Léandre-Alain Baker

Léandre-Alain Baker is an actor and film director from the Central African Republic.

Career Baker was born in Bangui in the Central African Republic. He is a national of the Republic of the Congo and now lives in Paris. He is an author, actor and stage director. Working with the writer Emmanuel Dongala he animated the Théâtre de l’Éclair in Brazzaville. He has directed short and feature-length films, and two documentary films on writers Sony Lab'ou Tansi and Tchicaya U Tam'si. As an actor, he has played in several films and TV movies.

Work

Baker is the author of several novels and plays. In 1993, he began to make short films. He released his first feature film, the documentary Diogène à Brazzaville, a portrait of the Congolese writer Sony Labou Tansi. Three years later he followed this with a portrait of the writer Tchicaya U Tam'si. His short film Les Oranges de Belleville about a blind man was one of fifteen films from fifteen different directors combined into the movie Paris, la métisse de 2005.

His first feature-length fiction film was Ramata (2007), a drama with the model Katoucha Niane in the title role. It tells of a Senegalese woman who, aged 50, discovers the pleasures of the flesh in the arms of a little thug 25 years younger. Ramata was released in France in 2011. The film was adapted from a novel by Abasse Ndione.