Directory of World Cinema: Africa 1783203919, 9781783203918

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AFRICA

STEFANSON PETTY

DIRECTORY OF WORLD CINEMA AFRICA

Eschewing the postcolonial hubris that suggests Africa could only define itself in relation to its colonisers, a problem plaguing many studies published in the West on African cinema, this entry in the Directory of World Cinema series instead looks at African film as representing Africa for its own sake, values and artistic choices. With a film industry divided by linguistic heritage, African directors do not have the luxury of producing comedies, thrillers, horror films or even love stories except perhaps as DVDs that do not travel far outside their country of production. Instead, African directors tend to cover serious, sociopolitical ground, even under the cover of comedy, in the hopes of finding funds outside Africa. Contributors to this volume draw on filmic representations of the continent to consider the economic role of women, rural exodus, economic migration, refugees and diasporas, culture, religion and magic as well as representations of children, music, languages and symbols. A survey of national cinemas in one volume, Directory of World Cinema: Africa is a necessary addition to the bookshelf of any cinephile and world traveller.

Directory of World Cinema ISSN 2040-7971 Directory of World Cinema eISSN 2040-798X Directory of World Cinema: Africa ISBN 978-1-78320-391-8 Directory of World Cinema: Africa eISBN 978-1-78320-392-5

www.worldcinemadirectory.org intellect | www.intellectbooks.com

DIRECTORY OF WORLD CINEMA AFRICA

EDITED BY BLANDINE STEFANSON AND SHEILA PETTY

DIRECTORY OF

WORLD

CINEMA

EDITED BY BLANDINE STEFANSON AND SHEILA PETTY

Volume 30

directory of world cinema AFRICA

Edited by Blandine Stefanson and Sheila Petty

intellect Bristol, UK / Chicago, USA

First published in the UK in 2014 by Intellect Books, The Mill, Parnall Road, Fishponds, Bristol, BS16 3JG, UK First published in the USA in 2014 by Intellect Books, The University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th Street, Chicago, IL 60637, USA Copyright © 2014 Intellect Ltd All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Publisher: May Yao Publishing Managers: Jelena Stanovnik and Heather Gibson Cover photograph: L’Extraordinaire destin de Madame Brouette/Madame Brouette (Moussa   Sene Absa, Canada/Senegal/France, 2002) © Prod. de la Lanterne Cover designer: Holly Rose Copy-editor: Emma Rhys Typesetter: John Teehan Directory of World Cinema ISSN 2040-7971 Directory of World Cinema eISSN 2040-798X Directory of World Cinema: Africa ISBN 978-1-78320-391-8 Directory of World Cinema: Africa eISBN 978-1-78320-392-5

Printed and bound by Short Run Press, UK.

contents

directory of world cinema

AFRICA Acknowledgements

5

Introduction 6 Films of the Year A Screaming Man The Pirogue Eighteen Days

10

Directors 19 Abderrahmane Sissako Osvalde Lewat Darrell Roodt Francois Verster Modes of Production 31 What is African Cinema? The   Industries of African Cinema French Funding and African   Francophone Cinema Bongo Movies: A Modern African   Film Industry in Tanzania Aesthetics 41 Scoring African Cinema Locations: Authentic or  Substituted Festival Focus Fespaco Film Festival African Film Festivals Around   the World

47

Drama 54 Essay Reviews Documentary 86 Essay Reviews Comedy 120 Essay Reviews

Social Issues Essay Reviews

152

Childhood in African Cinema Essay Reviews

190

Literary Adaptation Essay Reviews

220

History and Film Essay Reviews

254

Screening War, Surviving War Essay Reviews

284

Africa Seen by ‘Outsiders’:  Invention, Idea, Method Essay Reviews

312

Surreal 338 Essay Reviews (Home) Video Films from  Nigeria and Ghana Essay Reviews

362

Recommended Reading

384

African Cinema Online

399

Test Your Knowledge

406

Notes On Contributors

411

Filmography 418

Directory of World Cinema

acknowledGEMents

Directory of World Cinema

The editors wish to thank the directors of Intellect Books, Masoud Yazdani and May Yao for their initiative in creating the World Cinema Directory collection and for including African cinemas in this collection. Thanks are due to Intellect's editors and to all contributors for their interesting film reviews and other entries, without which the Directory could never have come to fruition. Special mention must be made of some generous supporters of this project, in particular, Melanie Wilmink, Saër Maty Bâ, Michael Carklin, Madelaine Hron, Sada Niang and Rosa Abidi. The publisher and the editors are grateful to Cornelius Moore for his generous permission to use his California Newsreel collection of African film stills.

Acknowledgements 5

Directory of World Cinema

Introduction by the EditorS

The publisher’s decisions and the editors’ solutions Intellect must be commended for their Directory of World Cinema series, a title that states its intention to promote the cinemas of the world to a large readership and does not refer to some unified, transnational but non-American style of cinema as sometimes does the phrase ‘world music’. The collection offers African cinemas a rare occasion to benefit from worldwide exposure on equal terms with many better known cinemas. Outside western universities that teach African studies and cities that host African film festivals, African cinema remains little known if not terra incognita, with the exception, however, of some South African and Egyptian successes. African cinema is not in an exceptional dead-end. All countries face increasing difficulty distributing their films, not only abroad but even at home. Turan (2002: 8) explains how the film festival proliferation is a replacement distribution method for lack of means to conduct campaigns with film stars and commercial paraphernalia. Even France does the round of film festivals to market its films in the English-speaking world. Let us hope this volume will be an imaginary, enticing and convenient festival of African films. The problematic or composite nature of African cinema is discussed in the next introductory entry by Allison McGuffie: ‘What is African Cinema? The Industries of African Cinema’. This contributor looks into the origins of cinema made in Africa in the heydays of colonization, followed by the emergence of independent African film-makers: either post-independence auteurs that mostly rely on outside funding or, more recently, self-sufficient directors-cum-producers who rely on video/digital equipment. Concurrently, many education and development advocates – whether African or foreign – continue to make films about Africa with local government subsidies and/or international aid. Celebrated Senegalese director Ousmane Sembène is not lionized in this Directory because many available publications are devoted to him – Pfaff (1984), Petty (1996), Murphy (2000), and in particular since his death in 2007, Présence Francophone 71 (2008), Africultures 76 (2009), Gadjigo (2010) and Fofana (2013). The ‘Elder of the Elders’ no longer dominates the West African film scene but the spirit of his filmmaking survives among the new generations. Many films reviewed hereunder are replete with raw emotions that are all the more powerful because the narrative means are not obfuscated by spectacular stunts and machinery (with some South African exceptions). Inventive and affordable means of production combined with clever scripts procure moving scenes and surprising twists of danger or kindness. The three ‘films of the year’ illustrate the topicality and urgency of films that point to Olivier Barlet’s enlightening formula – ‘l’imaginaire de l’utopie’ (‘imagined forms of utopia’) – that suggests what African cinema has to offer spectators throughout the

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world (2012:10 – 13): some hope or relief in the face of insurmountable odds. These relatively recent films – (Mahamat-Saleh Haroun’s Un Homme qui crie/A Screaming Man (Chad, 2010), Moussa Touré’s La Pirogue/The Pirogue (Senegal, 2012) and Tamantashar Yom/Eighteen Days (a collective production from Egypt, 2011) – deal with urgent issues such as competition for employment even within families and the helplessness or bravery that drives people to risk their lives by joining dangerous migration schemes or political riots. These three films, like many others reviewed in the volume, lay out unusual options of despair or reconciliation, poetry or laughter, and are deemed to confront other audiences with their own choices. Intellect submitted to the editors two challenging guidelines regarding the structure of an African volume in the Directory of World Cinema series: first, the concept of a single volume for a continent rather than national volumes, as is the preferred format for even small European countries such as Belgium or Denmark; second, the focus on film reviews as the backbone of the book. A third editorial decision, namely the classification of the film reviews into film genres, was more negotiable. The idea of looking at African film production on the continental scale is indeed a challenge. Despite the disproportionate ambition to broach so many cinemas and without any delusion of being fair to some 58 African countries, we did not want to divide the volume into chapters devoted to linguistic areas or national cinemas, as it already is the most common approach to African cinema. Indeed, countries such as South Africa, Egypt, Nigeria, Senegal, Cameroon or Morocco have already inspired books on their national cinemas and could sustain a volume of their own in the Directory of World Cinema series. Such compartmentalized presentation in the African Directory would, however, replicate the segmented view of Africa defined by the former colonial empires and would also exclude many countries that would not have enough films to justify a chapter yet have demonstrated their potential filmmaking capability, for example Chad, Gabon or Malawi. Eventually, just as Intellect have already published a volume on South America alongside Latin American national volumes (Argentina, Cuba), individual African countries remain a later option for the collection. The first irksome decision we had to make, as editors, pertained to the concept of Africa. In African studies, it is now commonplace to subscribe to Mudimbe’s concept of ‘invention’ of Africa, to borrow his most famous title, The Invention of Africa (1988) to appropriate the notion that Africa was invented by the West for exploitation purposes. The divide between North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa is also a western concept. ‘Sub-Saharan Africa’ may have been a convenient phrase in titles on African studies (including films studies) to define the arbitrary separation of ‘Arab Africa’ from ‘Black Africa’, but this racial concept is not supported by Africans. Contemporary African political institutions such as the African Union Organisation (AUO), which was re-founded as African Union (AU) in 2001, film festivals and sports events do not make this separation between north and south of the Sahara. On the political front, ‘Black’ African countries at various times elected Hosni Mubarak from Egypt and Muammar Gaddafi from Libya as President of AUO and AU, perhaps because both Egypt and Libya had more financial means to host international meetings. Conversely, in July 2013, the African Union excluded Egypt from its membership in retaliation against the military deposition of elected President Morsi. The political and cultural interconnection between North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa has become a dramatic reality for neighbouring countries, such as Chad throughout the 1990s as well as Mali and Niger in 2013. On the cultural side, the two great African film festivals (FESPACO in Ouagadougou [Burkina Faso] and Journées Cinématographiques de Carthage [JCC, Tunisia]) alternate years and grant their awards upon merit to film-makers from either the Maghreb or sub-Saharan Africa including South Africa.

Introduction 7

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In recent years, academics and film critics have become more aware of the need to repudiate the concept of North Africa as being part of the Middle East rather than Africa. Researcher associations, such as Saharan Crossroads, organize conferences on the historical links between north and south of the Sahara (WARA 2013). This trend is also noticeable in recent publications on African cinema. Roy Armes’s survey of new generations of directors in African Filmmaking: North and South of the Sahara (2006) and Olivier Barlet’s Le cinéma d’Afrique des années 2000 (published in 2012), have benefited from looking at Africa as a whole, even though these authors’ motivation could have been practical since the total number of African films produced per year gets a healthy boost from the inclusion of arabophone countries into the African continent. Our volume’s inclusion of a few films from the Maghreb heightens cultural and thematic affinities without claiming to investigate intercultural links. Out of this intermixing of films from all over the continent, some countries that are not usually placed side by side emerge as having a comparable film heritage, if not a comparable productivity. Algeria, Angola and South Africa, who have suffered bitter liberation wars because they were settlement colonies, are rich in film adaptations that include historical and political dramas. Liberation literature preceded and inspired the development of protest cinema in these countries as attested by Ahmed Rachedi’s, L’Opium et le bâton/Al-afyun wal-asa/Opium and the Stick (1969) reviewed in the chapter ‘History and Film’ as well as Sarah Maldoror’s Sambizanga (1972) and Ramadan Suleman’s Fools (1997) reviewed in the chapter ‘Literary Adaptation’. A dictionary in alphabetical order would presume that readers already know most filmmakers or film titles they want to read about. Roy Armes (2008: 5) collated information on 1,250 film-makers and 4,500 African feature films from 37 countries. The present Directory does not claim any such inventory and endeavours to define various types of films from the continent. The advantage of reviews over a historical survey is that rather than skimming over the production from afar by mentioning numerous titles, the Directory focuses on some 130 films only. Specialist reviewers give the readers compulsive reasons to see the films by providing information on the historical and cultural background of each film and/or analysis of film-making mostly achieved on a shoestring.

Rationale for the chapters The classification recommended by Intellect is based on genres, as defined by the British Film Institute. Historically, this concept of classification emanated from Anglo-American production companies that decided to make popular genre films for profit. It does not at first glance apply to African countries where a film project usually comes from individuals who are inspired to represent their African reality without any tried-and-trusted model. Indeed, we had few opportunities to procure a name for the entry ‘studio’ in the reviews’ data list, and many African production companies entered for ‘producers’ are in fact owned by the film-makers themselves. Nevertheless, the need to classify films into genres has prompted some critics to perceive village stories set in the Sahel as ‘Fespaco films’ or even more condescendingly ‘calabash films’. Férid Boughedir (2000: 120) also made fun of films steeped in magic, as though it were a requirement of western donors in search of the picturesque. We should perhaps think of trends rather than genres to define particular contexts. Survival in the city may supersede the search for identity that characterized the 1980s – the ‘return to the sources’ (Diawara 1992) – since many films of the last decade are set in African capitals rather than villages. We have opted for a compromise between genres and themes for three main reasons. First, many reviews could be placed in one category or the other because they combine various structures and techniques that define separate genres (drama, comedy and documentary). Feature films structured like documentaries are favoured by several

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directors from the francophone regions (for example Sissako in La Vie sur terre/Life on Earth [Mauritania, 1998] and Raoul Peck in Quelques jours en avril/Sometimes in April [set in Rwanda, 2005]. Second, a genre, say comedy, appears episodically as diversion to a tragic story. Third, the placement of a review in a particular genre depends as much on the reviewer’s interpretation of a film under scrutiny as on the director’s techniques, since film techniques are only at the service of a film-maker. The review of Na Cidade Vazla/Hollow City (Maria Ganga, 2004, Angola), for example, appears in ‘Screening War’ rather than in ‘Childhood’ because through its choice of techniques, such as showing a child who makes vital decisions in silence and alone, the film glimpses post-war freedom of choice and recovery for the whole population. Sadly indeed, the chapter ‘Screening War’, introduced by Madelaine Hron, includes three films that deal with children’s experience and role in wartime. In his introduction to ‘Childhood in African Cinema’, Michael Carklin shows that African boys and girls are pushed into responsibilities far beyond their age. Obviously, war causes or aggravates this tendency in economically deprived societies. Saër Maty Bâ’s chapter ‘Africa Seen by Outsiders’ extends the conundrum of coproduction and a foreign director’s legitimate perspective in a film set in Africa. Independent and effervescent Nollywood, introduced by Melanie Wilmink in the chapter ‘(Home) Video-films from Nigeria and Ghana’, is an invitation to read the many recent publications on this topic (Special Nollywood: Journal of African Cinemas [4: 1, 2012]; Krings and Okome 2013). Finally, a placement also occurs with a view to balancing the chapters. We did not have enough reviews of musicals to justify a chapter and since our entries on musical films focus on the films’ content rather than their musical specificity, we redistributed them into drama, comedy or literary adaptation. Readers will not fail to notice a majority of films from countries that share French as an official language, but this bias is not deliberate. It so happens that contributors who can write in English generally specialize in countries that have kept French as an official language rather than Arabic or Portuguese, with the exception of scholars devoted to the national cinema of South Africa or to the production of video-films in Nigeria, Ghana and Tanzania. Finally, readers who are disappointed that their favourite films or directors received little or no attention in this first edition are urged to contact the publisher and contribute entries for the second edition.

Blandine Stefanson

Introduction 9

Directory of World Cinema

FILMS OF THE YEAR A Screaming Man / Un Homme qui crie (Mahamat-Saleh Haroun, 2010) The Pirogue / La Pirogue (Moussa Touré, 2012) Eighteen Days / Tamantashar Yom (Various, 2011)

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A Screaming Man Un Homme qui crie Countries of Origin:

Chad France Languages:

Chadian Arabic French Studio:

Pili Films Goï Goï Productions Entre Chien et Loup Fonds Sud Director:

Synopsis Father and son, Adam and Abdel (Youssouf Djaoro and Diouc Koma), fool around in a pool, competing to see who can stay underwater the longest. The tension is already palpable as the son takes ages to resurface. We can guess it is not the first time that they have competed like this. But this time, it is the son who wins, the father getting older. Unlike his father, Adam, Abdel is full of life, living for the moment. Adam’s whole life is structured around his position as pool attendant at a luxury hotel in N’Djamena, Chad’s capital. During a scene in which a neighbour disturbs his family life, it is made clear that he hates change and intrusion. When the hotel changes management, Abdel is assigned Adam’s position. The father is demoted to parking attendant and the son welcomes his promotion because, as he tries in vain to explain to his father, he has new responsibilities. His girlfriend Djénéba is expecting a baby. Under the pressures of the civil war, Adam makes a decision that he will regret. A Screaming Man was awarded the Jury Prize at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival.

Mahamat-Saleh Haroun

Critique

Producers:

The father and son rivalry is not straightforward, but if the war had not complicated their relationship, making Adam lose his head, it could have all been resolved with humour. The director regularly punctuates the film with comic moments which, far from weakening the dramatic content of the narrative, on the contrary heighten it. Like Hitchcock, Haroun believes in humour and triviality’s power of amplification. Far more than a dramatic music score would have, or the crescendos of violence that western films set in Africa cultivate so freely, tiny, seemingly innocuous details contribute most effectively to heightening the tension. A Screaming Man is not sombre; Adam evolves in the light, in clarity. The touches of humour bring him closer to us, and give some relief to the spectator caught up in his tension. It is a very fine line to draw, which gives us the measure of this director’s mastery, a director who knows just how much the little elements of life construct a narrative more effectively than pedantic explanations. Ellipses and incertitude thereby destabilize us sufficiently to keep us constantly involved. Adam’s choices do not conform to rules or customs but that does not absolve him of his moral responsibilities. A Screaming Man is thus in direct continuity with Daratt, saison sèche/Daratt, Dry Season (2006), Haroun’s previous film. Rather than letting himself get trapped in the commonly accepted norms, such as vengeance or pardon, in Daratt, young Atim asserted his own free will, establishing himself as a thinking, acting individual, his own inventiveness being the only hope of escaping the vicious circle of violence. In A Screaming Man, Adam does not play by the rules either. He is quite simply human, in his weakness, guilt and dignity. Adam bears the name of the first man on earth, and it is this relationship to origin that is in question. The paradigm of the father–son relationship is nonetheless considerably different to

Florence Stern Sékou Traoré Screenwriter:

Mahamat-Saleh Haroun Cinematographer:

Laurent Brunet Music:

Wasis Diop Yaya Idris Bassa Djénéba Koné Editor:

Marie-Hélène Dozo Duration:

90 minutes Genre:

Drama Cast:

Youssouf Djaoro Diouc Koma Djénéba Koné Emil Abossolo M’bo Marius Yelolo Year:

2010

Films of the Year 11

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12 Africa

A Screaming Man

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that which Souleymane Cissé depicted in Yeelen, la lumière/ Yeelen, Brightness (1987). If the father in both cases fears that his son will take his place, Cissé portrayed this archetypal opposition as embodying a fatal breakdown in the transfer of knowledge. In A Screaming Man, Adam and Abdel are the best buddies in the world. They complement one another looking after the pool until the new Chinese owner of the hotel plays them off against each other. It is only when military-dictatorial arbitrariness, incarnated by the District Chief (Emil Abossolo M’bo), combines with that of economic rationalization that things go awry. He whom everyone calls ‘Champ’ turns out to be impotent, in the image of the cook, David (Marius Yelolo), who is just as powerless to fight against Goliath. From simply feeling old, Adam is confronted with a considerably more dramatic Cornelian dilemma, but in both cases his range of choices is economically limited. Haroun’s force was to make this a question of moral conscience, whereas Cissé portrayed it as a question of duty, denouncing a father who, in his refusal to convey his magical knowledge to his son, became a vital threat to him. This represents a major evolution in African film: it is no longer a question of reminding man of his duties to guarantee a future for the community, but of placing each and every one before his/her own responsibilities in a world that is becoming harsher. How are people to survive in such a world in order to preserve their integrity? ‘Our problem is that we put our destiny in God’s hands,’ says the cook bitterly. It is indeed the here and now of consciousness that one should look into. In this respect, although Haroun refrains from imposing anything, he is as much a realist as Sembène who offered the spectator ethical guidance in the face of corrupt authorities, patriarchy and obsolete traditions. Haroun’s characters are full of contradictions and are never models or heroes to identify with. They try to get by in a violent world. Haroun’s aesthetics are thus in all respects more open-ended. Adam and his wife Mariam have already opened their arms to a coming generation. Djénéba restores time, which had come to a standstill. This aesthetic openness also lies in the confidence in the power of the image, which is always meaningful, dialogues being scarce. A magnificent tracking shot down a corridor follows Adam and his friend, David the cook, as they discuss their concern about the war. The more trapped Adam becomes, the more he is filmed in interiors, in narrow streets or in front of walls. In his final excursion, the shots broaden out to more open form. The soundtrack is minimalist, often silent, making the sounds of the menacing war – sirens, artillery fire – more perceptible in the background. The radio punctuates the day-to-day tension. Poetically, the film evokes rather than states: the light, frames, chromatic unity, shot composition and a composed rhythm conjointly amplify the filmic discourse. Perspectives heighten what is felt, perceived, like the vanishing lines of the reed hangings as Adam watches Djénéba sing an infinitely sad song that it would have been superfluous to translate. The viewpoint speaks in the place of the character, like when, through the curtains, Adam watches the soldiers grabbing his

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son Abdel framed by the right-hand window, his crying wife, by the left-hand one. Touches of humour constantly contribute to opening this frame, reminding us that the theatre of life is thus, like in the delightful fixed shot of the family meal in which father and son only speak to one another when the mother has to leave the scene. Haroun makes the most of the wonderful Marius Yelolo’s brio, whose skills he already largely used in his television drama, Sexe, gombo et beurre salé/Sex, Okra and Salted Butter (Arte, 2007). David the cook thus gives a tragicomic echo to the character Adam, whom Youssouf Djaoro plays with an impressive interiority, on a par with his performance in Daratt, in which he played a former torturer turned paternal figure. Haroun’s cinema may seem to veer towards pessimism in its increasingly heightened awareness of the difficulties of the world. A Screaming Man and Expectations (2008) end more tragically than Bye Bye Africa (1999) and Abouna, notre père/Abouna, Our Father (2002). But it is never overwhelming. There are tears on several occasions in A Screaming Man, but always with discretion, in a film that isn’t afraid to show them, like in the impressive zoomin that reveals Adam’s watery eyes. The characters cry alone, on a screen that becomes veiled, for these tears are cries in a space in which cries are not heard. The African man’s cry is lost in the desert of indifference or, worse still, in the contemptuousness of stereotypes. ‘A screaming man is not a dancing bear’ – in the image of Aimé Césaire’s incisive words, this film is a stone thrown in the mire of paternalism, compassion and misunderstandings to restore the consciousness of an African man fighting to not lose his footing in the face of the violence done to him. Haroun develops such maturity, such mastery here, and in such simplicity, that the contemporary character of his message imposes itself without him having to overstate it. A Screaming Man is a major work, which forcefully contributes to inscribing Africans in a humanity that has been, and still so often is, refused to them. This review was adapted from O Barlet’s critique published in English on the Africultures website, 26 May 2010.

