done on Fullerton. I read about Fullerton in Emmanuel Carrer's biography on P.K.Dick. "Valis" always blew my mind. I hope I can make a film about it (or inspired by) one day. The 70's, California, psycodelia... WOW!

ELKINS: I can help you a little bit with research. My friend Jesse Latour started a zine store called Bookmachine in Fullerton, where he's self-published zines on PKD's life in Fullerton, as well as the local punk scene. I'll send you both!

LLANSÓ: Well, then I'll send you a surprise package as well.

ELKINS: Can't wait!

After receiving his package of zines + homemade Philip K. Dick t-shirt, Miguel sent this "happiness picture". Miguel in turn sent a vinyl release of his “Extinción De Los Insectos” EP.