Philippe Lacôte

My next feature, 7 Gold Thieves, is largely set in New York among Harlem’s African diaspora. The film takes place across several generations between West Africa and the USA, across the Atlantic, but mainly within a Harlem Sufi community, the Tidjane. It is a deep dive into a little-known world, its codes, and its rituals.

I intend to immerse myself in this community and portray it from the inside, following the documentary approach that I like to bring to my fiction films. In order to connect with members of this community, I will reach out to my existing contacts in the Tidjane community in Côte d’Ivoire, and meet anthropologist Zain Abdullah (the author of Black Mecca: The African Muslims of Harlem) who will teach me about the history of these communities and point me in the right direction.

Broadly speaking, the film will be a portrait of the historic Black neighborhood of Harlem and its African immigrant population. I will scout the area thoroughly with a view to gaining a better grasp of how these communities operate. With this in mind, I plan to meet City College of New York professor Boukary Sawadogo, the Harlem-based Burkinabè author of Africans in Harlem (2022), which is an invaluable resource for learning all about the neighborhood’s history from an African immigrant standpoint.

This residency with Villa Albertine will be a chance to tap into the pulse of New York and Harlem, document the world of Sufism, and hone my filmmaker’s eye for creating a personal film that is rooted in a specific reality.

Some years back, while walking around Harlem, I was surprised to hear the sounds of Mooré and other languages of West Africa – the very same as those spoken in Abidjan. An Ivorian childhood friend of mine was working as a New York cab driver and had invited me over to visit “her” city. She explained that the changes introduced with the Immigration Act of 1965 led to an influx of West African immigrants to New York City, which has further accelerated since 2010, resulting in the enclave that Harlem locals now call “Little Africa.”

Harlem’s history has revolved around the African American experience. Harlem has an undeniably rich heritage of Black culture and politics with the likes of the Harlem Renaissance movement, its African American population, its civil rights leaders, and its icons of culture and literature. They have contributed to Harlem’s renown both in New York and among Black populations the world over.

Now, following a new goal from the perspective of a different kind of diversity, I want to discover part of the untold story of African migrants to Harlem. Of all the diasporas that have populated the United Sates, this one is quite recent. It is the subject of academic research, but is rarely portrayed in cinema. I will travel to Harlem to meet residents belonging to the African diaspora in order to understand and document their ways of life, while also visiting the cultural and research sites that make up the social and geographical fabric of the neighborhood, such as The Africa Center and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.