Olivier Barlet

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The Pirogue La Pirogue Countries of Origin:

Senegal France Germany Languages:

Wolof Pulaar (Fulani) French Studio:

Les Chauves-Souris Arte France Cinéma Canal+ Astou Films Evangelischer Entwicklungsdienst (EED) Rezo Films Director:

Moussa Touré Producers:

Adrien Magne Éric Névé Alexandra Swenden Oumar Sy Screenwriters:

Éric Névé David Bouchet, based on a novel by Abasse Ndione Cinematographer:

Thomas Letellier Music:

Prince Ibrahima Ndour Editor:

Josie Miljevic Duration:

87 minutes Genre:

Drama Cast:

Souleymane Seye Ndiaye Laïty Fall Mama Astou Diallo

Synopsis The story starts in one of Dakar’s fishing quarters where Captain Baye Laye (Souleymane Seye Ndiaye), an experienced seafarer and family man, gives in to the pressures of Lansana (Laïty Fall), a businessman who deals in human cargo and who persuades him to take 30 migrants to Spain via the Canary Islands. The passengers, from different parts of Senegal and Guinea, do not know each other and are determined to make it in Europe. Most of them have never seen the sea and have no idea what is in store for them. Nafy (Mama Astou Diallo), a female stowaway, adds to the ambient tension. Ominously, the group soon encounters a similar ‘pirogue’ that is drifting, having run out of food and fuel. The crossing is a trial of strength that reveals everyone’s motivations. The Pirogue was nominated for the category Un Certain Regard at Cannes 2012 and it was awarded the Bronze Stallion at FESPACO 2013.

Critique It would appear that African film-makers who reside in Africa do not often broach the topic of emigration routes in fiction. Such subject matter is sensitive and topical since the number of people who attempt to leave the African coasts to reach Spain is steadily increasing. Their ordeal was invoked by Moroccan director Mohamed Abderrahmane Tazi in À la recherche du mari de ma femme/Looking for my Wife’s Husband (1993) and was more recently revived by Merzak Allouache in Harragas/Les Brûleurs – ‘Those who burn’ (leaving no traces) – (Algeria, 2009). On the other hand, West African film-makers seem to distance themselves from the voyage itself to favour documentaries about the consequences of immigration on the migrants’ life conditions in exile. In this context, Senegalese director Moussa Touré sets himself apart by choosing to take the spectators onboard The Pirogue. This compelling fiction shows upfront the fate of passengers on a wooden boat heading for Spain. The Pirogue is an intense, tragic journey that ends up in bitterness. Captain Baye Laye has to cope not only with the dangers of the sea but also with the shortages of food, water and petrol while the passengers divide and fight among themselves. Some passengers die and the survivors dispose of the corpses by throwing them overboard. The film exposes a social drama – illegal immigration – but focuses on the human side of the migrating experience. Moussa Touré foregrounds the dignity of his characters as they face adversity. He emphasizes the dramatic tension with meaningful scenes that relentlessly interlink with one another to the end. This is not about judging or establishing the causes of immigration or the violence of African societies that prompt people to leave their homeland; nor is it even about indicting western hostility. Rather, The Pirogue attempts to capture the life of a group of people caught in a ‘no exit’ situation, watching them as they surpass themselves or tear each other apart through the different stages of the crossing.

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Malminé ‘Yalenguen’ Dramé Salif Jean Diallo Bassirou Diakaté Balla Diarra Year:

2012

The structure of the film is classic, linear, setting itself apart from a straightforward account of a current affairs issue. The script is based on a novel by Senegalese writer Abasse Ndione, Mbëkë mi: A l’assaut des vagues de l’Atlantique/Braving the Waves of the Atlantic Ocean (Paris: Gallimard, 2008). The script written by Frenchmen Éric Névé and David Bouchet centres the adaptation on the reduced space of the pirogue in the sea. Touré’s mise-enscène is brisk, cutting from one scene to the other without any lull, occasionally escaping the tension to linger over tree trunks or to brighten up some sequences that lend themselves to chants and music by Prince Ibrahima Ndour. The unremitting rhythm holds the spectators captive, without perhaps managing to allow for dull moments in a voyage undermined by latent periods and the boredom of forced idle time. And so, The Pirogue keeps moving, intent upon its ultimate aim: escape. Moussa Touré’s camera serves his pragmatism. This Senegalese director, who originally trained as an electrician, first made his mark with two fiction features dealing with people on the move: Toubab Bi (1991), which is about a Senegalese man who goes to Paris to train as a film technician and TGV/High Speed Train (1997), about a bus trip from Senegal to Guinea. Since digital cameras have become widely accessible, Moussa Touré has freed himself from costly productions and has made nomadic documentaries, such as Nous sommes nombreuses/There are many of us (2003) about women victims of rape during the 1990s civil war in CongoBrazzaville and Nosaltres/Nous autres/Nosotros/We (2006) about Malian migrants in a village near Barcelona, while continuously questioning the Senegalese reality. In 2012, he made a noticeable return to fiction with The Pirogue, which he shot in Djifer, on the Senegalese Petite Côte (southern coast) thanks to a European co-production. Captaining his own vessel, Moussa Touré makes the most of his Senegalese actors and international crew, and his film cries out about the abuses of the continents. Tossed between African utopias and European mirages, the fate of Africans seems to drift along like a galley forever starting anew the same voyage. This review was adapted by Blandine Stefanson from Michel Amarger’s critique published in French on the Africiné website, 16 October 2012.

Michel Amarger

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Eighteen Days Tamantashar Yom Country of Origin:

Egypt Language:

Arabic with French subtitles Studio:

Collectif 18 Jours Lighthouse Films ASAP Films Video 2000 Film Clinic

Synopsis From 25 January to 11 February 2011, Cairo was in a state of ebullition and the masses agitated under the shock of revolution. Ten film-makers gathered and each agreed to film a short from his or her point of view. The result is a compilation of stories about, among others, inmates in the psychiatric ward of a prison hospital; an Internet buff; a couple arguing the day after ‘The Battle of the Camels’ because the wife wants to join the demonstrators in Tahrir Square to show her solidarity with the movement; a young idealist; a barber; a poor woman with no income to feed her children; an old man and his grandson who miss the curfew and get lost trying to find their way home. All these characters and scenarios represent a composite of Tahrir Square, Egyptian society and its profound contradictions in the twenty-first century.

Directors:

Critique

Ahmad Abdalla Mariam Abu Ouf Kamla Abu Zekri Ahmad Alaa Mohamed Aly Shérif Arafa Sherif El-Bendary Marwan Hamed Khaled Marei Yousry Nasrallah

Eighteen Days is a rare film made by a collective of ten film-makers during the course of two days and without a production budget. The goal of the project was to show ordinary people caught in the throes of the realities of the Egyptian Revolution in 2011. A multiplicity of viewpoints drawing on actual facts, but presented in fiction, resulted in a feature film that was produced almost instantaneously like broadcast media events, but as ten stories from ten different perspectives. It is more interesting than live events recorded from a single journalist’s point of view (Barlet 2011). The first short titled, ‘Retention’, revives the past, showing prisoners of the former regime describing how, as victims of fabricated charges, they were thrown in a penitentiary. At the outbreak of the revolution they are informed of television blackouts, seemingly due to technical issues, but in reality a ruse to hide the outbreak of the revolution, the announcement of Hosni Mubarak’s departure and the seizure of power by the high council of the armed forces. Pro- and anti-Mubarak demonstrators are filling the streets. Meanwhile a pro-Mubarak movement is fighting in the streets. The pro-Mubarak movement shows how the political regimes could manipulate the population by corruption and other illegal means. Marwan Hamed’s short ‘1919’ is not a date in history but the number of the revolutionary character Essam’s unit in jail where he endures torture and all sorts of humiliation from the Egyptian secret service simply because he was demonstrating in Tahrir Square. He ultimately dies from torture and the scene is probably one of the most graphic scenes of police violence in the film. In ‘Revolution Cookies’ by Khaled Marei, a young diabetic who awakens from a four-day coma sets out to inspect the shop he owns. Not realizing he is caught in the middle of a revolution and, fearful for his life, he locks himself in his shop and records events for the rest of the eighteen days of demonstrations. The direction of Eighteen Days is sometimes attributed to Yousry Nasrallah, perhaps the best-known of the ten film-makers.

Producers:

Amin El Masry Mohamed Hefzy Salma Osman Fadi Fahim Ehab El Koury Music:

Ibrahim Shamel Editor:

Pascale Chavance Duration:

125 minutes Genres:

Shorts Political drama Cast: Year:

2011

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His short, ‘Interior/Exterior’, portrays a young couple, Mona and Moustapha, who argue about whether or not they should join the demonstrators in Tahrir Square: Mona wants to but Moustapha is opposed. According to Olivier Barlet (2011), Nasrallah used a small Sony HD camera to film his actors mixing with demonstrators in Tahrir Square. Nasrallah has gone on to direct a feature about the Egyptian Revolution with Baad el Mawkeaa/After the Battle (2012), which focuses on a horseman who was pulled off his horse while charging demonstrators during the famous ‘Battle of the Camels’, which took place on 2 February 2011, when pro-government supporters, some riding camels and horses, clashed with antiMubarak protesters. Although the shorts are made from ten different perspectives, a common theme of solidarity and commitment to social change in the context of the revolution runs throughout the film. The film also cleverly depicts how military regimes exert their strength in the state of siege where all freedoms are denied and institutions of all kinds are paralysed. The grandfather with his grandson, Ali, in ‘Curfew’, returning from the hospital in Suez and unable to reach their house because of military control of the streets is an apt depiction of the unsecured situation that reigns all over the country and an accurate demonstration of how cities are ruled in extraordinary situations in the Arab World. Fear of the unknown leads to confusion with many asking if it is an Israeli invasion of Egypt. Moreover, in the context of all the confusion, many people just wanted a return to the status quo, rather than change or revolution, and the film-makers succeeded in showing this undercurrent within the population. In terms of technical and aesthetic quality, the film-makers were challenged with no production budget and many of the shorts have an urgent, grainy, Italian neo-realist feel to them. The collective’s will and tenacity, however, ensured an engaging final product that is a positive contribution to world cinema. Eighteen Days was screened at the Cannes and Verona Film Festivals in 2011 and at Vues d’Afrique in 2012. The film’s website indicates that all proceeds from the film’s screenings will be directed toward convoys sent to deliver political and civic education throughout Egypt’s villages.

Brahim Benbouazza

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DIRECTORS Abderrahmane Sissako Award-winning film-maker Abderrahmane Sissako was born in 1961 in Kiffa (Mauritania), grew up in Mali and returned to Mauritania aged eighteen to live with his mother. He trained at the VGIK film school in Moscow where he spent twelve years before moving to Paris in 1994. And yet, Sissako is not ‘the archetypal film-maker as exile’ (Armes 2006: 191) because his migrations were half-forced and half-voluntary while his films do not fit neatly into exilic cinema. Sissako makes films ‘accented more fully than those of the exiles by the plurality and performativity of identity […] multiplicity and addition’ (Naficy 2001: 14–15). This essay will explore predominant themes in Sissako’s work, and discuss the fictionalized documentary genre and stylistic aspects of his cinema. Sissako became a film-maker through migrancy, Russian literature, art cinema and 1980s–90s African cinema. In Mauritania, his inability to speak Hassaniya heightened Sissako’s awareness of his surroundings while sharpening his sense of non-verbal communication. That dual process opened a window through which Sissako channelled his desire to tell stories. He wanted to film that window/that important place from where his dream took off and he became a film-maker. This window is both literal and metaphorical in Heremakono: En attendant le bonheur/Heremakono: Waiting for Happiness (2002): in the parts of Mauritania filmed, windows are at floor-level. When Sissako looked through one at his mother’s house, he saw a different world made of parts of bodies, feet, shoes and tyres. Around that time, the Director of the Russian Cultural Centre in Nouakchott (Mauritania) introduced Sissako to writings by Ivan Turgenev, Maxim Gorky and Fyodor Dostoevsky, and helped him secure a bursary to study film in Moscow (Sissako 2003: 37). At VGIK, Sissako’s art cinema influences included La Strada (Fellini, 1954); Ivan’s Childhood (1962) and Andrei Rublev (Tarkovsky, 1966); The Passenger (Antonioni, 1975); Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (Fassbinder, 1974); and films by Ingmar Bergman, John Cassavetes and Luchino Visconti. In Mali, Sissako had grown up watching imagination-stirring spaghetti westerns, especially Sergio Leone’s films (Sissako 2003: 38). During the 1980s and 1990s, African cinema underwent major shifts in film narrative, style and aesthetics: films like Yaaba/Grandmother (Idrissa Ouédraogo, 1989) foregrounded timelessness and a ‘delicate film grammar’ while those like Nyamanton (Cheick Oumar Sissoko, 1986) ushered in a new genre of ‘critical realism’ in African film (Hoefert de Turégano 2003: 31) and films like Bye Bye Africa (Mahamat-Saleh Haroun,

Abderrahmane Sissako

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1999) mixed deliberately documentary and fiction modes of representation. Sissako’s cinema would open new spaces between these strands through key characteristics: light as a metaphor for culture (diverse, unfixable and to be shared); silence as audible; poetic and intellectual film language compelling the spectator to ‘engage her/himself in the image’ (Hoefert de Turégano 2003: 33); and a diasporic aesthetic conveying location, culture and identity as shifting paradigms. Indeed, Sissako multiplies and broadens cinematic language: for example, Bamako (2006) typifies ‘the new pan-African aesthetic’ (Ukadike 2007: 38) because it combines politics, ideology, satire and comedy into an entertaining film exposing neo-exploitation. Sissako’s main themes are neo-exploitation, racial rejection, friendship, timelessness and unmapped borders. Bamako tackles how the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank, World Trade Organisation (WTO) and the G8 rob Africa of its wealth. ‘I staged the film in my family courtyard in order to affirm those to whom we rarely give a voice’ (Sissako 2007a: 31), and yet Bamako is neither a scathing condemnation of ‘African subservience’ and the World Bank (Cousins 2007: 29) nor ‘a call to arms to European and US audiences’ (Jaafar 2007: 30). Instead, Bamako is a measured, playful but assertive questioning of ‘a cynicism so shameful it no longer has a name’ (Sissako 2007b: 39). This cynicism is responsible for hunger, an issue Sissako further explores in Le Rêve de Tiya/Tiya’s Dream (Youtube, 2008), set in Ethiopia. Through a schoolgirl (Tiya) and her dying uncle, the film asks questions like ‘why must millions die everyday while there is enough food on earth?’ Tiya’s Dream and Bamako are part of a thematic continuum of political films on neo-exploitation emerging in Sissako’s work as early as his graduation project, Le Jeu/The Game (VGIK, 1988). The Game espouses the view that war occurs when reason fails as a guiding human principle. Its plot intertwines two narrative threads: a child, Ahmed, plays war games safely at home while his father, a soldier, is executed during an undercover mission. In October (1992), Sissako addressed ‘this disregard for other people’ that goes beyond mere racism. Set in Moscow, the film meditates on forbidden love and traumatic separation between an African student (Idrissa) and a Russian woman (Irina), pregnant with their child. Idrissa’s imminent return home makes communication difficult, resulting in heavy silences, solitude and isolation. October empowers the voiceless but, like Bamako, demonstrates also how exilic-diasporic experience is mobilized to reveal defects in Russian/western culture. October was screened in Paris and ‘I did not even go back [to Moscow]. […] My French exile started that day’ (Sissako 2003: 39). Set in Tunisia, Sissako’s Sabriya-Le Carré de l’échiquier/Sabriya (1997) was one of six dramatic shorts chosen for the continent-wide project ‘Africa Dreaming’ television series on the broad theme of love. In Sissako’s film, friendship is challenged by eroticism, obsession and mystery. When Youssef meets ‘a [seductive], mysterious westernised woman’ (Armes 2006: 192) named Sarah on a train, he ignores his close friend Saïd in order to follow and spy on Sarah as she poses in a tight wet dress, a miniskirt and a swimsuit. An appalled Saïd leaves just to end up boarding the same train as Youssef and meeting a woman who uncannily resembles Sarah. Friendship is also central to Rostov-Luanda (1997) in which Sissako searches for his friend Alfonso Baribanga in war-torn Angola. The film reiterates his commitment to universality and to telling other peoples’ stories; Sissako conducts interviews with ‘a kind of patchwork of […] all countries’ (Sissako 2003: 40) in parts of Angola where Baribanga was least likely to be found. Only on the last day of filming in Luanda does Sissako come across people who knew Baribanga, and give him his address in Berlin. Sissako’s interactions with interviewees and the Angolan landscape signify ‘hope and

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faith in the human spirit, together with nostalgia of a lost world of firm belief’ (Armes 2006: 193). Sissako made his first feature, La Vie sur terre/Life on Earth (1998), while questioning the meaning of film and cinema. He concluded that both were uncertain, ambiguous and demanded patience: ‘one must give time to time. […]. Because making a film is groping about, feeling your way around […]. You’re going through obscurity, fumbling, doubting, hesitating’ (Sissako 2003: 41). Life on Earth attempts to forge relations through family, face-to-face conversation, rudimentary technology (radio, telephone) and a new millennium bearing little hope for Africans. Thus, Life on Earth collapses continents and cultures: Drahmane (Sissako) is an immigrant in France visiting his father’s village (Sokolo, Mali) where life is slow, unaltered. Apart from Nana (a beautiful, mysterious and elusive woman), only anonymous villagers whose ‘repetitive actions and gestures give the film its sense of timelessness’ (Armes 2006: 194) populate Life on Earth. Its aural literary dimension – quotes from Martinican poet and politician Aimé Césaire’s work – voices the film’s cognate concern, i.e. the trial of European colonialism, which anticipates Bamako’s trials. Heremakono is the elliptically told story of 17-year-old Abdallah who arrives in an unnamed coastal town (in fact Nouadhibou, Mauritania) from another unnamed place (maybe, Mali) to say farewell to his mother before migrating to yet another unnamed place (Europe, presumably). These places interconnect through fictitious and real encounters, thus allowing Heremakono to embody the crossings of unmapped borders. Similarly, Heremakono is circular yet open-ended because ‘[t]he function of art is not necessarily to say everything’ (Sissako 2007a: 31). At this juncture then, one could argue that Sissako’s films signify or even embody the style and aesthetics of the fictionalized documentary. Every film has a voice and style. ‘Voice […] is the question of how the logic, argument, or viewpoint of a film gets conveyed to us’ (Nichols 2001: 43, original emphasis). Style shows how a film ‘inflects its subject matter and the flow of its plot or argument in distinct ways […]. Style in fiction derives primarily from the director’s translation of a story in visual form’ (Nichols 2001: 43–44). Voice and style indicate that dividing films between documentary and fiction may be problematic, unless done strictly within teaching/learning contexts: only therein do I suggest that RostovLuanda can be considered a documentary, Heremakono fictional and Bamako a mixture of both styles. Voice and style show that Sissako’s cinema is more about mental states than physical action; characters’ psyches and emotions are prioritized to the point that this cinema is generally slow and ambiguous, and foregrounds estrangement or isolation. In this context, Bamako’s aesthetic favours a Tarkovskyan stretching of time by repeating scenes, voices and ‘juxtapositions to draw attention to a distorted reality’ (Ukadike 2007: 39) arrived at through a deliberate staging of events. This style reiterates Tarkovsky’s ideas that editing, which should not take primacy over time, deals with ‘shots that are already filled with time’ and ‘time passing through shots’ and that, within a single film, shots may ‘record such a radically different kind of time’ that they ‘can’t properly be joined’ (Tarkovsky 1989: 114–17). Indeed, Bamako fuses what Steve Lipkin (2005: 453) calls in another context ‘narrative and documentary modes of representation’, thus being ‘particularly well suited to launch a persuasive argument, when its narrative structure warrants the claims developing from documentary “data”’. Bamako is therefore a docu-drama in which ‘actors’ play versions of themselves while the trial, though emerging from documentary data, is fictionalized. Furthermore, Bamako tells fragmented, subjective truths through silence, non-translation (e.g. the elderly man’s chant towards the end) and an interspersed spoof western, ‘Death in Timbuktu’. This homage to spaghetti western

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shows that genre is mutable through narrative conventions and iconography and exposes Hollywood’s predominance of African screens (small and big) while the significance of Sissako interspersing images of the spoof western – with an audience of mostly children watching it on TV and reacting to it – is visually obvious. Finally, as Sissako explains in Artificial Eye’s DVD release of Bamako DVD (2006), ‘Death in Timbuktu’ inserts extra space within Bamako in order to help the viewer grasp Bamako’s less playful themes and Africans’ responsibility in their neo-exploitation. The Game displays silences, children (Ahmed) and literary quotations, ending with one by Paul Valéry: ‘War is a massacre by people who do not know each other, profiting people who do know each other but never massacre each other.’ These disparate elements combine to emphasize peace by depicting war. The Game has no standard dramatic arc and mirrors the circularity of Sissako’s body of work, beginning with October. October incarnates fragmentary and parallel truths, shifts in time frames, visual frames and viewpoints, and the idea of transforming space into place, in this instance, an uncertain and incomplete process, always in a state of becoming. Likewise, RostovLuanda, which wavers between an autobiographical road trip and a personal essay, attempts to transform space into place. Conversely, Life on Earth’s transformation of space into place is complete. The place (Sokolo) relates to a dispersed subject (Drahmane/Sissako) who had ‘part[ed] from origin and mov[ed] through journey to arrival in a way that transforms […] the origin itself’ (Petty 2008: 128). Thus, while Drahmane can inhabit Sokolo, habitation also triggers his ‘problematics of return’ conveyed by both Césaire’s writing as voice-over/interior monologue and a sense of a choreographed, perpetual mobility within Sokolo, a place criss-crossed by people who do not, or seldom, meet. Similarly, in Heremakono, vague points of departure and arrival add to the film’s elusiveness ‘through tentative allusions and fleeting emotional links’ (Armes 2006: 199). In summary, Sissako’s films mix modes of address, transform representation and open new horizons. Like the horizon, Sissako’s cinema and world-sense aspire to perpetual motion beyond any and all boundaries, and therefore represent revolutionary voices always-already committed to reinventing new poetics.

