Free Thinking

Original version

BBC Radio 3 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced Third Programme.

BBC Radio 3

Radio 3

Discussion & Talk

Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media

BBC Radio 4

Intelligent speech, the most insightful journalism, the wittiest comedy, the most fascinating features and the most compelling drama and readings anywhere in UK radio.

The ideas shaping our lives today - with artists and thinkers in debates and interviews.

The ideas shaping our lives today - with leading artists and thinkers in extended interview and debate.

Free Thinking: Touki Bouki

Touki Bouki

BBC Radio 4 - Free Thinking, Touki Bouki

A close look at Djibril Diop Mambéty's classic 1973 film with Matthew Sweet and guests.

The Journey of the Hyena mixes West African oral traditions with French New Wave and Soviet influences. Matthew Sweet and his guests look at a classic of African cinema.

A motorbike adorned with a zebu skull is one of the central images of Djibril Diop Mambéty's classic 1973 film, whose title translates as The Journey of the Hyena. Listed as one of the 100 greatest films of all time in the Sight and Sound magazine poll, it mixes West African oral traditions with influences from the French New Wave and Soviet cinema.  Mory and Anta are two young people growing up in a newly independent Senegal who fantasise about leaving Dakar for a new life in France, but how can they realise those dreams and do they really want to leave?  Matthew Sweet is joined by New Generation Thinker Sarah Jilani, Estrella Sendra Fernandez and Ashley Clark. Touki Bouki is being screened at the BFI London on July 27th as part of the Black Fantastic season of films drawing on science fiction, myth and Afrofuturism.  The curator of that season Ekow Eshun joined Shahidha Bari in a recent Free Thinking episode which you can find on BBC Sounds and as the Arts and Ideas podcast. 

Sarah Jilani is a lecturer in English at City, University of London and has written on neocolonialism in Francophone West African cinema.

Estrella Sendra Fernandez lectures in film and screen studies at SOAS, University of London.  She directed the award-winning documentary film Témoignages de l’autre côté about migration in Senegal. 

Ashley Clark is curatorial director at the Criterion Collection. He is the author of the book Facing Blackness: Media and Minstrelsy in Spike Lee’s “Bamboozled” 

Producer: Torquil MacLeod

Image: Mareme Niang (Right), and Magaye Niang in a still from the film Touki Bouki Le Voyage de la Hyène, 1973 Senegal. Director: Djibril Diop Mambéty.
Image credit: Alamy

In the Free Thinking archives you can find a series of programmes exploring silent film, star actors including Jean-Paul Belmondo, Marlene Dietrich, Dirk Bogarde, and classics of cinema around the world including Kurosawa's Rashomon, Satyajit Ray's films, the films of Jacques Tati and Charlie Chaplin.

Live music and the arts: broadcasts more live music than any other radio network. Classical music is its core. Genres include world and new music, jazz, speech and drama.

Accessibility links

Programme Index

Free Thinking

Touki Bouki

Genres

Brand

BBC Radio 3

About BBC Radio 3