Saër Maty Bâ

22 Africa

Directory of World Cinema

OSVALDE LEWAT Born in Cameroon in 1976, Osvalde Lewat came to documentary film-making after initially working as a journalist in Cameroon, Canada and France. Her formal training in documentary film-making began after winning a Canadian television competition aimed at young African women directors. The prize brought with it the opportunity for Lewat to study at Montreal’s Institut National de l’Image et du Son (INIS), after which she also trained at the Fondation Européenne pour les Métiers de l’Image et du Son (la Femis) in Paris. While in Canada, Lewat became aware of the racial prejudices experienced by Canadian Aboriginals. This became the subject of her first documentary, a thirteen-minute short called Upsa’Yimoowin/Peace Pipe (2000), which highlighted the issue through the work of a young woman activist. The piece, which continues to be rebroadcast, originally aired on Radio-Canada, Planète, TV5 Afrique and Canal France International (CFI). In 2001, the same channels carried Itilga: Les destinées, Lewat’s 26-minute short featuring a young Cameroonian woman pursuing dreams of becoming a soccer star, a young Cameroonian man who wants to become a famous rapper, and the tensions both face within their respective families because of the particular dream each has chosen to follow. (The rapper Rasyn went on to establish a name for himself in the industry, and in 2009 Lewat featured his music in her documentary Une affaire de nègres/Black Business.) The idea to make her first medium-length documentary, Au delà de la peine/The Forgotten Man (2003), came to Lewat while she was working for the Cameroon Tribune on a newspaper article about prisoners condemned to death at the Yaoundé Central Prison (even though Cameroon supposedly does not have the death penalty). In the prison, Lewat was introduced to an inmate called Leppé, who had originally been sentenced to a four-year term, but was still incarcerated some thirty years later due to his family’s inability to pay off corrupt prison system officials. The documentary traces Leppé’s ordeal and plays a key role in securing his long overdue release, though his newfound freedom, as Lewat’s camera goes on to capture, is quickly overshadowed by the devastating social rejection Leppé faces as a free man. In Un amour pendant la guerre/A Love During the War (2005), a documentary made for TV5, Lewat follows the

Osvalde Lewat

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story of Aziza, a radio journalist and mother of four in Bukavu, separated from her husband Didier who has travelled to Kinshasa to visit his ailing father when the Congo-Kinshasa civil war erupts; it will keep them apart for six years. During that time, Aziza wholly devotes herself and the radio station where she works to the cause of the thousands of women who have become victims of the war’s massive brutal rape campaign. Six years later, when calmer circumstances allow it, Didier insists that Aziza and their children come to him in Kinshasa where it is safer. In the midst of the struggle to rebuild their family relationship, however, Aziza also feels compelled to return to Bukavu. Lewat follows Aziza back to the zone of the ongoing violence, where, to Aziza’s relief, the government has not shut down the radio station, which is key to the organizing efforts that culminate in a huge women’s demonstration against the rapes. The film ends with Didier telling Aziza on the phone that the war is heating up again, implying she must return to Kinshasa before another separation becomes a reality. In the film’s final scene, Aziza has returned to Didier and the war is raging on. In her first feature-length documentary, Black Business (2009, reviewed in Documentary Chapter), Lewat seeks to uncover the truth about a government-sponsored special police force in Cameroon responsible for the disappearance of over a thousand men in 2000. For her second feature-length work, Sderot, seconde classe/Sderot, Last Exit (2011), Lewat takes her camera into a controversial film school in Sderot, an impoverished city located in southern Israel. The school’s founder and director, acclaimed Israeli documentary filmmaker Avner Faingulernt, chose the volatile borderland location expressly for bringing students together from a variety of ethnicities, religions and political leanings, out of his admittedly idealistic belief that dialogue, even when racist and offensive, can promote understanding, especially through film-making. Yet, as Lewat’s documentary reveals, a number of the students (whether left-wing pro-Palestinian or right-wing ultranationalist) have no intention of learning to love their enemy. Instead, their primary objective is learning the art and trade of film-making at a public school with a reputable programme. More specifically, Lewat’s camera documents the students making their documentaries, thereby creating a kind of meta-documentary exploring the motives and motivations behind the process, lending Sderot, Last Exit a somewhat experimental feel not generally characteristic of Lewat’s previous work. Lewat’s medium-length Land Rush (co-directed with Hugo Berkeley in 2012) was one of eight international documentaries commissioned by BBC Storyville for the Why Poverty? series. In partnership with 70 radio, television and internet broadcasters with potential to reach over half-a-million viewers in more than 180 countries, the aim of the series is to generate large-scale awareness and discussion about the growing crisis of world poverty. Available for free viewing online, each of the eight documentaries addresses a different aspect of world poverty (such as infant mortality, the relation between education and employment, the effectiveness of celebrity activism in reducing poverty, etc.). Land Rush looks at how agribusiness impinges upon local farming in the aftermath of the 2008 global economic crash and related world food distribution crisis. It focuses on the particular situation of Malian peasant farmers who see the very fields they work being leased by their own government to corporations based in countries such as China, Saudi Arabia and the United States. Land Rush goes to considerable lengths to present multiple perspectives on the problems and solutions as perceived from widely ranging points of view, including the angry Malian farmers, other locals who favour the corporate intervention, and corporate representatives driven by their genuine desire to relieve the suffering they witness, as well as their firm belief that profit-making and humanitarian action can go hand in hand. In this sense, while the film may be engagé, a label Lewat herself sometimes embraces and sometimes rejects, it may come across to some viewers as actually antithetical to activism, since it offers no clear-cut cause to champion.

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Though quite diverse in subject matter, geographical location and cinematic style, Lewat’s documentaries consistently address how individuals from marginalized populations experience the institutional frameworks that oppress them. Ever present themes in her films include the abuses of state power, women’s rights issues, as well as community empowerment and activism in the pursuit of social justice. Above all, they show how Lewat deploys the documentary to transmit stories, and even more importantly, the individual voices that tell them, in a way print journalism, which was Lewat’s first calling, cannot do. Yet, especially as her film-making has evolved and matured over the last decade, it becomes clear that Lewat harbours no illusions regarding the film-maker’s ability to bring about significant change. Lewat’s vision is perhaps best described as a sombre balancing act that eschews both the sensationalist reporting and idealizing tendencies of a lot of activist cinema. Shown in film festivals throughout the world, her documentaries have received numerous awards including the Human Rights Prize for The Forgotten Man at the Montreal Vues d’Afrique film festival in 2003; third prize in the documentary category for Black Business at the 2009 FESPACO pan-African film festival in Ouagadougou; and a Peabody Award in 2013 for Land Rush. In further recognition of her film-making accomplishments, in 2013, Vues d’Afrique paid special tribute to Lewat, screening four of the former INIS student’s films, including Land Rush. Regularly invited to serve on film festival juries, Lewat’s seat as president of the documentary section for FESPACO 2013, was of special significance: not only was legendary director and producer Euzhan Palcy the Grand Jury president, but women presided over all five of the main prize committees, a landmark in the festival’s 45-year-long history. These many awards and honours solidify Osvalde Lewat’s reputation as a documentary film-maker whose talent is recognized internationally.

Michelle Chilcoat

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DARRELL ROODT Darrell Roodt is South Africa’s most prolific working director. Since 2000, he has directed over fifteen features and worked on several television shows, remarkable in an industry where film-makers nurture projects for years and where home-grown cinema is considered largely unprofitable. Critics may point with justification to the patchy quality of some of his work and his seeming willingness to turn out quick exploitation or formulaic genre films: releasing the Oscar-nominated Yesterday in the same year as Dracula 3000 (2004) suggests a South African Steven Soderbergh or even Roger Corman. While Winnie (2011) his biopic of Winnie Mandela, was being critically panned at film festivals abroad, Roodt reeled off two other South African films, Stilte and Little One (both 2012), the latter released in time to be South Africa’s official contestant for the 2013 Foreign Film Oscar. Perhaps because so much interest in South African cinema has been focused around postapartheid representations and reflections of the apartheid past, little academic research has been devoted to individual figures in the industry (even the hugely popular comedian Leon Schuster is yet to be the subject of any sustained academic research). Perhaps, too, Roodt’s wildly eclectic output not only defies conventional auteurist analyses but also reflects South Africa’s schizophrenic film-making context in which some of the country’s most renowned figures ply their trade abroad (the actress Charlize Theron, director Gavin Hood and now District 9 [2009] director Neill Blomkamp) and many of its most significant stories are told on-screen by European and American film-makers. In one of the few studies of Roodt, David Murphy and Patrick Williams (2007: 207) suggest that his oeuvre reflects not only the ‘paradoxical and contradictory‘ nature of the South African film industry but also, at a deeper level, the lack of a film culture generally in South Africa. While interest in local films is growing, there is still an ingrained inferiority complex in South Africa that views local films either as cheap imitations of Hollywood products or as low-budget (low production value) products of academic interest only. Born and schooled in Johannesburg, Roodt began his career in the early 1980s during a period when television was only an emerging broadcast medium (South Africa’s first television broadcast was in January 1976) and the government’s B Subsidy Scheme (which funded low-budget films by mostly white directors for black audiences) was in full swing. Arguably his first significant film is City of Blood (1983). Virtually impossible to find today, City of Blood is a bizarre anthropological slasher film that hides at its centre a pointed critique of the death in custody of Black Consciousness leader Steve Biko. Thereafter followed another politically experimental film, Tenth of a Second (1986, also commercially unavailable), before Roodt made Place of Weeping (1986), the first in his ‘trilogy on racial conflict’ (Botha 2012: 130). As in the earlier films, the story involved both racialized violence (the death of black characters at the hands of white perpetrators) and politically conscientized white characters, proxies for liberal white protest against apartheid. Roodt’s most prominent film of this period is The Stick (1987), a heady psychedelic antiwar film about South Africa’s Border War. Though frequently considered an indigenous hybrid of Platoon (Oliver Stone, 1986) and Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola, 1979) – there is a large body of comparative work on South Africa’s military campaign in South West Africa (now Namibia) and the United States of America’s war in Vietnam – the film is also one of the most explicit anti-government films made in South Africa during the 1980s. Although The Stick was banned for general viewing for several years, the censors’ real concern was its expletive-laden script and the harm the film might do to military conscription rather than its obvious critique of the border war (Rijsdijk 2014). It would be wrong to see The Stick as an explicitly anti-apartheid film as it has little to say about the political situation in South Africa itself at the time. However, it is a potent tonic against the harmless comedies about life in the army that were popular at the time (Boetie Gaan Border Toe [1984] and Boetie

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Op Manoeuvres [1985]) and suggested not only that the war was being lost, but also that, in fact, white South Africa was falling apart, descending into madness. Jobman (1988), the third of this loose trilogy introduced a feature that would become more prominent in Roodt’s films: the marginalized character cast out in the fragmented society of apartheid South Africa, here a deaf-mute coloured man. From this first sequence of films, two distinct themes appear that characterize Roodt’s films. While he has a predilection for monsters in his genre films – vampires, killer lions, mysterious killers stalking the veld (open grassland) or the streets of Johannesburg – there is a sustained and powerful focus on marginalized people and social injustice in his realist films: women and children, the urban poor, disabled, black people under apartheid. Roodt’s major commercial break came with the film Sarafina! (1992). Made on the cusp of South Africa’s transition to democracy, it starred both local actors and Hollywood stars signalling not only Roodt’s mainstream emergence but also the desirability of South African stories internationally (in this instance, the 1976 Soweto uprisings). But it would be several years before Roodt would mount another major South African production. An opportunity to break into the lucrative American market presented itself, but yielded instead a B-grade kickboxer film and the underwhelming caper comedy Father Hood (1993) starring Patrick Swayze and early-career Halle Berry. In the wake of the 1994 elections, Roodt and long-time associate, producer Anant Singh dusted off the classic Alan Paton novel Cry, the Beloved Country. Shooting with a reasonable budget and a cast of international veterans (James Earl Jones, Richard Harris), the film rode the wave of South Africa’s ‘miracle’ transition to democracy. While visually beautiful, the film was not a tremendous success and furthered the dilemma of post-apartheid South African cinema: how to make meaningful films from the margin and what happens to the story once major international companies, directors and stars become involved. Roodt’s subsequent output represents this dilemma perfectly. Dangerous Ground (1997), a crime film set in Johannesburg, features Ice Cube (as an ex-pat Zulu) and Elizabeth Hurley while both Second Skin (2000) and Pavement (2002) were set in San Francisco but filmed in Cape Town. There were also forays into science fiction (Sumuru [2003] and Dracula 3000) and thrillers exploiting South Africa’s safari mystique (Witness to a Kill [2001] and Prey [2007]). This period also saw a gradual return to more local stories, notably Yesterday (2004) and Faith’s Corner (2005), films that focused on black women marginalized in South Africa through illness and poverty. While the former was feted internationally and brought together the picturesque elements of Cry, the Beloved Country (1995) and the politically charged story of AIDS in South Africa, the latter was visually experimental but largely overlooked. With Meisie (2007) and Zimbabwe (2008), Roodt has continued his drive to represent the stories of women at the margins as well as his creative experimentation. The former told the story of a young girl striving for an education in the remote desert town of Riemvasmaak while the latter examined South Africa’s immigrant population through the eyes of an orphaned young Zimbabwean woman. Both films were shot on tiny budgets with workshopped scripts and local actors. At the time of writing, Roodt has three films in various stages of production and postproduction including, surprisingly (or perhaps unsurprisingly for this restless, fearless and prolific film-maker), a biopic of Paul Robeson. A richer examination of Roodt’s work is definitely needed, not only because of the adventurousness of his film-making. He is a major figure in South African cinema, from the late subsidy years through the political transition to the challenges of the new democracy. He is also a key figure in discussions around the position of local film from the global perspective, as well as the influence of digital technologies on independent film-making.

Ian-Malcolm Rijsdijk

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FRANCOIS VERSTER Francois Verster is one of South Africa’s best known documentary film-makers. Even those who missed his award-winning debut Pavement Aristocrats: The Bergies of Cape Town (1998) or the much praised The Mothers’ House (2006), certainly sat up and took notice in 2006 when his 2002 film, A Lion’s Trail, received an Emmy Award for Outstanding Cultural and Artistic Programming. With an MA in English literature from the University of Cape Town, gained under the guidance of Booker and Nobel Literature Prize winner JM Coetzee, Verster was well prepared for a career of writing or teaching. And though he has done both very successfully (he has taught at Columbia University, NYU, Bowdoin College in Maine and the University of Cape Town, and has published on documentary film in various journals and anthologies) it is his work as a documentary film-maker that has set him apart. Verster’s work has been predominantly in the ‘observational mode of representation’ (Nichols 1991). Over the years he has done much of his filming himself and has captured intimate personal moments, sometimes spending years documenting a place, individual or family. The Mothers’ House is a prime example of the long-term commitment Verster makes to filming his subjects. He spent four years filming the Moses family, initially focusing on the complex, at times abusive, relationship between HIV positive Valencia and her mother Amy. But it soon became clear that Valencia’s precocious daughter, Miché, would provide the emotional core of the film. He captures rare, intimate moments and the camera becomes a confidant to Miché as she develops from 10-year-old innocent to 14-year-old drug addict. In this film Verster excels at connecting with his subjects in a way that allows his audience an emotional entry point into their lives. Verster has started to believe that in some ways the framing of a subject to fit the boundaries and needs of a documentary film is an act of violence, trying to impose the requirements of the form onto the complexities of real life. The tension between the need to make films that are intelligible and focused and the desire to not do a disservice to the subjects that are so framed, is clear in his two most recent films, Sea Point Days (2009) and The Dream of Shahrazad (in production). Sea Point Days, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, centres around the Sea Point pool and promenade in Cape Town. It visits, and in places revisits, some of the unique and culturally diverse characters that populate this public space. This film is much looser and less intimate than most of his previous films. It is made up of a series of atmospheric images and vignettes. For various reasons, as he explained in an interview I conducted in January 2009, Verster has started to shy away from ‘intense, highly intimate long-term association with human subjects’ in his films. In Sea Point Days he looks more at his ‘own issues and questions’, but without being directly present in the film. All one sees of Francois is a pair of feet drifting towards the promenade during a tandem hang-glide, and sometimes one hears his voice as he interacts with a subject on-screen. But in a way one senses his presence throughout. This film is his personal view of the

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environment he lives in. What lends it universal appeal is that it is a microcosm of South African life. As colour, culture and class collide and mingle around the saline water of the Sea Point public pool, one is given a view of the culturally diverse, but not necessarily integrated, post-apartheid South Africa. It is the story of ‘a not-quite departed world. Of a place that changed but also stayed the same. It deals with issues of being South African, the right to being here and the right to space’ (Personal Communication, 13 January 2009). It is impressionistic and at times even abstract; hypnotic rather than narrative. By the end of the film one is left with the impression of having been taken on a journey, but without aiming for any specific destination. Unfortunately, this creative licence comes at a price. He freely admits that ‘what you put in is not always what you get out’ and for him, as independent film-maker, securing funding for his projects remains a challenge. Verster usually self-funds phases of the film-making process in order to secure further funding from outside sources. The project Verster was working on in 2013-14 is The Dream of Shahrazad. It is a film that views recent politics in the greater Middle East through the metaphor of One Thousand and One Nights. In it various stories are juxtaposed to highlight how interwoven politics, art and ordinary life can be. The Dream of Shahrazad was filmed in Turkey, Egypt and Lebanon. Verster filmed in phases from 2010 to 2012 as he mostly self-funded the project. He showed extracts of it at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam new work-in-progress section in 2012. The reception was encouraging and he is hoping to premiere the film at an international festival in 2014. Verster has said on several occasions that documentary film cannot be objective. And, to paraphrase his perspective of his voice as documentary film-maker, it is in the particular balance he establishes between reality, political vision and art that his films get their unique flavour. Perhaps this is why his films are so consistently successful at festivals and competitions. In a country whose documentary culture is dominated by topical and investigative made-for-television pieces, Francois prefers to make ‘film festival-type films, […] exploring the creative documentary as a genre, rather than delivering on a commissioning editor’s brief’ (13 January 2009). His films have a unique voice and a complex, literary approach to story construction. The Mothers’ House, for example, makes use of narrative structure and elicits emotion through engagement with the subjects. Sea Point Days is fragmented and includes sequences that are poetic and associational (Bordwell and Thompson 1997: 129). He makes a great personal investment in every film he directs, but his commitment and dedication to a project are not given purely with a view to the finished product. ‘I want to learn about the world’ (13 January 2009). For him, the very process of making a film is a process of learning, and the same can be said about the viewer’s experience of watching his films. They provide privileged access to the experiences of others. Verster’s films have never been easy. They are all infused with subtext and underlying themes and demand participation from the audience. The viewers must tease their own meaning from the events and emotions captured onscreen. Verster has progressively moved away from established documentary modes of representation in his films and has embraced looser ways of structuring the content he gathers. He expresses a desire to ‘balance story with a more organic relationship between the subject and other dimensions

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[in the] surrounding world’ (Paper Verster presented as Carnegie Resident Equity Scholar at the University of the Witwatersrand, 22 October 2012). His later films, like Sea Point Days, which are arguably more in line with his personal artistic vision, allow collaboration with the subject and create more space for the audience to project their own interpretations on the work. It remains to be seen whether the audiences, festivals and awards that lauded him previously will continue to connect with and value the work he produces now as they did when he worked in a more recognizable mode.

Liani Maasdorp

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MODES OF PRODUCTION What is African Cinema? The Industries of African Cinema As the diversity of films reviewed in this volume illustrates, a comparison of films across genres, modes of film-making and countries of origin quickly reveals that there is not, in fact, any single African cinema. Rather, a plurality of cinemas – each with distinct industrial structures – can be affiliated with the deceptively simple adjective, ‘African’. An answer to the question, ‘What is African Cinema?’ is therefore loaded with political implications related to who claims the authority to designate what does and does not count as African and to what ends? Early forays in the field of African film studies by scholars in Europe and the United States accomplished the important task of demarcating the significance of post-independence film-making, especially the self-representation made possible through African artists gaining access to the materials of production from the 1960s forward, from the plethora of imperial films that have long defined the continent for movie audiences around the globe. While this was, and remains, a key scholarly and political project, separating African from other world cinemas is no longer sufficient for defining cinema of, from or for Africa’s peoples, places and stories. A responsible consideration of African film must instead account for varied nuances internal to this vague category, delineating the specific ways different cinematic contexts across Africa distinguish themselves and interact with each other, as well as how these systems are related to film industries and political economies outside the continent. This essay begins to trace the parameters of distinct industrial structures that comprise the domain of African cinemas, thereby offering a framework for understanding the similarities and differences evident in the wide range of films reviewed in this volume. For the purpose of contextualizing the film reviews that follow, I identify three distinct industries within African cinema: (1) globally circulating independent art-style cinema, (2) audience-supported national and regional popular entertainment video-film industries, and (3) development or educational cinema fuelled by the international humanitarian aid community. Linguistic, national and geographical differences necessarily qualify the integrity of each category – for instance, independent art filmmaking in, say, Morocco and Senegal manifest in dissimilar themes and styles, as well as film talent and audiences – but the structural conditions that generate the distinct organization of each industrial context remain across these differences.

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Global African art film Films first hailed as African cinema emerged from specific political and economic conditions in the immediate post-independence era, especially from the dense cultural and economic relationship France established with its former colonies beginning in the early 1960s. Films by selected, usually West African and francophone film-makers, including seminal directors such as Souleymane Cissé and Djibril Diop Mambéty, were either financed before or purchased after production by a series of French cultural ministries, which often executed post-production work and held distribution rights. Many film-makers were also trained in French film schools, as well as competing Soviet schools. This arrangement enabled the production and distribution of many important films from the 1960s to the early 1990s, but it simultaneously discouraged the development of a film-making infrastructure within francophone African nations and encouraged dependence on foreign equipment and technical expertise. Since the end of Cold War competition for cultural influence in Third World nations, funding is now sourced from a wider range of public and private organizations invested in cultural production, including the pan-African film institution, FESPACO; public broadcasting corporations in Australia and Europe, in particular, Arte; and US production companies, such as Focus Features. The basic economic model of pseudo-independent film-making continues to structure this industry: individual films, all of which are some form of international co-production, are supported to the extent to which they can be successfully screened for a global cosmopolitan audience, while the mechanisms of funding and distribution remain hidden behind the industry’s emphasis on individual film-makers as independent auteurs. The global art film industry is driven by the international film festival circuit and African films that successfully traverse this terrain must accommodate its paradigm, whether or not they seek the designation of art film. Films gain renown in the domain of foreign films for the extent to which they capture some essence of African alterity recognizable to educated audiences that attend festivals and universities. The industry now boasts films by a smattering of cosmopolitan directors hailing from anglophone and lusophone regions in addition to those of the more-established sub-Saharan francophone tradition. Many films from North Africa also compete on this global scale of art exhibition, but the history of film production in the region is longer, especially due to very different Islamic and European colonial histories, dating back to the Lumière brothers. Films produced within each nation of the Maghreb also tend to be deeply rooted within state boundaries and the specific politics and foreign policy of their more centralized regimes. Films from exceptional industries in Egypt and South Africa regularly circulate the global art film scene, as well. Despite these distinct qualifications, pressure to represent Africa to the world, especially through the most acceptable paradigms of universal humanism, remains strong among African films in the realm of global art cinema. Because of their international distribution, African films of the global art film scene are relatively more available than those of other industries to scholars of African history and culture working in the United States and Europe. They consequently dominate academic discourse and publishing in this field and have played a central role in defining the category of African cinema as such. Books by Manthia Diawara (1992), N Frank Ukadike (1994) and Olivier Barlet (1996, trans. 2000), for example, were some of the first texts to collect and discuss a corpus of globally prominent films by African directors, films which subsequently make up the dominant canon of African cinema. More recent publications, such as those by Kenneth Harrow (2007), Françoise Pfaff (2004) and Melissa Thackway (2003), build on this canon while simultaneously acknowledging that individual art films do not represent the totality of African cinema, as was often implied by the previously limited nature of published scholarship on the topic. For example, Thackway’s Africa Shoots Back: Alternative Perspectives in Sub-Saharan Francophone African Film

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designates the geographic and linguistic contours of the corpus on which she draws, as demonstrated by the book’s subtitle, thereby recognizing that the domain of African filmmaking exists beyond these parameters. African films of the global art industry remain the most visible specimens to scholars in western universities, but developments in African film studies have begun to pinpoint the specificity of this industry and distinguish its output from that of parallel, but rarely overlapping, popular and educational domains.

Popular video industries Just as the postcolonial relationship between France and its former colonies allowed for the development of a francophone African cinema industry closely following independence, the opposite was true for former British colonies. British colonial institutions employed film and other media technologies in their efforts to produce a modern colonial citizen in their territories, but largely abandoned support of local production after independence. Because film-making equipment and training is so expensive, production in newly independent anglophone nations was nearly non-existent, often limited to statesponsored television programming. Furthermore, turbulent economic and social conditions led to the closure of cinema theatres built under colonial development projects. This lack of infrastructure, however, did not irrevocably negate the possibility for film production in anglophone African nations. The advent of, first, 16 mm, then video and more recently, digital technology for production, post-production and distribution has led to innovative new video-film industries that take advantage of existing economic and social conditions and fill a need for locally relevant entertainment for African audiences. Popular national video-film industries – the largest of which is in Nigeria, with a smaller industry in Ghana, and new markets and sites of production emerging in Uganda and Tanzania, for instance – are built on an entrepreneurial model. In the major Nigerian industry, based largely in Lagos and controversially referred to as ‘Nollywood’, featurelength fiction videos are generated by small but influential production companies on tiny budgets, averaging $15,000 USD and filmed over a very short period of time, often only five to seven days. Production values are poor, reflecting the economic reality of sparsely funded film-making, but over 800 video-films are made per year (compared to less than 500 films per year in the United States) and widely sold on VHS or DVD in urban markets across Nigeria and neighbouring countries. The industry’s financial structure is unique: distributors buy a video-film from the producer and thereafter own the rights to copy and sell it with little to no regulation, thereby maximizing distribution profit, minimizing financial return to the producer and ensuring a vibrant piracy market. Video-films are hugely popular with audiences locally, regionally and abroad in the African diaspora. Feature videos are exhibited privately at home, broadcast on television or screened in urban video clubs with very low admission prices. Narratives tend to be highly dramatic, following conventions of melodrama, gangster or police genres, for instance. They often depict moral and fiscal corruption, rendering the excesses of elite politicians or criminals, such as flashy SUVs, expensive clothes or grand homes on-screen for entertainment and ridicule by mostly middle- and lower-class audiences. Similar to American soap operas and Brazilian telenovas, Nigerian video-films are often serial in nature, consisting of two, three or even seven sequels, and are driven by a small but well-known roster of star actors whose recognizable names and faces ensure sales. Production in Southern Nigeria has set the standard for popular film-making in Africa, but is beginning to see its leadership challenged as it is slow to switch from older VHS technology. Its competitors, such as nascent industries in Uganda and Tanzania, are emerging with straight to digital production and DVD distribution, constantly redefining the parameters of the video-film industrial structure.

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The Nigerian video-film industry, in particular, is remarkable not only for its ability to thrive in poor economic conditions with minimal infrastructure, but also for the fact that it is entirely audience funded, unlike art and educational film-making that rely on donated funds to survive. While these movies are reviewed in local media outlets and avidly discussed between viewers, scholarship on African video-films has only recently entered the domain of academic publishing through African, European and American universities, such as in the work of Onookome Okome and Jonathan Haynes (1995), Jonathan Haynes (2000), Brian Larkin (2008) and Matthias Krings and Onookome Okome (2013). Nigerian video-films have also been introduced to casual audiences through documentary films produced in North America, including This Is Nollywood (Franco Sacchi, 2007, USA), Welcome to Nollywood (Jamie Meltzer, 2007, USA) and Nollywood Babylon (Ben Addelman and Samir Mallal, 2008, Canada). While not exclusive to video-film, the exceptional cases of Egypt and South Africa also hover within the industrial context of – sometimes popular, sometimes art-style – national cinemas. They sport a wide range of state-sponsored and independent, fictional and documentary, politically conservative or revolutionary, entertainment and educational, and made-for-TV or theatrical modes, among others. In these instances, questions of film’s relationship to the nation state can follow avenues of interrogation similar to those used in the well-established project of unpacking European national cinemas, especially because Egypt and South Africa have older and more functioning state institutions to which films can have a sympathetic or confrontational relationship. Recent scholarship in this vein has been demonstrated by Keyan Tomaselli (2006), Jacqueline Maingard (2007) and Martin Botha (2012) regarding South African cinema as well as Viola Shafik (2007) and Josef Gugler (2011) regarding North Africa, for example.

Development and educational film and video Less frequently included under the designation ‘African cinema’ are films and videos produced and distributed within the context of international humanitarian aid. Films in this category are usually short or feature-length dramatized narratives, some fictional and some documentary, that impart a particular educational message. These films are sponsored by non-profit International Governmental Agencies (IGOs) and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), some religious and some secular, to the extent that they align with specific development goals – currently dominated by HIV treatment, malaria prevention and climate change mitigation – largely determined at the global level. Global-scale aid organizations, ranging from USAID, DFID and UNICEF to the Carnegie and Ford Foundations to Gospel Communication International or public broadcasting stations in Scandinavia and Australia, distribute grants for educational media projects, which are then executed on the ground in non-profit-dense countries, such as Tanzania, Namibia and South Africa. Competitive grants for development films are sourced internationally, but the projects are executed locally: scripts are written by humanitarian professionals in collaboration with local authors, aspiring film-makers or other storytellers, such as travelling theatre groups. The producer, who often also acts as director, is similarly entrenched in the international aid community. Many directors are European or North American nationals relocated to production sites in Africa, resulting in usually white producers directing mostly black African crews. Local casts and crews are employed and publicity materials often emphasize this showcasing of local talent. These projects use filming and post-production equipment fixed in small, local studios, some indigenous and others brought in from abroad. Resultant films and videos are distributed to almost exclusively non-paying audiences, such as in health clinics, schools, prisons or in rural villages via mobile cinema vans. Higher-end

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development films are often packaged with additional educational materials, such as discussion guides, intended to facilitate further conversation among audiences about issues presented in the films. Development-related film-making has a generally longer history in Africa than the art or popular industries described above. Useful primary sources from the 1930s to 1950s include reports by P Morton-Williams (1950), LA Notcutt (1937) and William Sellers (1954), and the British Film Institute has made a handful of films available online on their colonial film site. Archival research by media historians, such as Rosaleen Smyth (1988), James Burns (2002) and Glenn Reynolds (2009), has begun to trace out the history of instructional film as it was used by governmental, commercial and missionary authorities in colonial Africa, especially in British colonies, as early as the 1920s. Some of the most thoroughly researched projects include the Bantu Educational Kinema Experiment (BEKE) in Southern Rhodesia and South Africa and the Colonial Film Unit (CFU), which operated mobile cinema vans in and around Nigeria, for example. These programmes have left some of the best – better preserved and politically accessible – records in both British and African national archives and therefore provide valuable insight into life under British rule and the perception of film as a teaching tool in the colonies.

Conclusion African cinemas are deeply transnational, crossing national boundaries within and beyond the continent, all of which are greatly affected by specific pre-colonial, colonial and postcolonial history. The channels through which films are imagined, funded, produced, exhibited and consumed remain fundamentally impacted by individual nations’ relationships with former colonizers and subsequent donor nations, as well as cross-border flows of film talent, equipment and expertise. Despite this diversity, however, it is possible to identify and compare consistent infrastructures across time and space. Each industry is delineated by its avenues of funding (commercial or non-profit), forms of distribution (film or video; in festivals, markets or classrooms), target audiences (local, regional or global; popular or exclusive) and purpose (cultural enrichment, entertainment or education). In short, African cinema is an amorphous term that encompasses a sprawling range of films by, for and/or about Africa, African film-makers and/or African audiences. Each industry is defined by distinct production and exhibition infrastructures, which have emerged out of specific historical conditions intimately intertwined with the politically dense concerns of nation building; pre-colonial, colonial and postcolonial subjectivity and identity; and the unequal flow of resources and authoritative knowledge into, out of and through the African continent. All complicate what it means for a cinema to be ‘African’ and Africa’s relationship to the domain of cinema and the history of film. The unique comparative potential enabled by the breadth of films included in this directory encourages nuanced and often contradictory answers to the question, ‘What is African cinema?’. Foregrounding the industrial contexts internal to this category ultimately forces a reconsideration of the very terms involved: What counts as African? What counts as cinema? And what, exactly, characterizes the relationship between the two?

Allison McGuffie

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French Funding and African Francophone Cinema France’s role in film-making in francophone Africa goes almost as far back as the invention of film itself. From the 1897 screenings which took place in Tunis and onwards, there has always been a strong involvement of France regarding cinema in its former colonies in North and Sub-Saharan Africa. In the early days of colonization, African French colonies were either used as a setting for French films or as a place where screenings were organized, mostly for the colonizers. Even today, and despite the celebrations of the 50th anniversary of the independences in 2010, France remains a key agent in francophone African cinemas although funding from other countries of the European Union has become more available. From the Ministry of Cooperation to the Fonds Sud, France contributed and still contributes to funding African films and to train technicians but also to decide and to a certain extent, to shape the ‘Africanness’ of a film produced in francophone Africa. Fonds Sud does not only help African cinema but is meant to support films made in the southern hemisphere which were, or were not, former colonies: this aspect can explain the possible/potential influence it has regarding the content of the films. As noted by African film-makers and officials who were in charge of African cinema in the era following independence, France did not directly censor all the films that were critical of its colonial past. However, distribution was a means of limiting viewing. According to N. Frank Ukadike (1994: 322, note 26), La Noire de…/Black Girl (Ousmane Sembène, 1966), Soleil O/O Sun (Med Hondo, 1970) and others ‘whose productions could not be suppressed, could be manipulated through distribution’. Historically France’s role was much more developed than what was done in nonfrancophone colonies, either before or after independence. This was obvious from the start and whether we consider funding, training (mostly at the French leading film school IDHEC [Institut des Hautes Études Cinématographiques], the golden path of film-making training in France) or distribution, France was and is still extremely active, and much more than any other former colonial empires such as Britain. When one looks at the history of francophone African cinema, it is difficult to dissociate training from funding as France started training directors from her colonies in Paris (more especially at the IDHEC) while they were still colonies. France did not stop helping and contributing to the development of national cinemas after independence. This is in clear contrast with countries such as Britain. A former IDHEC student from Zimbabwe, director Michael Raeburn underlined the importance of cinematographic culture in African francophone countries and deplored the lack of it in anglophones ones. As an illustration he shows the scarcity of African students graduating from the London Film School. Indeed there is a clear contrast here with the promotion of African students at IDHEC. Apart from IDHEC, students could study film techniques at the École Nationale Louis Lumière, or the Institut Français du Cinéma, both state-funded schools which meant ‘free’ access (which does not mean substandard instruction however). Other francophone Africans studied in film schools in Europe, especially in East Berlin, and in Moscow (at the famous national film institute VGIK). Once trained, only some directors began a career in film-making. By the time the first group graduated, their respective country of origin was independent from the French government and many played a key role in the emerging national cinemas of the former colonies. Others stayed and worked in France (there was an agreement between the IDHEC and the ORTF-Radio and Broadcasting Institute until 1974). A comparison with other colonial countries is revealing of the role France wanted to play in African film-making: as early as 1962, a UNESCO report noted that France had produced 83 per cent of the films made in

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Africa, while United Kingdom had only produced 15 per cent. According to Jean-René Debrix, interviewed in 1978 by Guy Hennebelle, out of the 185 African films made between 1963 and 1975, 125 were produced with the technical and financial help from the Ministry of Cooperation (and none were censored or rejected). Former director of IDHEC between 1945 and 1948, Debrix later played a major role in the development of African cinema and was appointed to the film department for African former colonies in 1963. Various phases can be identified regarding funding, and France’s financial role in African film-making. In the early days following decolonization, France remained very present and potent in its former colonies and its role was essential via its Ministry of Cooperation which was maintaining and developing financial and technical support with its Bureau du Cinéma. The Consortium Audiovisual International (CAI) created in Paris in 1961 was equally active in developing links in the filmic field with the former African colonies (such as Senegal which was the first francophone country to sign an agreement). After the Ministry of Cooperation was disbanded in 1998, other institutions such as the Ministère des Affaires Étrangères, the Agence de la Francophonie as well as the Fonds Sud soon became involved. From the mid-1980s onward, French funding for African cinema increased mostly through the creation of the Fonds Sud which depends on the CNC (Centre National du Cinéma). This was followed in 1992 by a decree regarding the development of various financial systems meant to help film production in developing countries. Between these two dates, 1987 stands as a key moment: two African films from former French colonies were selected in major European film festivals. Ousmane Sembène’s Camp de Thiaroye (1988), a rare example of South-South collaboration received the Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival. The film was shot in Senegal with an Algerian crew and was edited with the help of Tunisian companies. Souleymane Cissé’s Yeelen, la lumière/Yeelen, Brightness (1987) was the first African film selected for the main selection of the Cannes Film Festival. It was a typical example of South-North (French) cooperation. From then on, the latter model became the norm and it was the end of the former. The Fonds Sud has played (and still does) an essential role in developing, funding and promoting African cinema (as well as other national cinemas from the southern hemisphere, i.e. developing countries). The ideological, iconic and narrative counterpart of such financial help should not be underestimated: French officials from public institutions such as the CNC or the Agence de la Francophonie play a crucial role not only in financing films which might not be made without public subsidies but also in generating, or contributing to the creation of what they consider as being ‘African cinema’. One of the criteria for getting the funding is to respect the strong cultural component of Africanness (whatever that means). To quote Michel Reilhac’s criteria, former Fonds Sud president, ‘the aim of the Fonds Sud was to give priority to projects from people who make in their country a film about their country’ (Cannes’s Round Table on Fonds Sud, 2004). Furthermore, this justifies both the lack of funding for film-makers from the diaspora and the emphasis put by decision makers in Paris on ‘village films’ presenting an ‘eternal’ (i.e. a-historical) and ‘natural’ (i.e. not developed) Africa which has led to a growing internalised eurocentrism. This raises the issue of distribution and therefore of audience, most of the African films funded by France being invisible in francophone Africa and scarcely visible in Europe or France except in selected festivals. This was highlighted by Tunisian Tahar Cheriaa (founder of the JCC [Journées Cinématographiques de Carthage] and one of the key players in the creation of FESPACO) who declared: ‘Qui tient la distribution, tient le cinéma’ (‘Whoever masters/holds distribution, masters/holds cinema’). He was quoted by Férid Boughedir (2005), whose article details the various steps and attempts to develop an Africa distribution network.

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The awards in non-specialized festivals (i.e. here not specifically devoted to African cinema such as Cannes, Venice or Berlin) cannot be mentioned without underlining the role of the CNC via the Fonds Sud or Francophonie agency. Raphaël Millet (1998) has clearly shown that the impact of such selection is not so much for the film, the director or the country s/he comes from, as the fact that, for French institutions, a symbolic success increases their prestige and visibility.

Brigitte Rollet

Bongo Movies: A Modern African Film Industry in Tanzania Tanzania has always been a film market rather than a producer nation. Until the 1980s, Tanzania’s place as a market for Bollywood films was well known and Hindi films were particularly popular among ‘Africans’ and ‘Asians’ in the Island of Zanzibar (Reinwald 2006). The situation in Zanzibar was replicated in mainland Tanzania. Seventy-five per cent of all the income from cinema-going audiences in Tanzania, as it was in many African cities, was derived from the locals. Between 1990 and 2000 Tanzania had no cinema-going audience of any sort due largely to the collapse of the cinema infrastructure during the IMF (International Monetary Fund)-induced austerity conditionalities of the 1980s–90s. Since 2000, even after some new multiplexes were built and a fledgling infrastructure developed, the Tanzania film market has become dominated by the distribution of pirated Hollywood, Bollywood and Nollywood films. However the trend has been changing, albeit slowly, due to the growing pace of the take-up of Swahili-speaking films commonly known as Bongo movies or Swahiliwood. Bongo (from ubongo, brain) was used as the nickname of Dar-es-Salaam in the 1980s. Since the mid-1990s, however, it has come to refer to the whole of Tanzania, with the obvious allusion to the cunningness you need to survive in the country (Suriano 2007: 208–09). The Bongo movies’ literary and cinematic idioms offer a specific sociocultural perception. It includes widely perceived factors of Kiswahili language, cheaply made, melodramatic, star based but loosely structured genre-based stories. They have also often been seen as copycats to Nollywood. Bongo films, however, have helped liberate the discussion of African cinema from concerns with decolonization, authenticity, identity and the construction of film criticism around the national cinema model. Obaseki (2005) has argued that the visual dimension, compared with the dialogue and narrative elements, is less important than it is in other cinema cultures. Every year, an estimated 300 low-budget films are produced and some 40 per cent are released into the market, with a potential reach of 140 million people living in eastern and central African countries where the lingua franca is Swahili (Kamin 2011: 18).

Tanzania film productions Apart from the earlier government-funded films of the 1970s and 1980s produced by the now defunct Tanzania Film Company (TFC) like Fimbo ya Mnyonge/The Poorman’s Stick (Tork Hauxthausen, 1976), Vita Vya Kagera/The Kagera War (Cyril Kaunga, 1981),

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Yombayomba (Martin Mhando, 1985) and Mama Tumaini (Martin Mhando and Sigve Endressen, 1987) there were no other fictional or documentary films produced and commercially distributed in the country. These films were ideologically acceptable to the government and they were produced by parastatal organizations like the Tanzania Film Company and the Tanzania Audio Visual Institute. It was left to the non-commercial production and distribution circuit to develop the skills and audiences of these Swahililanguage films. These are films made by independent film producers, including experimental and festival circuit films of the calibre of film-makers Augustin Hatar, Imruh Bakari, Omar Chande, Beatrix Mugishagwe and Maria Sarungi. These directors do attempt to make films with individual signatures.

Bongo movies The Bongo movie industry was essentially built upon theatre actors who were performing in local theatre groups and wanted to appear in films or on television so that they could later attract audiences to their theatre performances and thus make money. These actors would work for nothing in film and television in order to enhance their status in the industry before they could begin to ask for payment. So great was the dream of becoming a star that many of the actors would indeed pay to be cast in these films. These film-makers include such names as George Tyson, who is regarded as one of the best commercial directors in the country, and Mussa Banzi. Another production company that produced these commercial films is the Tamba Arts Group which has produced such films as Fungu La Kukosa/The Have Nots (Mussa Banzi, 2004). These actors/film-makers are aware that they have struck a lucrative and longneglected market – movies that offer audiences characters they can identify with in stories that relate to their everyday lives in urban and rural African settings. Their key themes include conspicuous consumption, crime, witchcraft, sorcery and prostitution as symbols of urban inequity and debilitating poverty as well as the desire to rise from it under any conditions. Key to the success of the production of Bongo movies are its language, Kiswahili, and its direct links with distribution. Thus, George Tyson’s titles are in English (Girlfriend [2004], Sabrina [2004] and Dilemma [2003]), but his dialogues are in Kiswahili, according to the urban trend. For a long time the Bongo movies story had been integrated to Nigerian films. The Nollywood phenomenon, which had captured the imagination of the rest of Africa, has allowed audiences who had hitherto been hooked by the Euro-America product, to be weaned from it and begin a slow but sure appreciation of the African product. Many Bongo movie patrons are even willing to pay a little higher price for the local product than the cost of a Hollywood video or twice as much as that of a Bollywood video (Mhando and Kipeja 2010). Currently, most distributors, who are also marketers of Bongo movies, are based in Dar-es-Salaam. Their distribution networks range across the East African and Great Lakes region. The leading distributor, based in Tanzania – Steps Entertainment – has a chain of wholesale outlets in over fifteen cities around East Africa. ‘Furthermore, there are nearly ten thousand video exhibition halls and about twenty-five thousand video rental libraries across the country’ (Kamin 2011). This distribution system is embroiled with piracy and works within the piracy structures. Indeed the distributors-producers take advantage of evolving local conditions, like the Wamachinga phenomenon (street vendors) to integrate itself within a living culture. Key to its success has been its capacity to utilize appropriate socially inclusive technologies such as cheap cameras, moveable projectors and smallgenerator-dependent venues within the local electricity-denied environment. Finally, the organized star system means that the actors are a real promotional asset for the movies. This is fuelled by the sensationalist media coverage (such as the newspaper Udaku) that may well be superficial but effective – often focusing on the stars’ private Modes of Production 39

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lives. A case in point was the late Steven Kanumba who died following an accident in 2012. His funeral was attended by around 40,000 people including the first lady of Tanzania, the country’s Vice President and the Minister for Culture and Sport. The films are an expression of the ‘African urban apocalypse’, the ultimate expression of anarchic urban catastrophe, environmental destruction and human misery; its ‘crime, pollution, and overcrowding make it the cliché par excellence of Third World urban dysfunction’ (Kaplan 2001: 15). Indeed the films are illustrative of social coping mechanisms and creative forms of self-expression of a population whose ability to survive defies common sense. The industry emphasizes the ingenuity of people struggling to survive within the informal economic sector of African cities, the manic energy that pervades city life and urban artists’ creativity (Gandy 2005). The Bongo movie industry originates and currently resides within the informal economy. Here, like in Nigeria’s Nollywood, professional guilds of actors, writers, producers and directors are the primary organizational units. Indeed, these structures can never be called capital creative (capitalist). The visions and the capitalist aspirations of Bongo movie producers are still based on the realities of the informal economy in Africa because they can’t generate significant capital. What might be needed is first to create semi-formal structures that position Bongo movie producers to interact and engage in exchange with Tanzanian financial communities, on their own terms, thereby reducing dependence on government or donor funding.

Martin Mhando

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AESTHETICS

Scoring African Cinema The celebrated Senegalese film director Ousmane Sembène once complained of the ‘gratuitous’ use of music in film, arguing for music which ‘holds by its own instead of calling for the complete adhesion of the viewers’ (Pfaff 1984: 65). Listening to contemporary film and television, Sembène’s point would appear to hold true today: music continues to be used ‘gratuitously’, or rather simply as a means of underscoring narrative action and reifying meaning, aiming to draw the viewer into a passive engagement with the narrative, as Claudia Gorbman (1987) has demonstrated at length in her book Unheard Melodies. In contrast, African films are perhaps characterized by more autonomous uses of music, invoking narrative and thematic associations that demand ‘active’ viewer engagement. Thus, despite the aesthetic diversity and numerous modes of production of African cinema, music is often fundamental to the articulation of the films’ thematic concerns, particularly in relation to the recurring oppositions of ‘colonialism vs independence’, ‘official history vs popular memory’ and ‘tradition vs modernity’. Moreover, the formal integration of music in African film frequently departs from the classical Hollywood model: whereas nondiegetic music tends to dominate Hollywood cinema (in other words, it uses music that does not ‘exist’ within the world of the film), African cinema often makes extensive use of diegetic music (music that is produced in the fictional world). Indeed, music frequently emphasizes musical performance as well as audience listening and participation. In this way, music forms an almost autonomous component of the films; far from being ‘gratuitous’, it is often central to the ways in which the films produce meaning. This tendency characterizes a range of aesthetically diverse African films, including wellknown examples from auteurs such as Ousmane Sembène and Djibril Diop Mambéty, alongside lesser-known films from countries such as Zimbabwe and Nigeria, whose filmic output has thus far attracted relatively little scholarly attention. Music plays a central role in one of the most celebrated African films, Sembène’s Xala, l’impuissance temporaire/Xala (The Curse or Impotence) (1974), in which the director overtly attempts to realize his vision of film music that ‘holds by its own’. An acerbic satire on neo-colonialism, Xala brings musical performance to the fore, and the subsequent repetition of the music performed plays a key structuring role within the narrative. In particular, the Congolese rumba of the Star Band de Dakar, which was created to celebrate Senegalese Independence (Charry 2000: 270), complicates the meaning of the

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film’s visual images. The band is first heard performing at the wedding of the protagonist El Hadji, a member of the ‘postcolonial’ African elite who soon succumbs to the neocolonial corruption of the former French rulers. Following its initial performance at the wedding, the Star Band’s rumba brings a further dimension of meaning to the film each time it is heard, returning at strategic points in the narrative, and transforming into an ironic, almost mocking presence as it non-diegetically accompanies the protagonist’s personal and political downfall. Additionally, a repeated musical motif is played by a group of beggars on the xalam, a West African lute typically played by griots (the oral storytellers of African tradition who pass history down through the generations). This repeated motif is transformed over the course of the film, coming to embody the beggars’ thematic significance within the narrative, as they infiltrate the home of El Hadji and hold him to account for his actions. The same xalam motif was previously used in the director’s earlier feature, Mandabi (1968), whose protagonist’s thwarted attempts to cash a money order recall the formal structure of the ‘trickster narrative’ of African oral tradition (Cham 1982: 30). Here, the music’s repetition articulates the narrative futility of the protagonist’s encounters with state bureaucracy, but is also significant in relation to the oral narrative structure of the film itself; again, the xalam is an instrument traditionally played by griots, and its presence reminds us that Sembène is returning to traditional storytelling structures in a film that depicts a man’s fruitless encounters with the state bureaucracy that epitomizes postcolonial African modernity. The use of music to articulate similar thematic ideas appears just as readily in Djibril Diop Mambéty’s films, such as Touki-Bouki, ou Le voyage de la hyène/Touki-Bouki, Journey of the Hyena (1973), Hyènes/Hyenas (1992) and La Petite vendeuse de soleil/ The Little Girl Who Sold the Sun (1998). In Touki-Bouki, the sound of a traditional flute intertwines with the ‘modern’ roar of the protagonist’s motorbike, racing through the slums of Dakar. Later, as our heroes attempt to escape the poverty of the Senegalese capital for the utopian modernity of Paris, we hear Josephine Baker singing an idiomatically familiar chanson française (referencing a particular ‘Parisian’ modernity). However, the song is abruptly edited and repeated to form a repetitive, circular structure, unable to reach its conclusion. Here music represents the (fictitious) modernity for which our protagonists yearn, but which they will inevitably fail to reach, articulated through the music being literally ‘stuck’. In his later films, Mambéty collaborated with his brother, Wasis Diop, producing musical tracks that were far less self-conscious in their style (correlating with the director’s movement away from the avant-garde towards a classical style of film-making). However, the music continued to form key thematic and narrative components of the films. In Hyenas (where Mambéty transports Swiss playwright Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s The Visit to his birthplace of Colobane, Senegal), the music begins as a kind of deceit, its gentle, synthesized melodies complementing the rural simplicity embodied in the opening images of migrating elephants. However, as the narrative unfolds, the music gradually builds in its urgency, peaking at a memorable scene in which the village truly ‘sells out’ to Linguere Ramatou’s demands with the arrival of an amusement fare in the formerly deprived town. By the end of the film, the gentle melodies have given way to the roar of bulldozers and jet engines, the sounds of modernization. In Mambéty’s final film, the short The Little Girl Who Sold the Sun, music is delivered via the modernizing force of mass communication – in this case recorded cassette – as a wheelchair-bound young man plays popular music on a portable stereo in return for money from the disabled young protagonist and her friends. The children then perform a joyful dance, transcending the youngsters’ disabilities and the urban poverty that surrounds them. Although delivered through the modern channel of magnetic tape, music provides a sense of community and optimism, in contrast to the incomplete modernity represented by the run-down urban marketplace it occupies. Mambéty’s last film is consistent with his other works in terms of the way it uses music to thematize the tradition/modernity opposition. Indeed, in his first film, Contras’ City (1968), a gentle 42 Africa

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kora melody provides a ‘traditional’ accompaniment to the modern images of urban Dakar that soak up the screen. Music also thematizes the tradition vs modernity opposition in Mauritanian director Med Hondo’s Sarraounia (1986), which recounts an historical battle against colonial conquest led by the eponymous Queen of the Aznas. As an adult, Sarraounia is accompanied by a griot who sings her praises; previously traditional non-diegetic kora music underscored a montage sequence in which we see her childhood coming-of-age as a warrior. The colonizing French Army’s rendition of nationalistic French marching songs marks a pivotal moment in the film’s narrative, in that African musical idioms are pitched against those of Europe, in a way that articulates the film’s depiction of a colonial encounter between radically differing cultures. This musical performance is thus central to the dramatic and thematic structure of the movie. In another narrative of historical recovery, Sembène’s Camp de Thiaroye (1988), a harmonica rendition of ‘Lili Marlene’ invokes a familiar sense of wartime nostalgia, a disarming prelude to the brutal massacre of the demobilized tirailleurs sénégalais (the West African soldiers enlisted by France to fight during World War II). Elsewhere in the film, the bebop of Charlie Parker refers us to a narrative of globalizing African consciousness as a backdrop to the reconciliation of an African American GI and a senior tirailleur, as they engage in a mutual act of listening. The first instance of African music is heard only as the film reaches its conclusion, while the tirailleurs celebrate their perceived political victory over the French officers (regarding the underpayment of their demobilization premiums) through traditional collective song and dance. Sembène thus weaves European classical music, traditional African choral music, wartime nostalgia and African American jazz as a way of articulating the diversity and complexity of the cultural encounters taking place within the spaces of the demobilization camp. In Abderrahmane Sissako’s Bamako (2006) musical performance is again brought to the fore, and used to explore western exploitation of Africa via an outlandish scenario in which the IMF and the World Bank are put to trial for their financial policies in a rural Bamako courtyard, while day-to-day life continues all around. The testimony we see and hear comes to resemble a musical performance, and this is emphasized by one of the witnesses, the village griot (who has remained speechless up to this point), who testifies against the defendants in an impassioned oral performance that is sung/spoken in Bambara, and clearly entrenched in the ancient idioms and rituals of such performances. This is in contrast to the modern – but no less impassioned – performances that bookend the film, from nightclub singer Melé, whose gradual break-up from her husband forms an analogy for the economic ravages described in the testimony. While the films discussed so far use music in relation to representations of African modernity, elsewhere it has been used to accompany narratives that take place in rural, pre-colonial settings, as a means of undermining stereotypical images of the continent. Indeed, the ‘return to the source’ (Diawara 1992) films of directors such as Idrissa Ouédraogo and Gaston Kaboré often employ music that is culturally and temporally dislocated from the diegetic events. Thus, in Tilai (1989), Idrissa Ouédraogo’s exquisitely crafted rural images stand in counterpoint to Abdullah Ibrahim’s laid-back, contemporary jazz soundtrack, disrupting any kind of ethnographic or exoticized gaze that may be invoked by the beauty of the scenery. In contrast, Souleymane Cissé’s Yeelen, la lumière/ Yeelen, Brightness (1987) uses a different strategy to the same end; a thirteenth-centuryset tale relating the corrupt practices of the komo (a covert cult with potent magical powers), the film uses a musical track which pre-empts the imminent encounter between father and son that goes on to form the basis of the film’s cataclysmic conclusion, at the same time as it articulates the mythic dimensions of the ancient rituals depicted onscreen. Here, the music reminds the viewer of the significance of the magic witnessed within the frame, while visually the film uses a somewhat distant, theatrical style, making extensive use of the long-shot. A similar effect is achieved in a more recent Malian Aesthetics 43

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feature, Cheick Oumar Sissoko’s La Genèse/Genesis (1999); an African retelling of a Biblical story, the film features a soundtrack by Michel Risse and Pierre Sauvageot, formed of synthesized western orchestral instruments. This music emphasizes the mythic dimensions of the story, transcending the geographic and cultural specificity of its African setting, and reminding us of the legendary status of the events depicted on-screen. Running alongside the African ‘art’ cinema tradition (which has often explicitly engaged with the politics of cinematic representation) there is also a body of films that use music in order to find popular appeal, including Benoît Lamy and Mweze Ngangura’s La Vie est belle/Life is beautiful (1987), which features a soundtrack by star cast member Papa Wemba, and Michael Raeburn’s Jit (1992), which features popular Shona musician Oliver Mtukudzi. Additionally, a number of well-known films feature popular musicians in leading roles, including Godwin Mawuru’s Neria (1992), which again features Mtukudzi, while others showcase local popular music, such as Everyone’s Child (Tsitsi Dangarembga, 1996). As with the more politically oriented African films, music continues to play a central role in structuring the narratives’ thematic dimensions. The most widely known of these films, Life is beautiful, has few scenes where music is absent; indeed, the opening scenes feature at least three different types of music, performed in different contexts, as Kourou (Wemba), an out of work musician from the suburbs, heads into Kinshasa to realize his dreams. This music continues to function in relation to the tradition vs modernity opposition. First we see and hear a traditional mbira (thumb piano) being played, its sound epitomizing indigenous African music. We then see traditional communal call-and-response singing before contemporary rumba music, which draws heavily from the music of the African diaspora, is heard coming from the radio of a passing truck. Thus the film’s opening moments lead us from the simplicity of ‘tradition’ to the complex hybridity of modernity, articulated through the medium of music. Similarly, in Neria, Zimbabwean musician Oliver Mtukudzi takes a leading role as the ‘modern’ character of Jethro, who supports the eponymous protagonist in her struggle to maintain her rightful inheritance following her husband’s death. In this film, Mtukudzi belongs to the ‘modern’ space of the nightclub where he performs, removed from the rural spaces in which the protagonist experiences oppression. A largely unexplored area of African cinema’s music lies in the burgeoning videofilm phenomenon in Nigeria. Again, these films have tended to aim for popular appeal in their form and content, being produced through a commercial model that is independent of European financial backing. Moreover, the films often employ non-diegetic uses of music that typify mainstream Hollywood cinema (in some cases borrowing music directly from Hollywood films). Much work remains to be done in terms of mapping the various narratives that have emerged from this mode of production, as well as their particular stylistic and formal qualities. However, there are a number of directors whose work stands out, such as Tunde Kelani, Fase Lasode and Amaka Igwe, who are beginning to position themselves as the auteurs of Nigerian cinema, using the medium, and in turn its music, in unusual and challenging ways. Tunde Kelani is a case in point: drawing from the traditions of Yoruba travelling theatre and oral tradition, while commenting on contemporary politics, Kelani’s films also use music in ways that are central to their dramatic and thematic concerns, being entrenched in ancient ritual and tradition. Nowhere is this more prevalent than in Sawaro Ide/Brass Bells (Tunde Kelani, 1999), whose title itself is musical, referring to the brass bell that is central to the rituals undertaken by the film’s tyrannical King of Jogbo. The film forms the first part of a trilogy, being followed by Agogo Eewo/Gong of Taboo (Tunde Kelani, 2002). African societies and African music are shown to be inextricably linked in these films, again demonstrating how African film-makers have tended to regard music as a fundamental part of filmic narratives, even when the films’ production is dependent on commercial success.

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Undoubtedly the scale and heterogeneity of African cinema presents problems for anyone attempting to characterize its uses of music (or indeed any of its aesthetic aspects). However, music continues to offer rich, and to a large extent untapped, insights into the lines of continuity that exist between aesthetically diverse African films, particularly in terms of the recurrent centrality of music to the films’ narrative and thematic dimensions. Thus, listening to – as well as viewing – African cinema reveals uses of music that are certainly far from ‘gratuitous’, and provides new and important perspectives on the films, ultimately completing the picture in terms of the films’ cultural and political significance.

Alexander Fisher

Locations: Authentic or Substituted As there are no studios as such that would make film sets usable for African cinema, film-makers look for some aesthetic location – a scenery or some existing architectural landmark – that will compound the force of conviction of their tale. Sembène drove his crew desperate by travelling throughout Senegal and Burkina Faso to find the ideal village for Moolaadé (2004), the story of a woman’s fight against female initiation (excision). In a village where the Senegalese hawker’s bicycle and the women’s transistor radios, as signs of modernity, will eventually be destroyed, the unifying deep red coating of the huts and mosque enhance the red robes of the ‘cutters’. The unspoilt beauty of the village reinforces timeless rules of conduct and the fortitude of a female rebel. There could be numerous other examples of locations that amplify the thematic demonstration of a movie. In films made in the Sahel, the architecture of banks and elite classes’ dwellings is stunning and provides an eloquent contrast to the surrounding poverty. The quasi religious soaring of Dakar’s BCEAO bank in DiopMambéty’s Le Franc/The Franc (1994) points to the neo-colonial money cult while in Souleymane Cissé’s Finye/Le Vent/The Wind [1982]), Governor Sankaré can be as tyrannical in his elegant, cool villa as he is in his Mauresque red mud (banco) office. In his first feature film (Den Muso/The Girl [1975]), Cissé had made the most of the 1-kilometre-long ‘Martyrs’ Bridge’ over the Niger River – a historical landmark in Bamako and the location for the mute girl’s tragic journey of emancipation. African locations also play an essential role in documentaries. By showing at leisure the wooded and fertile hills of North Kenya in his documentary A Time There Was: Stories from the Last Days of Kenya Colony (2009), Donald McWilliams offers an insight into the cultural symbiosis between the indigenous population and their land as well as a convincing argument for the British settlers’ reluctance to part from their farms and for their resistance to the Mau Mau independence movement. Film location showcases the diversity of landscapes and architecture on the African continent, even though, for political and security reasons, some films need to be shot in a suitable imaginary replacement country. Thus, although Raoul Peck’s Lumumba (2000) was mainly shot in Mozambique instead of the Congo in order to avoid a confrontation with dictator Mobutu still in power in the late 1990s, the use of the landscape is memorable and emblematic of the history of a national hero. As Prime Minister Lumumba says to President Kasa-Vubu, when they are supposed to be grounded outside Elizabethville (today Lubumbashi) and reduced to contemplate a

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luscious plain bordered by mountains (somewhere in Mozambique): ‘Ce pays est grand et il exige de nous de la grandeur’ (‘This land is grand and it requires from us grandeur’). Likewise, Zeka Laplaine’s Macadam Tribu (1996), the Congolese exuberance and wit needed to counteract poverty in Mobutu’s Zaïre (now Democratic Republic of Congo) was shot in Bamako, the capital of a predominantly Muslim country (Mali), not in Kinshasa. In Macadam Tribu, the Congolese joie de vivre is conveyed by Papa Wemba’s musical score and by women’s scant dresses never to be seen in Bamako’s streets, at least in daylight, except for the need of the movie shoot. Landscape is also essential in films made by expatriate and foreign directors, for it conveys the power of nostalgia and creative Utopia, for example in the final images of Alain Gomis’s L’Afrance (2001), when hope is suggested for the cure of the main character who contemplates a perspective of majestic baobab trees. The vastness and beauty of landscape can inspire passion and visceral attachment, as would any character. Two movies reviewed in the volume forcefully testify for the specific contribution of landscape to national identity. In Amor Hakkar’s La Maison jaune/The Yellow House (Algeria, 2007), the Aurès Ranges, which are mostly remembered as the sombre locum of freedom fighters’ all-out resistance during the War of Independence, provide a luminous background to the efforts a father makes to keep his family united after his elder son has died in an accident. These mountains are an important feature in the deceased son’s posthumous video recording. Likewise, in Steve Jacobs’s 2008 adaptation of Coetzee’s novel Disgrace, the wide-angle-view of the hills that surround the Professor’s daughter’s farm not only justifies Lucy’s determination to stay in her country but also foregrounds, albeit wishfully, a new era of black and white South Africans sharing their land.

Blandine Stefanson

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FESTIVAL FOCUS FESPACO Film Festival The Panafrican Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou (Festival Panafricain de Cinéma et de Télévision de Ouagadougou – FESPACO) was set up in Burkina Faso (Upper Volta at the time) in 1969. Born out of a modest private initiative, it received official backing from the Upper Volta authorities in 1972. That year, awards were introduced, the first editions not having had any competition sections. By the sixth edition (1979), the FESPACO adopted a biennale rhythm, the festival starting on the final Saturday in February every odd year. This choice was partly motivated by Tahar Cheriaa, founder of the Carthage Film Festival (JCC), who wanted to avoid competition between the two events. Set up in Tunisia in 1966, the JCC was originally intended to be a festival for films from sub-Saharan Africa, North Africa and the Arab world. In practice, however, even though Ousmane Sembène won its first prize in 1966 with La Noire de…/Black Girl, the JCC soon became a festival focused on the Maghreb, Mashriq and Arab world in general. Placed under the authority of the Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Communications, the FESPACO continues today to reflect the determination of the Burkinabe government. Michel Ouédraogo has been its Delegate General since taking over from Baba Hama in 2008. As it became institutionalized, the event adopted clear objectives, aiming principally to ‘encourage the distribution of all African films, to facilitate contacts and exchanges between film and audiovisual professionals, and to contribute to the emergence, development and safeguarding of African film as a means of expression, education and consciousness raising’(Statuts du FESPACO, 1999). The best of African film production is thus screened at the festival. At the end of the feature film competition, three major awards are attributed: the Gold, Silver and Bronze ‘Etalons de Yennenga’ (‘Yennenga Stallions’). Short films are awarded the Gold, Silver and Bronze ‘Poulains’ (‘Foals’). The horse plays a highly important role in the epic founding myth of the Mossi people, Burkina’s majority ethnic group. Princess Yennenga met her future husband, Riale, thanks to his mount. Their child was the first in the line of the founders of the Mossi Empire. They named him Ouédraogo, which means ‘the stallion’, in reference to the horse that brought about their meeting.

A festival of its kind The FESPACO brings together a considerable number of film enthusiasts. Today it easily attracts over half-a-million spectators. It is characterized by its popular dimension, lacking in a lot of other international film festivals. The Ouagadougou festival is one of the rare festivals to offer the general public the possibility of seeing the films selected during the competition, and on no other condition than buying one’s ticket. Right since the outset, one of the FESPACO’s major stakes has been to show African films to African audiences, and that at a time when the continent’s screens were flooded with American, French and Indian films. Largely inspired by pan-Africanism, this militancy has remained unfailing since 1969 and has translated into Africans’ desire to re-appropriate their culture and develop their cinema. A real showcase for African film, the FESPACO helps ‘keep a finger on the pulse’ of filmmaking on the continent and makes it accessible to the world. Festival Focus 47

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FESPACO: Birth and evolutions Born thanks to the initiative of a few enthusiasts, the FESPACO was created by the Franco-Voltaïque Cultural Centre (CCFV) film club in 1969 under the name of the ‘Ouagadougou First African Film Festival’. It emerged in a favourable context, several cultural initiatives having been launched across the continent, and notably in the domain of film. From the rudimentary nature of its first editions, it has evolved into a major event on the international cultural agenda. It was renamed FESPACO in 1972. That year, the Volta government decided to institutionalize it, in an effort to thereby benefit from this showcase. Indeed, whatever the period, the FESPACO has always represented a key asset in Burkinabe diplomacy. Each regime has benefited from the platform that the event represents to convey certain positions to the international community. That was the case in 1983, for example, when deportations orchestrated by the Nigerian regime were denounced at the festival. Or again, during the apartheid era, when South Africa was boycotted and the FESPACO mobilized against this system, to give but a few examples. The relationship between the State and the FESPACO is pretty equitable and mutually beneficial to both parties. The State encourages the festival at several levels, notably financially, since, from the outset, it has and continues to contribute significantly to the FESPACO’s budget. The State also gives the FESPACO access to structures and institutions, thereby giving it more ample technical means. Three major phases that have often been related to the country’s political evolutions have marked the development of the FESPACO. A first phase marks its original structuring: from 1969 to 1983, the event grew at a fairly slow rate, consolidating its base. After a timid start, the FESPACO progressively imposed itself in the 1970s as a major rendezvous for African film. From 1983 to 1989, the FESPACO passed under the influence of President Thomas Sankara, who instrumentalized it to political and propagandistic ends. This second phase (the 1980s) marked the festival’s expansion during the Sankarist Revolutionary era in which the event was politicized by the regime. Sankara used FESPACO to promote Burkina Faso and the Burkinabe Revolution. This period also corresponds to the FESPACO’s enshrinement, as it became a truly international festival, opening up to the black diaspora, South America and the entire world. The people’s participation also literally exploded, with nearly 400,000 spectators in 1987. Contrary to what is sometimes written, Sankara did not create the FESPACO; he seized upon the event and enabled it to achieve a much greater dimension. Sankara died in a coup d’état in October 1987, but the edition of the festival that followed his death remained marked by his influence. The third evolutionary phase of the FESPACO has lasted from 1991 until the present and corresponds to a new dynamic. In 1983, the festival took on a commercial aspect, with the creation of the MICA (International African Film Market), which enables exchanges with television companies and the acquisition of film rights. Blaise Compaoré’s government, which succeeded that of Sankara, has continued efforts to ensure that the event contributes to the positive image of the country. Nonetheless, certain events, such as the assassination of journalist Norbert Zongo in 1998 (the consequences of which were felt during the 1999 edition), or the Ivorian crisis in the 2000s, and their negative repercussions, have marked the festival. Seeking to become more professional, the FESPACO has also undergone a succession of changes and fitful progress. Changes are today inevitable – notably if the event is to evolve towards greater autonomy and independence, and if its commercial dimension is to take hold more firmly – in a new context that is seeing the confirmation of competition from festivals in South Africa, the rising star of African film.

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A decisive role for African film Throughout its history, the FESPACO has contributed to transforming the film-making industry on the African continent. In 1970, the first edition of the festival encouraged the government to nationalize Upper Volta’s film industry. Several neighbouring countries followed suit, for example Mali, with the OCINAM (Malian National Film Office). In 1974, Senegal and Benin in turn took their industries in hand, respectively creating the SIDEC (Film Import, Distribution and Exploitation Company) and the OBECI (Beninese Film Office). The FESPACO has contributed to the general development of the film and video industry. Today, it remains the main festival of its kind in sub-Saharan Africa, a pole of excellence and a springboard for directors and actors. It gives African films visibility and offers an ever greater public of festival-goers a panorama of recent production on the continent, which is otherwise often sparingly or poorly distributed. In the mid1980s, FESPACO administrators decided to incorporate video. This evolution horrified certain purists, but reflects the event’s desire to remain in touch with spectators of all

FESPACO competition categories: African feature films African short films African documentary films African TV and Video Films from the African diaspora/Paul Robeson Award

The Stallion of Yennenga since 1972: 1972 – Le Wazzou polygame – Oumarou Ganda – Niger 1973 – Les Mille et une mains – Souheil Ben Barka – Morocco 1976 – Muna Moto – Dikongue Pipa – Cameroon 1979 – Baara – Souleymane Cissé  – Mali 1981 – Djeli – Kramo Lancine Fadika – Côte d›Ivoire 1983 – Finye – Souleymane Cissé  – Mali 1985 – Histoire d’une rencontre – Brahim Tsaki – Algeria 1987 – Sarraounia – Med Hondo – Mauritania 1989 – Heritage Africa – Kwaw Ansah – Ghana 1991 – Tilaï – Idrissa Ouédraogo – Burkina Faso 1993 – Au Nom du Christ – Roger Gnoan M’Bala – Côte d›Ivoire 1995 – Guimba – Cheick Oumar Sissoko – Mali 1997 – Buud Yam – Gaston Kaboré – Burkina Faso 1999 – Pièces d’identités – Mweze Ngangura – DR Congo 2001 – Ali Zaoua – Nabil Ayouch – Morocco 2003 – Heremakono: Waiting For Happiness – Abderrahmane Sissako – Mauritania 2005 – Drum – Zola Maseko – South Africa 2007 – Ezra – Newton Aduaka – Nigeria 2009 – Teza – Haile Gerima – Ethiopia 2011 – Pegase – Mohamed Mouftakir – Morocco 2013 – Tey (Aujourd’hui) – Alain Gomis – Senegal

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backgrounds; the most popular films in Africa are often seen on video, whereas so-called ‘calabash cinema’ has suffered somewhat of a decline in interest. This cinema is dubbed calabash in reference to the traditional recipients used in the rural areas mainly because this kind of film-making deals with rural tales. Its detractors mainly criticize its repetition of the same themes and the slowness of its screenplays. Moreover, given the difficulties of finding funding, joint cinema-television co-productions are on the rise. From an institutional point of view, the FESPACO is one of the driving forces of the FEPACI (Pan-African Federation of Filmmakers). This federation, which more or less fulfils the role of a film-makers’ union, has taken responsibility for defining the main orientations for film-makers and nations too. It has, for example, ensured nations greater implication in film circuits in Africa and encouraged African co-productions. Even after independence, these film circuits were long dominated by the leading European majors (notably Comacico, the African Film, Industrial and Commercial Company, and SECMA, the African Film Exploitation Company), then American majors (notably the MPEAA, Motion Picture Export Association of America). Since the 1980s, the FESPACO and FEPACI have attempted to create their own distribution and broadcasting networks on the continent, in particular with the CIDC (the Inter-African Film Distribution Consortium) and CIPROFILMS (the Inter-African Film Production Centre), unfortunately in vain. Yet this distribution and broadcasting issue is truly at the heart of everything, for, as Tahar Cheriaa, founder of the JCC, stated: ‘Whoever controls distribution controls cinema.’ In 2011, the situation in this respect is not the most favourable. The distribution problems facing African films are slightly attenuated by the FESPACO which, with the help of financial backers, pays for the printing of copies or the distribution of its award-winning films on western circuits, thereby opening up the possibilities of a life beyond the festivals. For the moment, this distribution remains extremely limited, and international festivals (the FESPACO and others) remain the main site of distribution for African films. Some television channels, such as M-Net (South Africa) and Arte (FranceGermany) broadcast African films, but on a small scale. The FESPACO also encourages African production and above all filmmakers’ professionalization. The holding of a range of seminars, workshops and roundtables helps the creation of networks. These networks are highly important in inciting partnerships between different countries and African directors. It is one of the major objectives that the festival has set itself. Finally, in conjunction with the Ouagadougou African Film Library, the FESPACO plays a role in all that concerns the conservation and safeguarding of African film heritage. This institution – a veritable emanation of the FESPACO – has in theory made the distribution and valorizing of this heritage possible, even if the floods in September 2009 had serious consequences on the state of copies and lastingly disrupted the running of the Film Library. Given the fragility of this source of documentation, the festival contributes to this heritage conservation mission. While film is still very fragile in Africa – the closure of its cinemas remains the underlying tendency as, with a few rare exceptions, movie theatres are shutting down one by one all over the continent – the Ouagadougou Pan-African Film Festival remains a reference and a driving force. Encouraging continental production, the distribution of certain works, and a reflection on the difficulties that film-makers face, the FESPACO is a model in the promotion of African cinema. With an ever-increasing number of spectators, it remains a major cultural event in Burkina Faso and the whole continent. The author found information and inspiration from Barlet (2002), Armes (2008), ATM (2000), Ouédraogo (1995), Ukadike (1994), Diawara (1992: 128–39), Ruelle, Tapsoba and Speciale (2005), Hoefert de Turégano (2005). See also Dupré 2012. This entry was translated from French by Melissa Thackway.

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African Film Festivals around the World A plethora of film festivals showcasing African films has emerged over the past decade or two as cultural organizations seek to capitalize on the presentation and promotion of culture in and/or from the African continent. What follows is a sampling of some of the representative African film festivals around the world and the list is not meant to be exhaustive by any means, as interesting events are often created as ‘one-offs’ or as sections of larger-themed film festivals. On the African continent, FESPACO (Festival Panafricain de Cinéma et de Télévision de Ouagadougou/Panafrican Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou), established in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso (reviewed in this volume), is undoubtedly the largest African film festival in the world. Founded with a mission of promoting African films to Africans on the African continent, it has been running biannually since 1969. The Journées Cinématographiques de Carthage Festival (JCC) was founded in Tunis in 1966 by the Tunisian film critic, Tahar Cheriaa, who also acted as initial liaison with FESPACO. In order to be eligible for competition, films in the festival must have a director of African or MENA (Middle East and North African) nationality. This festival claims to be the first on the continent and alternates years with FESPACO. Other festivals of note on the continent are the Zanzibar International Film Festival or ZIFF, held annually in Stone Town, the old capital of Zanzibar island, Tanzania. The largest film festival in East Africa, ZIFF selects films from Africa and abroad that are submitted based on a yearly theme. The Out in South Africa Gay and Lesbian Film Festival established in 1994 screens films based on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered content in both Cape Town and Johannesburg. The Sahara International Film Festival, or FiSahara, established in 2003, is an annual event celebrated in the Sahrawo refugee camps in the south-west corner of Algeria. Sponsored by the Polisario Front and organized (and mostly funded) by donors from Spain, the event’s goal is to bring film to those many Sahrawis who have lived isolated for years in the Algerian desert. This event, however, like many others described here, does not focus solely on the presentation of African films, but has a more global approach. On the European continent, African-based film events have come and gone while others have been in existence for years. For example, the Amiens International Film Festival (Festival International du Film d’Amiens) is an annual event held in Amiens, France since 1980 and featuring films from Europe, Latin America and Africa. Africa in the Picture, based in Amsterdam, brings African films to several Amsterdam cinemas before travelling to Rotterdam and The Hague. The festival features a significant established category on Gay Africa. Edinburgh’s Africa in Motion, established in 2006 by Lizelle Bisschoff, a South African researcher, is the United Kingdom’s largest African film festival. Film Africa in London and Festival Cinema Africano in Milan, Italy are two other prominent European African film events. In North America, the New York African Film Festival has been presented annually since 1998 at the Lincoln Center, the Brooklyn Museum of Art and the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Round-table fora allow African film-makers to connect with film industry professionals and media scholars in the United States. The African Diaspora International Film Festival (ADIFF), created in 1993, is held annually in various locations around Manhattan, New York City and the Pan-African Film Festival (PAFF) in Los Angeles presents and showcases the broad spectrum of ‘Black film’ every February since its creation in 1992 by Ayuko Babu.

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The longest-running African film festival in North America is the Festival International de Cinéma Vues d’Afrique, which has been held annually in Montreal since 1984. Founded by film-makers and producers including Gérard Le Chêne and Ousseynou Diop, and created with a mandate to link Quebec and Canada to African and Creole artistic and cultural production and to serve as its promoter and exhibitor, Vues d’Afrique also acts as an excellent resource and documentation centre for scholars, students and the general educated public where year-round consultation of documents and archived films is possible. Vues d’Afrique also organizes public moonlight screenings of films in July (usually in Parc Lafontaine), ‘discovery and intercultural sensitivity’ workshops for schools during the academic year, audio-visual and screenwriting training in Quebec and in Africa, Quebec/Canada film screenings in Africa and Haiti. 2014 marks the festival’s 30th anniversary and many activities are planned, such as a celebration of the festival’s partnership with FESPACO and a special focus on films from Burkina Faso, Morocco, Senegal, Egypt, Haiti and Tunisia with the support and introduction by their respective embassies or consulates. Selected films will also be presented in Quebec City. Clearly, African film festivals have come and gone or diversified and expanded over the years so that there is practically constant activity year-round around the globe. Such efforts can only be credited to the dedicated aficionados of African culture who are committed to sharing this passion with the world.

Sheila Petty

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DRAMA

Directory of World Cinema

Since the birth of cinema over a century ago, two major tendencies have marked the art form’s evolution. According to early film theorist, Siegfried Kracauer, on the one hand, there is the tradition of narrative, or fictional, film in which the primary object is to divert or entertain, and, on the other, there is that of documentary whose main aim, it has been said, is to instruct or inform. (Kracauer, cited in Izod and Kilborn 1998: 426) Indeed, Louis Lumière’s ‘life on the run’ newsreels, which focused on a single action in a single take, set the ensuing path for the development of the documentary form. French magician Georges Méliès, who specialized in special effects, elaborate settings and fantasy worlds, is credited with ‘pioneering’ narrative fiction ‘as a new vehicle for illusion’ via series of tableaux (Giannetti and Eyman 2006: 11). Edwin S Porter, an American, as well as others in Britain, began experimenting with forms of linearity of time, space and logic for storytelling, albeit with somewhat crude results. By the mid-1910s, the American, DW Griffith and his contemporaries were perfecting a formulaic narrative structure based on ancient Greek theatre conventions. This structure would eventually become known as the classical paradigm or classical cinema in which story is paramount and the emphasis is on character development and emotion. Conflict occurs between a protagonist and antagonist and builds to climax and resolution. This pattern is quite flexible and equally effective in a variety of sub-genres such as melodrama, romance, historical drama, epic and crime films. Interestingly, these developments, which came to define the Hollywood Studio System, would run contrary to the initial emphasis in African cinema, where, according to Henri-François Imbert, film-makers tend toward fiction films because they are an extension of oral tradition and oral tales (2007: 14). And, as N Frank Ukadike argues, ‘although African filmmakers invoke oral tradition as a primary influence, they have appropriated it and applied it in various ways to create paradigms for addressing the broad range of social, political, cultural, and historical issues of Africa’ (2000: 187). The desire on the part of African film-makers to uncover indigenous forms depicting Africa as a unique discursive environment has marked its development as an industry since its birth in the early 1950s. Some of the first films of note were actually shot in France. For example, Afrique-sur-Seine (discussed in Documentary Chapter), arguably the first sub-Saharan documentary, was produced in Paris in 1955 by four West African students led by the Senegalese director Paulin Soumanou Vieyra. This film documents and recreates the experience of African immigrants in France, opening the debate on issues such as racism, outsider experiences and employment discrimination later taken up in African dramatic fiction films such as Ousmane Sembène’s La Noire de…/Black Girl (Senegal/France, 1966), Med Hondo’s Soleil O (France/Mauritania, 1969), Jean-Marie Teno’s Clando (Cameroon, 1996) and Abderrahmane Sissako’s 1992 short film, October (France/Mauritania/Russia) in which the African male protagonist must hide in the shadows outside the university zone to bid farewell to Dakan, Destiny/Dakan le destin (Mohamed Camara, Guinea/France, 1997)

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his pregnant Muscovite girlfriend before he returns (the viewer assumes) to his homeland. The couple’s doomed relationship in contemporary Russia acts as an allegory for the post-independence melancholia that permeated 1990s African films dealing with exclusionary practices and the entrenchment of hostility towards African immigrants in western cultures. It was during the late 1960s and 1970s that sub-Saharan African film-making became codified as a movement. New directors such as Moussa Bathily (Senegal), Ben Diogaye Beye (Senegal) and Cheikh N’Gaido Bâ (Senegal) among others emerged to join established film-makers such as Med Hondo (Mauritania), Mahama Johnson Traoré (Senegal) and Ousmane Sembène (Senegal) in a community dedicated to changing the way in which Africa and Africans were perceived by spectators at home and abroad. In addition, the development of the Fédération Panafricaine des Cinéastes (FEPACI) in Algiers in 1969 gave film-makers a voice and an organization for lobbying for support of the new, and fragile, film industry. Dedicated to pan-Africanism, ‘the new members of FEPACI believed their prophetic mission was to unite and to use film as a tool for the liberation of the colonized countries and as a step toward the total unity of Africa’ (Diawara 1992: 39). One of the far-reaching consequences of this goal was a direct impact on the type of film-making that would take root in sub-Saharan African cinema. The film-makers would, almost universally, turn away from western cinematic grammar and narrative in favour of developing ‘the creation of aesthetics of disalienation and colonization’ (40). In practical terms, what developed were aesthetics that shunned the Hollywood classical paradigm and its attendant focus on implicit ideology subordinated to psychology. Instead, sub-Saharan African film-makers privileged ‘semidocumentary forms to denounce colonialism where it existed and to use didactic fictional forms’ to further sociopolitical critique where new regimes remained mired in neocolonial legacies (40). Films, then, were not to serve as pure entertainment or as commercial ventures alone, but instead should take as their locus ‘the need to raise the consciousness of the African masses’ and to create aesthetic constructs that would depict ‘African realities in ways that could not be absorbed by the dominant cinema’ (42). In this endeavour, Sembène’s films, along with those of Med Hondo and Mahama Traoré, were held up as setting desirable benchmarks for others to emulate. Although this had the arguably undesirable effect of truncating exploration of other aesthetic styles, the pressure to conform to the goal of education and revolution over western-inspired aesthetics resulted in an identifiable sub-Saharan African aesthetic style of social realism which included the use of orality as a foundation of debate, witness or neutral camera aesthetics, a preponderance of medium and long shots to foreground social space, and a return to traditional African values as a source of identity renewal. Interestingly however, some film projects emerged that challenged this African social realism. Djibril Diop Mambéty’s 1973 release, Touki-Bouki ou Le voyage de la hyène/Touki-Bouki, Journey of the Hyena (Senegal), is considered sub-Saharan Africa’s first avant-garde film. By mixing images and sounds from the past and the present with fantasy visions, Diop Mambéty used an avant-garde style to take a critical look at Senegalese society. The subject introduced by Touki-Bouki in 1973, the search for positive values in an inevitably modernizing Africa, has preoccupied many African film-makers and by the 1990s and 2000s many were experimenting with new forms and aesthetics and a variety of genres to explore these issues. Soccer is the focus of two sports films in the 1990s: in 1994, the Guinean Cheikh Doukouré produced Le Ballon d’or/The Golden Ball about a young boy who is granted his wish to become a professional soccer player, and in 1998 Fernando Vendrell directed Fintar o Destino/Dribbling Fate (Cape Verde/

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Portugal) about an aging soccer hero. The musical as a genre becomes popular with film-makers by the early 2000s. In 2002 the Senegalese Moussa Sene Absa directed L’Extraordinaire destin de Madame Brouette/Madame Brouette about the disintegration of post-independence Senegalese society, and in 2003, the Guinea–Bissau director Flora Gomes released Nha Fala, ma voix/Nha Fala, My Voice, in which the protagonist’s voice becomes an instrument of, and metaphor for, liberation. Social problem dramas or ‘message films’ expressing powerful lessons remain, arguably, the most popular genre within the category of drama films. In his review of Dakan, le destin/Dakan, Destiny, Bakary Sawadogo argues that Mohamed Camara’s 1997 depiction of gay rights in Guinea is the first African film to deal explicitly with gay, male sexuality. From South Africa, Les Blair’s 1996 Jump the Gun portrays social and political conditions in post-apartheid Johannesburg while Bheki Sibiya’s 2009 Father Christmas Doesn’t Come Here deals with acceptance of traditional African values. In the Maghreb, two Algerian directors make their marks: Yamina Bachir Chouikh’s Rachida (2002) portrays the determination of protagonist Rachida to lead her life as she chooses amidst threats and violence against women in Algiers and Amor Hakkar’s 2007 La Maison jaune/The Yellow House promotes strong family values, especially between parents and children. And finally, the theme of journey and migration continues to resonate with many African film-makers. In 1999, Mahamat-Saleh Haroun directed Bye Bye Africa about his own return to Chad after living in France. Reviewer Yifen Beus describes the film as documentary with a fictional twist, underscoring the fact that the fictional form is as effective a commentary on the real world as documentary. Saër Maty Bâ suggests that Abderrahmane Sissako’s 2002 Heremakono: En attendant le Bonheur/Heremakono: Waiting for Happiness, in which protagonist Abdallah visits his mother in Mauritania before immigrating to Europe, is autobiographical. The drama films described in this chapter are not meant to constitute an exhaustive list, but are, however, representative of some of the styles and themes embraced and also challenged by African film-makers. And, as the continent continues to globalize, the corpus promises to become even richer.

Sheila Petty

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O Sun Soleil O Countries of Origin:

Mauritania France Languages:

French Arabic, with English subtitles Studios:

Films Soleil O Shango Films Director:

Med Hondo Producer: 

Med Hondo Screenwriter:

Synopsis Told through a series of vignettes, including street interviews and encounters with employers and other citizens, Soleil O explores the plight of black immigrants in France as they try to resist unfair housing policies, labour exploitation and a hostile social environment that demands complicity with attitudes rooted in the colonial past. The film focuses on an unnamed black immigrant who arrives in France with dreams of economic prosperity and expectations of equal treatment as an ex-colonial subject with a French-based education. His dreams are thwarted when he finds himself facing systemic racism by potential employers and other citizens of the city. This sends the black immigrant on a journey through the racial politics of 1960s France as he tries to survive and sustain his own identity. As he meets other black immigrants, he becomes connected to global histories of racism that cross black cultures and are united by the same daily struggles to survive. Driven to despair, the black immigrant casts off his acculturation and, taking his inspiration from black revolutionary leaders, he finds a way to reconfigure his African identity positively within a global context.

Med Hondo

Critique

Cinematographer:

Soleil O holds a special place in African cinema history. Like Ousmane Sembène’s La Noire de.../Black Girl (1966, Senegal/ France), Soleil O is a seminal feature film in early African cinema and, according to Françoise Pfaff, ‘owes its title to an old song that the African slaves used to sing aboard ships on their way to the West Indies’ (Pfaff 1986). It is remarkable for several reasons. First, the film’s main story thread concentrates on an unnamed back immigrant who arrives in France with the goal of attaining economic prosperity. This character construction succeeds in both personalizing the black immigrant’s struggle and in linking that struggle to the social conditions of all black immigrants in France. The character presages later character types in early African cinema where collective protagonists emerge as a means of emphasizing African cultural values. Second, the film has an avant-garde narrative structure in which Hondo hybridizes French New Wave aesthetics and other European influences with a truly African aesthetic sensibility. Given the later preponderance of African realism in early African cinema, Soleil O’s experimental narrative structure offers a glimpse of the kind of experimentation and hybridization practised by contemporary African film-makers such as Jean-Pierre Bekolo and Abderrahmane Sissako. Another significant aspect of Soleil O is the way in which the film is located at the crosscurrents of global history while loosely organized around the black immigrant’s struggle to find his identity in a hostile society that rejects him. He unsuccessfully searches for employment, debates paternalistic employment policies with a businessman, and is confronted by sexual politics based on racist stereotypes. In addition, the film uses fictionalized street interviews with French citizens and intellectuals as they comment on their

François Catonné Music:

George Anderson Editors:

Michèle Masnier Clément Menuet Duration:

102 minutes Genres:

Avant-garde Drama Cast:

Robert Liensol Théo Légitimus Yane Barry Bernard Fresson Greg Germain Armand Meffre Year:

1970

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attitudes to Africans in their midst. More to the point, the film seeks to connect the black immigrant’s experiences to those of different black cultures struggling for a foothold in 1950s and 1960s France. In one scene where a cross section of African immigrants come to discuss the racist housing policies of Paris that puts them in sub-standard quarters at the mercy of greedy landlords, the men discover that despite cultural differences they have common ground in their oppression. Significantly, African nations are also critiqued for their failure to protect the immigrants. Decrying the fact that their ambassadors in France ‘only defend governments’, and that their presidents have ‘sold out’ to neo-colonial interests, it becomes apparent that they are stranded in a rift between ‘origin’ and ‘otherness’, suggesting the need for a new formulation of identity. Soleil O conceives of the new process as a shriving of acculturation and an embracing of a transnational African identity forged at the crossroads of global histories. In this sense, the film is ahead of its time because it not only identifies the black immigrant’s diasporic experience as a locus of cultural exchange, it also suggests that he must actively refuse complicity with, and victimization by, such exchanges. Near the end of the film, the black immigrant, overwhelmed by his foray through racist French society, suffers an emotional purging of all he has experienced. Trapped in his room, he recognizes that if he complies with the social demands of French culture and becomes ‘a good white’, he will be complicit in his own dehumanization. In a series of scenes culminating in the climax of the film, Soleil O frames the black immigrant’s struggle to reconceive himself against the backdrop of black diasporic histories (significantly, the black immigrant is played by Robert Liensol, a professional actor from Guadeloupe). In one scene, the film evokes African slavery as the black immigrant careens blindly through a forest, stumbling to a stop at the edge of a river. Staring at the rushing water, he sees black men cast into the waves where they drown. In another scene, the black immigrant cowers on the forest floor as photographic images of iconic revolutionary leaders such as Malcolm X, Che Guevara, Mehdi Ben Barka and Patrice Lumumba flash subliminally across the screen. As both these scenes indicate, Soleil O actively seeks to link the black immigrant to global histories of racism and oppression, but also to the revolutionary spirit accompanying them. It is this revolutionary experience that prevails at the end of the film as the black immigrant positively reclaims his own subjectivity and moves on to redefine black experience within evolving contexts. The film closes on the words, ‘to be continued’, suggesting the black immigrant is at the beginning of a longer process of inscribing a positive diasporic space.

Sheila Petty

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October Countries of Origin:

France Mauritania Russia Language:

Russian, with English subtitles Studio:

Centrmauch-Film (Moscow) Director:

Abderrahmane Sissako Producers:

La Sept, EDJVA (Moscow) ATRIASCOPE (Paris) Andrée Davanture Emmanuel Vernières Annabel Thomas Screenwriters:

Tatiana Sachina Abderrahmane Sissako Gheorgi Rerberg

Synopsis Set and shot in Moscow, October features a black African student, Idrissa (Wilson Biyaya), who is about to leave Russia, and his white Russian girlfriend Irina (Irina Apeksimova), who has recently become pregnant. The impending departure makes interaction complicated, and isolation and solitude increasingly overwhelming. Though centred on the couple, October’s non-linear plot – predicated on ellipsis, silence and the psyches of its characters – also calls to account Russian society for its indifference towards and rejection of interracial love. As October unfolds, Idrissa seems unwilling to continue with a traumatic relationship while Irina faces the dilemma of whether or not to get an abortion. Furthermore, Sissako uses the film’s circular plot to play skilfully with time (present, past and future). Thus, as October progresses, questions arising in the viewer’s mind include: does Idrissa know of Irina’s pregnancy? Have Idrissa and Irina managed to re-connect physically and mentally? Do they or will they manage to do so? Does Idrissa actually leave Russia? Is the whole film not a surreal experience? Rather than providing answers to such questions, October’s narrative cleverly emphasizes them.

Critique Sissako argues in relation to October that rejection is found:

Cinematographer:

Gheorgi Rerberg Editors:

Galina Galouchkina Eric Carlier Duration:

36 minutes Genre:

Short drama Cast:

Wilson Biyaya Irina Apeksimova Year:

1992

60 Reviews

paradoxically […] in societies where you also find the most beautiful books, the most beautiful paintings, the best music, societies who have the monopoly over everything that is valued today. And yet this does not create universality. Those who are profoundly universal come from societies where knowledge […] belongs to the oral tradition, with things immaterial and imperceptible. (Sissako 2003a) By thus exposing western claims to universalism, Sissako is using October to question without bitterness his once-held view that Russian and African cultures are closely linked: ‘if one wants to denounce something, it is preferable not to hit people with it’. More than any of his films, October creates a mood for a soft but assertive denunciation of the West. Gueorghi Rerberg, who shot Zerkalo/The Mirror (1975) by Tarkovsky and who influenced Sissako, plays a major part in October’s black-and-white, mellow, poetic yet invoking film noir cinematography, interspersed with two fleeting colour shots of Irina’s hand. In the sequence where Irina and her friend Lena discuss Idrissa’s departure and the possibility of abortion, the camera lingers on their faces in close-up, and then cuts to a TV screen featuring a group of white dancers in blackface (one man and many women) performing a baroque, minstrel-type number that oozes racist tropes. Sissako, however, resists making ‘race’ the focus of his denunciation at the same time as he opens up the sequence to multiple interpretations, as he will do in his later films Heremakono

Directory of World Cinema

(2002) and Bamako (2006), by using the device of the-screen-withina-screen. While the second screen (TV) is both a window (into another world) and a mirror that questions and distorts reality, it also forces Lena and Irina to interact with its contents. The following analysis of Irina’s entrapment in ideology is inspired by Deborah Philips’s article ‘The Althusserian moment revisited (again)’ (2005: 88–90). Lena and Irina are linked to a minstrelsy performance that goes beyond racial issues in order to convey their uncertainties and fears, although these are distorted as they are represented in public. This applies particularly to Irina’s memory of her corporeal ecstasies, now interrupted by her imminent separation from Idrissa. For that reason, this second screen positions Irina as a ‘subject’ in Louis Althusser’s sense of individuals who are both subject ‘to the processes of ideological formation, and the subject of their own life’. Irina is ‘trapped within ideology’ (because her non-verbal communication with the TV screen, through tears shed in silence, connotes her resignation to the inevitability and immutability of the minstrelsy performance. The fact that Irina voluntarily lives and participates in an Ideological State Apparatus (i.e. Russian culture, Russian consumer society, Russian education and media) means that she repeats rituals, reproduces stances, and therefore seems unable to escape ideology. This is because the performance (sound & image) on the TV screen interacts with Irina not as ‘a system of false ideas’ but as one within which ‘ideology actually constructs [her] experience and reception of the world’. I am not denying that Irina has free will and consciousness. When Idrissa visits her flat one night and her xenophobic elderly neighbours call a police officer, Irina demonstrates her ability to resist the Repressive State Apparatus (RSA, represented by the police force)..Insisting she has no visitors and that the man’s coat and hat on the chair are hers, she drives the policeman away without Idrissa being arrested. However, such a resistance happens once in the film and is as fleeting as October’s characters recurrently leaving frames. Irina’s tentativeness seems to adhere to a framework of fragmentation accented by Sissako’s use of sound effects, editing and mise-enscène. In addition, October asks at least two crucial questions. First, can Irina demonstrate a rigorous understanding of a distorted reality, of her own culture and society? Second, can Irina and Idrissa penetrate and challenge the ideological constructions entrapping them? Sissako provides no answers to these and other questions emerging from October. Instead, he occasionally interrupts the film’s circular plot with open-ended scenes like the penultimate one, which could be either a flashforward or a flashback. Alone in the snow, Idrissa is hit by a snowball. An enigmatic mixed-race girl enters the shot, gently places his hat on his head and steps back and looks at him. Idrissa tries to reach out to her and asks her name, but only gets a tender look and an inscrutable smile before she runs towards a Russian woman (her mother or grandmother?).

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Ultimately, October demonstrates that Sissako’s film language emphasizes the unsaid and embodies visual-aural deference to Yasujiro Ozu, Sergei M Eisenstein and Andrei Tarkovsky. Simultaneously, in order to fully appreciate the ethics, aesthetics and politics of October, one may want to meditate on Frantz Fanon’s introduction to his book Black Skin, White Masks (1967), especially the excerpt that Sissako almost used to open October with white words superimposed on the black screen. ‘[T]he explosion will not happen today. It is too soon … or too late. […] I think it would be good if certain things were said. These things I am going to say, not shout.’ Sissako believes that Fanon’s statement describes well the generation of film-makers to which he belongs (Sissako 2003b: 89).

Saër Maty Bâ

Touki-Bouki, Journey of the Hyena Touki-Bouki, ou Le voyage de la hyène Country of Origin:

Senegal Languages:

French Wolof Arabic, with English subtitles Studio:

Cinegrit Director:

Djibril Diop Mambéty Producer:

Djibril Diop Mambéty Screenwriter:

Djibril Diop Mambéty Cinematographer:

Georges Bracher Art Director:

Aziz Diop Mambéty Editor:

Siro Asteni

62 Reviews

Synopsis Two lovers – a cattle herder, Mory (Magaye Niang), and a university student, Anta (Mareme Niang) – set off on a motorcycle to escape the poverty and violence of the Dakar slum where they live, with the aim of emigrating from Senegal to France. Discouraged by Anta’s Aunt Oumi, the couple nonetheless pursue their dream through criminal acts. Mory and Anta first steal the take from a wrestling match, and later rob Mory’s homosexual friend, Charlie (Ousseynou Diop), by taking advantage of his attraction to Mory. The couple make their way to the seaport in Charlie’s car, leaving Mory’s motorcycle behind for a savage boy they encounter who is reminiscent of Tarzan. Although Mory fancies himself returning to Dakar a wealthy prince whom Anta’s aunt (Aminata Fall) adores rather than derides, when he and Anta secure a passage to France aboard a ship of European intellectuals, he abruptly decides to flee, leaving Anta to sail off alone. Afterward, Mory finds the Tarzan boy, who has crashed the motorcycle. Mory collects the cattle skull that adorned the motorcycle’s handlebars and wanders off.

Critique Touki-Bouki, released in 1973, is among Africa’s first avant-garde film narratives. The film explores the issue of emigration and the clash between tradition and modernity in postcolonial Senegal. Djibril Diop Mambéty (b.1945–d.1998) was Africa’s foremost avant-garde film-maker. Mambéty’s first feature, Touki-Bouki, defies categorization within the genres of social realism, colonial confrontation and the return-to-the-sources common in African Fespaco cinema of the 1970s and 1980s. Touki-Bouki’s experimental narrative form is an ideal approach to the film’s thematic investigations of the cultural clashes between Senegalese traditions and the influence of European modernity on those living in Dakar. In this respect, Mambéty builds on the social

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Duration:

85 minutes Genres:

Drama Avant-garde Cast:

Magaye Niang Mareme Niang Christophe Colomb Ousseynou Diop Moustapha Touré Aminata Fall Fernand Dalfin Al Demba Dieynaba Dieng Assayne Faye Robbie Lawson Year:

1973

commentary of his first release, the 1968 short, Contras’ City. As Touki-Bouki confuses its chronology, it also mingles Mory and Anta’s daily experiences with their fantasies. The Tarzan boy’s presence in the non-fantasy sequences especially renders the distinction between reality and fantasy irrelevant in this film. This road movie’s loose narrative style and challenging political attitude may inspire viewers to relate the film to Jean-Luc Godard’s oeuvre, although Mambéty would likely have loathed comparisons between his film and a European aesthetic. The frenetic shifts between ‘fantasy’ and ‘reality’ contribute to the film’s relatively fast-pace, which can confuse viewers through narrative convolutions. Nevertheless, the story’s ontological ambiguities and ambivalent outlook serve its complicated messages. Touki-Bouki challenges both tradition and modernity as they impact Africans without favouring one social system over the other. Instead, Mambéty offers a balanced critique of how Senegalese society chafes in response to the postcolonial conflict between African and European ways of life. It is significant that each of the film’s protagonists chooses a different system, with Mory opting to remain in Senegal after he sees Africans in European dress boarding the ship of French intellectuals, and Anta pursuing life in France away from her African slum. Mory’s motorcycle, which is adorned with a cattle skull, is the film’s most prominent symbol of the compression of tradition and modernity. Of course, the motorcycle also signifies social mobility, which, for Mory and the young Tarzan, comes crashing to a halt. Mory, in juxtaposition to the white savage trying to survive in postcolonial Africa, seemingly finds himself out of place among Europeans, who denigrate Africans as uncivilized. Anta, the more educated of the pair, sets sail to escape her Aunt Oumi’s disheartening attempts to interfere in Anta’s studies so that Anta may take up the traditional gender role of Islamic Wolof women who live in the slum. Elsewhere, the film takes issue with African intellectuals of the radical left who place themselves in opposition to uneducated Africans, and the limited social and economic benefits of France’s neo-colonial investment in Senegal. Gender and sexuality are particularly notable markers of the convergence between the two worlds in this film, with Anta, whom the homosexual Charlie describes as ‘butch’, rejecting her traditional gender role, and the fat, stylish, wealthy Charlie metonymizing the privileging of modernity in Senegalese society. While Touki-Bouki ends ambiguously without offering any clear solutions for Africans caught in the postcolonial moment, Mambéty carries his themes forward in a loose sequel, Hyenas, which followed in 1992.

Stefan Sereda

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Dribbling Fate Fintar o Destino Countries of Origin:

Cape Verde Portugal Languages:

Criolo Portuguese, with English subtitles Studio:

David and Golias Director:

Fernando Vendrell Producers: 

Fernando Vendrell Luís Alvarães Screenwriters:

Carla Baptista Fernando Vendrell Cinematographer:

Luis Correia Editor:

Pedro Ribeiro Duration:

77 minutes Genre:

Sports drama Cast:

Carlos Germano Betina Lopes Paulo Miranda Figueira Cid Manuel Estevão Elíseo Leite Year:

1998

64 Reviews

Synopsis Fifty-year-old Mané (Carlos Germano) is a figure larger than life in his small town of Mindelo, on the island of Saõ Vincente, Cape Verde. He is a famous soccer player, who could have actually tried out for the Portuguese team Benfica in 1959, had he not married Lucy, a local girl (Betina Lopes). Now, Mané coaches soccer to teenagers who revere him, and runs a small bar, where local soccer fans gather to root for Benfica. Yet, Mané is deeply unsatisfied with his life. Consumed by regrets, he sinks into alcoholism and ignores his wife and family. His big dream is that his protégé Kalu (Paulo Miranda), a promising young soccer player, will leave the island and play for a major Portuguese team; yet the teenager dreams of immigrating to America or of remaining on the island with his girlfriend. When Benfica is set to play at the Portuguese Finals, Mané has a midlife crisis – he steals his wife’s savings and flies to Lisbon to watch the match, convinced that without his attendance, Benfica will lose. On the mainland, Mané learns some hard lessons and returns to Mindelo humbled, and somewhat reconciled with his island fate.

Critique Dribbling Fate differs from most sports films circulating about racial or gender minorities (e.g. Invictus [Clint Eastwood, 2009], More Than Just a Game [Kristopher Belman, 2008], Pride [Sunu Gonera, 2007], The Great White Hope [Martin Ritt, 1970], Hoop Dreams [Steve James, 1994], Love and Basketball [Gina Prince-Bythewood, 2000], Offside [Mårten Klingberg, 2006], etc.) which generally celebrate youth, masculinity, triumph over adversity, team-building, social reconciliation, multiculturalism or gender equity. By contrast, this sports drama resists many of these generic themes, in that it features a nostalgic, aging soccer hero, who mourns the loss of his masculinity and social status, feels divorced from his family and local community and is unable to reconcile with his ordinary fate post-retirement. Mané’s soccer fandom is also not viewed in a positive light, but rather as a form of dangerous, destructive and discriminatory fanaticism. While in many sports films, sports are heralded as a panacea for all types of social ills, here sports are likened to a band-aid solution – as games or child’s play. The many scenes of soccer practice and soccer matches are paralleled with various scenes of other games, such as chess or children playing in the streets. Mané’s clients at the bar, all avid sports fans, are largely unemployed loiterers who cannot afford to pay for their drinks. Joaquim (Figueira Cid), the only paying customer, at one point has a dispute with Mané, chiding, ‘You just played football. I worked all my life.’ Throughout the film, soccer, as puerile play, is contrasted with work, often depicted as manual labour. For instance, the film opens with a shot of a labourer hoeing arid dirt; only later do viewers realize it is a youth idealistically marking out a soccer field. Island life is also a central theme of Dribbling Fate. While Cape Verde is often celebrated as a quaint, relaxing tropical paradise, as

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Dribbling Fate

in the songs of Cesaria Evora, here it is depicted as an imprisoning dead-end, with few viable prospects. As the town’s schoolteacher observes, ‘on an island, men fear staying more than leaving’. Shots of the island’s arid volcanic landscape and its concrete cityscape, as well as long sequences of waiting, watching or idly passing time, cultivate this sentiment of sterility and stagnancy. The only way to leave is by boat or plane, and Mané spends much of the film raffling off his bicycle, which his friends ridicule because it can never leave the island. In the film’s closing scene, Mané, transformed by his journey to the mainland, finally rides off into the sunset on his bicycle. This last shot also finally presents us with lyrical images of the island’s tropical coast. The turning point in the film is clearly Mané’s journey to Portugal, and to the Finals match in the Lisbon Stadium; thus the film also addresses the dream of emigration, as well as dream fulfilment. On his trip, both of Mané’s idealistic aspirations are shattered – with his anti-soccer son who escaped Cape Verde, with his former teammate Americo who made it big but now lives in a shanty town, and with a scalper, who robs Mané of his money. As in the traditional immigrant journey then, Mané is forced to gain more realistic expectations through a series of transformative obstacles. Though he returns home humbled and exhausted by the mainland where ‘one must be

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as sly as a fox’, the film does not suggest that Mané returns a more practical man. Rather, our hero has simply learned that imaginary journeys are more satisfying than real ones. As Mané explains in his concluding speech to Kalu, ‘you can go anywhere you like with your imagination’.

Madelaine Hron

Madame Brouette L’Extraordinaire destin de Madame Brouette Countries of Origin:

Canada Senegal France Language:

French Studios:

Productions La Fête Inc. Production La Lanterne MSA Production Director:

Moussa Sene Absa Producers:

Badou Ba Danielle Champoux Rock Demers Claude Gilaizeau Moussa Sene Absa Screenwriters:

Gilles Desjardins (co-writer) Claude Gilaizeau (writer) Moussa Sene Absa (writer) Cinematographer:

Jean-Jacques Bouhon   Art Director:

Moustapha Ndiaye Music:

Mamadou Diabaté Majoly Fiori Serge Fiori

66 Reviews

Synopsis Mati (Rokhaya Niang), a street vendor with a young daughter, Ndèye, struggles to find freedom, prosperity and an honest life in postcolonial Senegal. Called ‘Madame Brouette’ for the brightly coloured wheelbarrow (brouette in French) from which she sells her wares, Mati is a strong woman who dreams of opening a canteen in the marketplace. She meets Naago (Aboubacar Sadikh Ba), a womanizing police officer who covets her beauty, and seduces her. When Mati becomes pregnant by him, Naago refuses to take responsibility for her and the child. Trapped in a slum hotel with her daughter, Mati abandons her principles and entices a friend into helping her smuggling scheme. Mati then approaches London Pipe, the local gang leader, to sell the goods and start her canteen. At first the business is successful, but once London’s gang members make the place their hangout, Mati’s legitimate customers drop off. On the festival of Tajaboon, Naago is out womanizing when Mati goes into labour. Ndèye (Ndèye Seneba Seck), sent to find him, discovers Naago drunk in London’s bar, dancing with another woman. Ndèye is then surrounded by intoxicated men and almost molested, but she is saved by a neighbour boy. When Naago returns home after his drunken spree, he and Mati argue violently over his absence and the attack on Ndèye.

Critique Madame Brouette is a musical, a relatively new genre in postcolonial African cinema which includes such films as U-Carmen e-Khayelitsha (Mark Dornford-May, South Africa, 2005), Nha Fala, ma voix/My Voice (Flora Gomes, France/Portugal/Luxembourg 2003) and Karmen Geï (Joseph Gaï Ramaka, Senegal, 2001). Unlike Karmen Geï, which draws from the western musical paradigm by focusing on the musical and dancing performance of the central character, Madame Brouette draws on the African cinematic tradition of the griot or storyteller. The music, predominately performed in Wolof by a group of griots singing for donations in the marketplace, becomes a social commentary on Mati’s fall from grace. Awarded a Silver Bear for best music at the 2003 Berlin Film Festival, the film’s music is a collaboration between prominent Malian Kora musician Mamadou (Madou) Diabaté, and Quebecbased writer-composers Majoly and Serge Fiori. By drawing on African rhythmic and musical heritage, Madame Brouette’s

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Editor:

Mattieu Roy-Décarie Duration:

104 minutes Genres:

Musical Drama Cast:

Rokhaya Niang Aboubacar Sadikh Ba Kadiatou Sy Ndèye Seneba Seck Year:

2002

musical performances offer a poignant counterpoint to evoke the postcolonial disarray of the film’s fictional world. Madame Brouette is comprised of two storylines. The first is a frame story that creates suspense and gives the narrative a mystery format. A man staggers out of a shack, dressed in dishevelled women’s clothing, and is shot several times. He collapses and dies. The neighbours quickly identify him as Naago, and suspect Mati of the killing as she was with him at the time of the shooting. The police and media arrive to begin their investigation. The quest of the film then becomes centred around who killed Naago and why. The frame story, which returns at key moments in the film, allows for social commentary on Mati and Naago as individuals, but also on the relations between men and women, as well as on the struggle to survive in postcolonial Africa. In one scene, a television reporter asks a group of women if Mati should get a jail sentence or a full reprieve. The women are supportive of Mati, calling Naago a louse, but the men standing nearby are divided. This exchange, with its range of opinions, creates a discursive space for the spectators and allows them to choose their own position on the debate. Madame Brouette, at its heart, deals with the corruption of Mati’s character, which comes to represent the disintegration of postcolonial society. Globalization, materialism and the failure of postcolonial politics to carry out the promises of independence, have recently figured in a number of African films, including Dôlé, l’argent/Dôlé, Money (Imunga Ivanga, Gabon, 2001), Faat Kiné (Ousmane Sembène, Senegal, 2001) and Na Cidade Vazla/The Hollow City (Maria João Ganga, Angola, 2004). Madame Brouette demonstrates this in several ways. For example, Mati starts out as a strong woman, determined to create a better life for Ndèye, despite receiving no support from her womanizing ex-spouse. She stands up to the abusive husband of her friend, Ndaxté (Kadiatou Sy), and when the husband orders her out of the home, she takes her friend to her father’s home, despite the criticism she knows she will face. Although her desire for economic advancement is made visual in her wheelbarrow, which is plastered with bright coloured Coke, Nescafe and other advertisements, she declares herself willing to save up for her canteen pennies at a time because it is honest work. All of this ends when she meets Naago, who manages to deceive her into believing that she is his one true love. When she becomes pregnant and is thrown out of her father’s house, she finds that Naago will not commit to her or the child. This circumstance leads to her first criminal act: she talks Ndaxté into a smuggling scheme. The implication of these events is that it seems impossible to advance in Senegalese society, especially for women, without engaging in corrupt behaviour of some kind. In a later scene, when Mati complains that London’s gang members are driving away her legitimate business, Naago mocks her self-righteousness, pointing out that Mati buys black market gas, serves her customers ancient frozen fish and operates without a business licence. Mati’s response is that she did everything she could to gain her licence, including handing out bribes. This exchange seemingly suggests that honesty is not the best policy in postcolonial Africa. At the same

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time, by choosing this path, Mati is the embodiment of a corrupt postcolonial subject. If there is a weakness in the film, it is the tension between a western-influenced view of male/female relations and the film’s focus on postcolonial social space and cinematic technique. The difficulty lies in the almost unanimously negative portrayal of key male figures, including Biran, Ndaxté’s brutal husband, Mati’s rigidly Islamic father and Naago. Unlike films such as Moolaadé (Ousmane Sembène, Senegal, 2004), which are critical of traditional male patriarchy but also provide male characters that are supportive of equal rights for women, the men of Madame Brouette remain stereotypical victimizers of women. This is particularly evident at the end of the film when Naago, dressed in women’s clothes and still drunk, arrives home to be confronted by Mati. At the height of the argument, Naago beats Mati, an act of male violence that forms the justification for his subsequent murder minutes later. Despite this motivation, Mati’s actions at the end of the film result in her assuming the social cost of his death. In the end, it is patriarchy that endures, and this seems at odds with Mati’s independent character.

Donna-Lynne McGregor

Nha Fala, My Voice Nha Fala, ma voix Countries of Origin:

France Portugal Luxembourg Languages:

French Portuguese Director:

Flora Gomes Production Companies:

Fado Filmes Films de mai Samsa film Screenwriters:

Flora Gomes Franck Moisnard Cinematographer:

Edgar Moura

68 Reviews

Synopsis  Nha Fala is a musical directed in 2003 by Flora Gomes from Guinea–Bissau. It tells the story of Vita (Fatou N’Diaye), a young and pretty woman, born in Cape Verde. A familial curse forces her to never sing, at the risk of death. Before leaving for France in order to study, Vita travels around the town to say goodbye to her friends and family. Vita also promises her mother (Bia Gomes) that she will never sing. In Paris, she meets and falls in love with Pierre, a musician (Jean-Christophe Dollé). When he hears Vita’s voice, he convinces her to sing in his group. Vita accepts and the album is a success. Vita decides to return to Cape Verde to organize her false burial in order to liberate herself from the traditional ban. Pierre does not really believe in this malediction but he follows Vita to Cape Verde and helps her make the preparations.

Critique  Flora Gomes directed several feature films in which women are the heroines, such as Mortu Nega, celui dont la mort n’a pas voulu/ Mortu Nega, Death Denied in 1988, The Blue Eyes of Yonta/Les Yeux bleus de Yonta in 1991 and Po di Sangui. This last film was selected for the official competition of the International Cannes Film Festival (France) in 1996. Nha Fala was selected for the Venise Mostra (Italy) in 2002. Nha Fala is a musical in which voice becomes a tool for a narrative transgression. Vita is not allowed to sing at the risk of death, but she defies this traditional ban and sings. The title of

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Music:

Manu Dibango Editor:

Dominique Paris Duration:

89 minutes Genre:

Musical Cast:

Fatou N’Diaye Jean-Christophe Dollé Bia Gomes Angelo Torres Jorge Biague José Carlos Imbombo François Hadji-Lazaro Danielle Evenou Year:

2003

the film means ‘my voice’. Vita repeats this expression twice in the middle of the film. This repetition underlines of course not only the importance of voice for a musical film, but especially its importance in the narrative for the relatives of the young woman. The action of Nha Fala takes place in the streets of Cape Verde (Guinea–Bissau) and Paris (France). This film is constructed around journey and crossroads. The journey is symbolized with some objects: the letters given to Vita or the quotations of country names. Death is also the ultimate journey through a rebirth. In Nha Fala, death is everywhere on-screen, through the presence of coffins or with the burial of one of Vita’s neighbours or with the one she organizes for herself. But death is festive in Nha Fala because it is a form of liberation. The film is dedicated to the memory of Amilcar Cabral, who was one of the charismatic leaders of the struggle for the independence of Cape Verde and Guinea– Bissau. Cabral fought for equality between men and women and denounced some traditional beliefs that he felt stunted the social and economical development of his country. Nha Fala also denounces the outmoded traditional beliefs such as the ban of singing for women. The crossroads are the encounters of people and the cultural exchange. Vita, born in Cape Verde, meets Pierre, a French artist. Some of their cultural differences are erased when they prepare together the false burial of the young woman in order to remove her malediction. Furthermore, the name ‘Pierre’ has a Judeo-Christian connotation. In this film, a particular scene shows the coexistence between traditional and occidental religions in the Cape-Verdian society. During Vita’s neighbour’s burial, the sacrifice of a pig is foreign to the priest who comes to celebrate Mass. In Nha Fala, Portuguese Creole alternates with French. Furthermore, in Flora Gomes’s movie, the scenes shot in Cape Verde are very colourful and contrast with the grey and darkness of the Parisian scenes. However, in Paris, Vita always dresses in bright colours. This may be a way of retaining her origin and adapting it to wherever she lives. The crossroad is obvious in the difference of skin colours between Pierre and Vita, especially in the love scene. Spatio-temporal crossroads also appear in the encounters of supernatural and real worlds. The last scene of Nha Fala ends with a special effect of Cabral’s bust literally rising up in the air to take its place on a pedestal in front of the sea. Throughout the whole movie, characters constantly look for the appropriate place to set it. This special effect creates the illusion that the statue chooses its own pedestal, just as Vita’s and all Cape Verdians’ destinies are in their own hands.

Karine Blanchon

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Dakan, Destiny Dakan, le destin Countries of Origin:

Guinea France Languages:

French Malinké Studios:

Les Films du 20ème La Sept Cinéma Director:

Mohamed Camara Producer:

Pascal Lahmani Screenwriter:

Synopsis Dakan tells the story of Manga and Sori, two high school students in Conakry (Guinea) who love each other in a social context in which a relationship between two people of the same sex is not acceptable. The two young men face their parents’ disbelief and refusal to let their sons continue a relationship they consider as unnatural. ‘Throughout the country you will be treated like outlaws, like criminals,’ warns Mr Bakari Kaba (Mohamed Camara) in an attempt to persuade his son Sori to renounce his relationship and prepare to replace him as manager of his fishing business. Manga’s mother, in turn, is convinced that a strange madness has struck her son and he needs healing. The enforced break-up between the two partners is followed by their attempt to lead a professional and heterosexual life. Now a fisherman, Manga intends to marry Oumou (Cécile Bois), a relationship that is welcomed by their respective mothers. Sori, likewise, has had a child with a village woman and now works for his father at the port. Their attempts at leading heterosexual lives fail, however, for Manga breaks up with Oumou to meet up with Sori, who leaves his village wife and child.

Mohamed Camara Cinematographer:

Gilberto Azevedo

Dakan, Destiny

70 Reviews

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Art Director:

Mohamed Camara Music:

Kouyaté Sory ‘Douga’ Kandia Editor:

Dos Santos Duration:

90 minutes Genre:

Drama Cast:

Mohamed Camara Cécile Bois Mamadou Mory Camara Aboubakar Touré Koumba Diakité Year:

1997

Critique Made in 1997, Dakan is the first African film to deal solely and explicitly with the theme of homosexuality, in particular, gay male sexuality. Other African films tackling the same theme followed, among others, the documentary Woubi Chéri (Philip Brooks and Laurent Bocahut, Ivory Coast, 1998) and the fictional Karmen Geï (Joseph Gaï Ramaka, Senegal, 2001). Film director Mohamed Camara from Guinea had already attracted the critics’ attention with his choice of taboo themes such as incest and child suicide in his short films Denka (1992) and Minka (1994). With homosexuality at its core, Dakan maintains the Guinean film-maker’s trademark of taboo topics. Although the film broaches various aspects of sexuality, this critique focuses on the preconceptions and popular biases that surround a same sex relationship, and on the film’s message. Madness, unnatural relationships and broken-down families are the images this film depicts of the nation state’s mental image of homosexuality. First of all, the relationship between Manga and Sori is perceived by their families as unnatural, as demonstrated, on the one hand, by the stunned look on the doctor’s face when Sori tells him that he is in love with another male youth and, on the other hand, by the question put to him by a female classmate: ‘how do you make love? Are you the woman or is he?’ To Fanta, Manga’s mother, this sort of relationship challenges masculinity as she states ‘boys don’t do that’. This rejection of a relationship between two males finds justification in the concept of sexuality as a means of reproduction. In the eyes of Fanta and Bakari Kaba, the high school students’ respective parents, the concern about ensuring the family line is of paramount importance. Mr Kaba thus expresses his anxiety to his son: ‘Do you want our lineage to end with you?’ and likewise, Fanta reminds her son of his duty: ‘You are our son. You must give us children.’ In addition, homosexuality is represented as the consequence of a psychological disorder of which madness is a symptom. This representation of homosexuality derives from the theory of degeneration (dégénérescence), a clinical diagnosis developed by psychiatrists in the second half of the nineteenth century, according to which homosexuality is a dysfunction of the central nervous system (Mendès-Leite 2000). In order to ‘cure’ such unnatural sexual orientation, it is necessary to restore the psychological balance. In Dakan, Manga is declared mad by his mother after he reveals his relationship with Sori. To make him regain his heterosexuality, Manga’s uncle takes him to the family village healer for a purification ritual. Upon his return to Conakry, Manga begins a relationship with Oumou, a French girl who claims she is Guinean. This relationship seems stable to the audience until Oumou shows her distress in a love scene in which Manga tries to take her as he would Sori. This scene challenges the commonly held view that homosexuality originates from the West as Oumou here is the one who is western and heterosexual. Furthermore, after her first marriage to Alassane failed, Oumou had hoped to start a family with Manga. The sex scene also contradicts the concept of African masculinity, in particular the black man’s sexual power that white women allegedly fantasize about, as Frantz Fanon explains in Black Skin, White Masks (1967).

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The film explores yet another popular stereotype, namely that of the homosexual deprived of affection, from having been raised by a single parent. Manga has indeed never known his father who abandoned him and his mother to go and live in Paris. As for Sori, the viewers are left to their own devices as to why his mother is not mentioned once. Dakan emphasizes preconceptions and popular myths of homosexuality in the sociocultural context of Conakry, yet it provides a case study that could apply to other African societies as well. Such is, for example, the case of the documentary Woubi Chéri that shows the marginal status of homosexuals in Abidjan and their attempts to voice their right to be different. Dakan goes beyond merely depicting social constructs of homosexuality. Indeed, the director uses his film to celebrate the triumph of love, even if it occurs between same sex couples in a hostile environment. The end of the film, however, with the young men leaving everything behind including their families, provides a solution that is far from likely in the West African context, though of course the film-maker is entitled to be inventive in his fiction. The film has become a favourite among many black gay communities in the United States, although some critics in Africa, such as Clément Tapsoba (1997) from Burkina Faso, question the relevance of the theme of homosexuality to African cinema. For Camara, Dakan is also the opportunity to encourage debate around taboos: ‘I think no matter what the problem is, if there is no way to discuss it openly, it will get worse. I made this film so that there would be an open discussion, so that people may begin to discuss among themselves and that the entire community may gain from it’ (Ellerson 2005: 71). In conclusion, if the question of gay cinema in francophone Africa is raised, then Dakan is a pioneering and essential film, especially when it comes to representing sexual choices and their practice and legitimacy in relation to social norms and values. The film is also a celebration of love and shows that everyone’s ultimate desire and sometimes destiny is to love and be loved. This review was translated from French by Blandine Stefanson.

Boukary Sawadogo

Jump the Gun Countries of Origin:

South Africa United Kingdom Languages:

English Zulu Studio:

Channel Four Films

72 Reviews

Synopsis Jump the Gun opens with Clint (Newton), a white ‘sparky’ (electrician), and Gugu (Cele), an aspiring singer from Durban, arriving by train in Johannesburg. While Clint returns to a city of lawlessness and unfriendly black faces, Gugu sees opportunity, going to a party and hooking up with charming accountant/ band manager, Thabo (Seiphemo). She also meets wheelchairbound local gangster Bazooka (Nyembe) and slyly charms both on her quest to sing in a band. Clint, meanwhile, meets the prostitute Minnie (Burgers) in a bar run by JJ (Keogh) and begins a relationship with her.

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Director:

Les Blair Producer:

Indra De Lanerolle Screenwriter:

Les Blair Cinematographer:

Seamus McGarvey Production Designer:

David Barkham Music:

Joe Nina Editor:

Oral Norrie Ottey Duration:

109 minutes Genre:

Drama Cast:

Lionel Newton Baby Cele Michele Burgers Rapulana Seiphemo Thulani Nyembe Danny Keogh Joe Nina Marcel Van Heerden Year:

1996

JJ’s bar becomes the meeting point of Gugu, Minnie, Clint, Thabo and taxi driver Johnny (Van Heerden). Clint and Minnie’s relationship fumbles forward while Gugu rehearses with the band, but this sours her relationship with the possessive Bazooka, who keeps her prisoner in his house. Meanwhile, Clint is confronted with the reality of Minnie’s work. Gugu defies Bazooka, Minnie seeks reconciliation with Clint, and the action concludes at JJ’s where Thabo’s band performs to a packed house.

Critique Jump the Gun is often overlooked in surveys of post-apartheid film, but in its easy-going way it is a significant film in the cultural landscape of South Africa’s fledgling democracy. It might lack the gloss and high-profile cast of Darrell Roodt’s Cry, the Beloved Country (1995), but it is a far more authentic representation of South African identities in transition. Its key strengths are Les Blair’s unfussy direction of the characters’ journeys through working-class Johannesburg and the workshopped dialogue and performances of the actors. The result is a story that doesn’t poeticize the sometimes unpleasant realities of working-class urban life, and that is populated by a cast of believable, multifaceted characters. There is an essential humanity to all the characters that transcends the simplistic binaries of heroes and villains. Bazooka may be a car thief prone to violence, but the audience is also encouraged to regard him in a sympathetic light, just as Clint’s racism is tempered by the nuanced contextualization of his character: as Lesley Marx (2000: 135) writes: ‘he is one of those paradoxical figures: the white working-class man who has more to do with blacks on the ground than any of the liberals who despise his racist views and modes of expression.’ Clint’s arrival in Johannesburg immediately sets up the film’s examination of identities in flux. His (and the film’s) opening lines establish his racism and weary resignation to change: ‘South Africa’s getting quite African lately, hey?’ Just afterwards, in JJ’s (the bar), the white taxi driver Johnny asks: ‘You from out of town?’ to which Clint replies, ‘Out of touch’. Clint is now a stranger in a city in which he once felt at home. Being out of touch is also not the province of white South Africans alone: when Bazooka and Thabo argue later in the film, Bazooka tells his white-collar former friend that he has ‘lost touch’ with the township. Gugu treads a well-worn path as the black migrant to the big city seeking a new start and a rise to relative fame, but she is also framed in interesting ways. While there is no doubt her body is exploited by the camera, it is nonetheless refreshing to see black sexuality represented in an honest and direct way. Moreover, Gugu’s escape from Bazooka’s house and her final confrontation with him confirms her as an individual capable of prospering in the city on her own. Despite Minnie reprising the ‘hooker with a heart of gold’ stereotype, her character is given additional complexity. We might sympathize with her anguish over the child taken from her by Child Welfare, but there is no evil foster home or pious father to further slant our sympathies. The film’s denouement – with Clint on a train out of

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Johannesburg while Gugu braids Minnie’s hair on a utopian green hill amidst the city’s high-rises and busy streets – also suggests a new South African optimism based not only on race but also gender. The confrontation outside JJ’s consolidates some of the film’s themes, particularly male violence and firearms. After Bazooka has fired three harmless shots at Gugu and Thabo, Minnie screams, ‘Why must these fucking men always carry guns?’ Gugu replies calmly, ‘It’s just an African trying to prove his manhood,’ the impotence of men with guns reinforced by Clint rolling on the ground comically trying to get his illegally purchased gun out of his belt before dropping it on the ground. Clint’s purchase of the firearm is equally comic, a clumsy enactment of movie contraband exchanges prompted by Clint suddenly realizing the realities of purchasing the gun from a car full of black men in a dark alley at night. In an earlier scene, Clint is taken to a gun dealer by Johnny where Clint, Johnny and the dealer end up striking a series of ridiculous poses while a bemused young black boy looks on. The staging is clumsy, but the satire of machismo is clear. Crime, or more accurately the fear of crime, complements the theme of men with guns: it is after Clint witnesses a mugging that he decides to arm himself. This sets up a trajectory that points to – and even references – Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese, 1976), setting up Clint as the urban outsider and anti-hero. Clint’s last ‘act’ before leaving is to stand at the window of his room and train the unloaded gun on a black pedestrian, before pulling the trigger. It is another act of impotence, juxtaposed ironically with the prominent view of his T-shirt on which is emblazoned: ‘South Africa: one serious crime is committed every 17 seconds’. Loren Kruger’s assertion that ‘Jump the Gun remains preoccupied with white anxieties about race and crime that dominated fictions of the interregnum’ (Kruger 2006: 148) is true, but the film’s normalizing of black urban residents’ professional, creative and sexual lives marks a significant shift in South African film. Ultimately, Jump the Gun’s narrative and creative process indicate an intelligent, progressive approach to representing South Africa on film.

Ian-Malcolm Rijsdijk

Father Christmas Doesn’t Come Here Country of Origin:

South Africa

74 Reviews

Synopsis This film explores ideas of beauty and mythology from a child’s perspective. Just like Sembène’s La Noire de…/Black Girl (1966), Father Christmas Doesn’t Come Here gives voice to a hitherto silenced figure, an African girl aged around five, Siphokazi Mkhize (Jabulile Sithole). The film begins with a close-up shot of the little protagonist expressing pain at having her hair combed. Her grandmother (Thembe Sithole) is overheard saying: ‘You want to be beautiful? Beauty comes with pain.’ Siphokazi writes to Father Christmas to ask him for ‘long straight hair, just like my mother’. In

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Language:

Zulu Studio:

DV9 Films and National Film and Video Director:

Bheki Sibiya Producers:

Jeremy Nathan Michelle Wheatley Screenwriters:

Sibongile Nkosana Bongi Ndaba Bekhi Sibiya Cinematographer:

Jamie Ramsay Editor:

Garreth Fradgley Duration:

14 minutes Genre:

Drama Cast:

Jabulile Sithole Thembe Sithole Mthandeni Mvalase Slindile Nodangala Jomo Zama Aubrey Mthethwa Year:

2009

the end, Siphokazi learns to accept a different kind of life, and a distinctly African kind of beauty.

Critique Father Christmas Doesn’t Come Here interrogates Eurocentric beauty ideals and explores the ties that bind three generations of women – Siphokazi, her mother (a former beauty queen who is present only in the photo her daughter idolizes) and her grandmother, who raises her alone. Her mother had straight hair and fair skin, while her grandmother is a dark, overweight woman who wears headscarves, refusing to indulge in cosmetic concerns: ‘Be proud of your hair … be proud of yourself!’ The film examines Siphokazi’s childhood experiences, where the mythology of Santa Claus exists alongside dire poverty. The brutality of the shop owner who refuses to post her letter to Father Christmas – ‘I’m not wasting my petrol … for this nonsense … [he] isn’t real’ – is a signifier of this contrast, as is the framing of a little girl watching old Disney cartoons in her shack, or the incongruity of the ‘Jingle Bells’ soundtrack heard against her granny’s Zulu sing-song mutterings. As a spectator, one is instantly aware of the chasm between the ideals of western capitalist consumerism the television transmits and the hardship, lack and loss Siphokazi experiences in daily life, as well as the fact that the snowy location of the Father Christmas fable is distinctly European. ‘Where is the North Pole Granny?’ ‘There in the city somewhere’. ‘Do you think Father Christmas understands isiZulu … will he bring me a gift?’ Siphokazi is fascinated by a local girl who looks mixed-race, speaks English and has straight hair. When she sees her in the local shop, music (similar to that of the Western) plays in her head and she sees the teenager engulfed in light, a mirage that disappears into the African sun. The girl’s exit through a door into white light – repeated to illuminate its fantastical element – mimics that of John Wayne’s iconic cowboy at the end of The Searchers (John Ford, USA, 1956). Afterwards, Siphokazi’s face is alight with joy and she almost leaves the shop without paying, lost in the glow of her desire. But her attempts to make herself look white fail terribly, first when the closest thing she can find to a weave is a mop, and second when she secretly uses hair straightening cream in the night and awakens with terrible scalp burns. Siphozaki’s desire to look white (and the pains to which she will go to do so) is also central to Chris Rock’s film Good Hair (USA, 2010), an intriguing exploration of the black hair industry that generally depends on the idea that Afro hair is not good, feminine or beautiful. Such a damaging message has even filtered down to a little girl in a remote Zulu village. Siphokazi carries what looks like a mixed-race Barbie doll, with tanned skin and straight hair. Father Christmas Doesn’t Come Here is a radical challenge to a westernized point of view and ends with Siphokazi discovering that beauty is often skin deep; the shop owner’s wife reveals that, having lost her hair by using straightening creams, she wears a wig (just as Siphokazi’s mother did). Siphokazi learns that image is a superficial, transitional plaything, nothing more: as her

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grandmother says ‘it is just hair […] you are beautiful inside and out’. She also learns that nothing is more important than identity, and that her appearance can never outweigh the content of her character. Her grandmother tells her that she can achieve anything if she believes in herself – she doesn’t need a ‘pretend’ father to bestow gifts upon her. Having begun on the metaphorical road to self-acceptance, the film ends with a shot of Siphokazi walking home with her grandmother, skipping and smiling. She sheds the shackles of labels and ideals imposed by outside (commercial, political, hegemonic) forces, and she learns to just enjoy life.

Zélie Asava

Rachida Countries of Origin:

Algeria France Language:

Arabic Studios:

Canal+ GAN Cinema Foundation Ciel Production Arte France Cinéma Ciné-Sud Promotion Director:

Yamina Bachir Chouikh Production Companies:

Ciel Production Ciné-Sud Promotion Ministère de la Culture de la Republique Française arte France Cinéma Screenwriter:

Yamina Bachir Chouikh Cinematographer:

Mustapha Belmihoub Music:

Anne-Olga de Pass Editor:

Yamina Bachir Chouikh Duration:

93 minutes Genre:

Drama 76 Reviews

Synopsis Rachida, made in 2002 by film editor Yamina Bachir Chouikh, is the first Algerian fiction film shot by a woman in 35 mm. Set in 1996, within the specific historical moment of the rise of religious movements and terrorism in Algeria, it is the story of Rachida (Ibtissem Djouadi), the eponymous young schoolteacher working in Algiers. When a former pupil of hers flanked by several other youngsters force her to take a bomb to her school, Rachida refuses. She is shot in the abdomen and left for dead, the activated bomb beside her. Rachida survives her ordeal and moves to the countryside with her mother Aïcha (Bahia Rachedi). There, the young woman attempts to overcome the trauma of her aggression in the capital, and resumes her teaching. Although centred on Rachida, the narrative also presents us with a myriad of strong and colourful characters, proposing an intimate and at times humorous glimpse of the small village community where mother and daughter have sought refuge. However, their hope of finding a safe haven is soon crushed, as the presence of terrorists amongst the villagers brings more fear as well as more bloodshed.

Critique Yamina Bachir Chouikh began her film career in the 1970s, working as a scriptwriter and editor on several feature films (by directors Mohamed Chouikh, Okacha Touita), before embarking on her directing project. Though primarily focused on women’s experiences in her exploration of the life of a mother and daughter, Rachida offers a plurality of characterizations, illustrating incursions of physical, moral as well as emotional violence. In an early and pivotal scene, Rachida is shot. The use of specific cinematic techniques such as the presence or absence of diegetic sound, slow motion and ellipsis, converge to elicit a particularly strong empathy from the spectator by reflecting a similar disorientation, fear and confusion to that of the lead actress. The combination of character identification and distanciation carries with it an effective jarring feeling reminding us of our own subjectivity,

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Cast:

Ibtissem Djouadi Bahia Rachedi Rachida Messaouden Zaki Boulenafed Amel Chouikh Abdelkader Belmokadem Year:

2002

producing shock as well as distress at the vivid potential loss of life. In a masterful mise-en-scène, Bachir Chouikh succeeds in justifying the (only) presentation on-screen of an appalling physical act. Throughout, the director will continue to expose the various modes of violence encountered by women. Aïcha divorced her husband many years previously after he had taken a second wife, yet it was she who paid the heavy price of social exclusion and rejection. The weight of societal judgment also weighs on Rachida’s shoulders. Fearing that her scar will be mistaken for a caesarean, she refuses to join her mother and new neighbours at the Hammam. Another example of violence, both physical and emotional, is that of a young woman abducted and raped by terrorists. This victim of rape is rejected by her father who considers her forcible violation a disgrace to their family. In this rejection of a daughter, the director depicts not only a father’s desertion, but how societal values can prove equally restrictive for both genders: here, a man unable to transcend an archaic sense of honour, despite his daughter’s innocence. Similarly, young men try to force Rachida to plant a bomb in her school, yet in the village where she begins a new life we are introduced to Khaled (Zaki Boulenafed), an unemployed and endearing youth whose sole preoccupation is trying to speak to the woman he loves, but who is promised to another. The youths in the capital are caught in violence, whereas Khaled is consumed by unrequited love. His lack of means bars him from marrying his beloved, crushing his hope for happiness. On catching him in a public phone booth with his home number written on Khaled’s hand, the father of the bride-to-be comically loses his temper and assaults Khaled. It is an older friend who pacifies him, pointing out that Khaled is a young man genuinely and desperately in love. It is important to note that the various protagonists are portrayed to be Muslim believers. A fellow teacher who wears the hijab excitedly shares Rachida’s headphones to listen to Raï, the controversial Algerian popular music genre considered subversive, whose singers openly and often crudely speak of their malaise, and of love, loss and alcohol. In the countryside, when Rachida is challenged by a female colleague as to why she remains unveiled, she defends her choice by citing a verse of the Koran, proving herself as erudite as her colleague. The core concern is therefore not men or women pitted against Islam per se, but the way in which it is adhered to and practised by ordinary people in a predominantly Sunni Muslim country. Algeria earned its democratization process through the violently repressed Algiers riots of 1988, with the population making demands of dignity, improved standards of living, access to employment as well as democracy and government transparency. In the late 1980s, the Algerian religious movements, whose rise had been phenomenal, demanded these changes, yet few expected the horror that was to follow in their battle for political power. With Rachida, Yamina Bachir Chouikh intimates difference and moral ambiguities in a moving and multi-layered account of the suffering and aspirations of human beings in times of political and civil

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unrest. In the concluding sequence, Rachida and her mother survive a vicious and terrifying attack by terrorists in the village. In spite of her mother’s resignation to moving again, Rachida stands her ground. She defiantly returns to the devastated school, intent on imparting to her young pupils knowledge, as well as hope.

Rosa Abidi

The Yellow House La Maison jaune Countries of Origin:

Algeria France Languages:

Berber (Chaoui dialect) French Director:

Amor Hakkar Production Company:

Sarah Films (Besançon, France) Screenwriter:

Amor Hakkar Cinematographer:

Nicolas Roche Art Director:

Amor Hakkar Music:

Joseph Macera Fayçal Salhi Basile Ntsika Editors:

Lyonnel Garnier Amor Hakkar Duration:

87 minutes Genre:

Drama Cast:

Amor Hakkar Aya Hamdi 78 Reviews

Synopsis The first half of The Yellow House deals with the impact of a farmer’s eldest son’s untimely death in an accident while serving in the police force and the father’s journey to Batna (Algeria) to identify and collect the mortal remains. The second half deals with husband Mouloud’s quixotic but dogged plan to bring the shattered life of his wife (Fatima, played by Tounés Ait-Ali) to normalcy with the help of his eldest daughter (Alya, played by Aya Hamdi) and of a video recording made by his son before his death. Policemen, who have never met the farmer, help the man by providing him with a hazard light as he travels in the night on a three-wheeled farm tractor without headlights to bring his son’s body home. Taxi drivers help him locate addresses in the city. An official at the morgue, instead of taking the farmer to task for ‘stealing’ his son’s body, catches up with him on the highway and hands him the signed legal papers approving the body’s release. The farmer asks a pharmacist for some medicine to cure his wife’s depression, and the well-meaning pharmacist who has heard of a cure (painting the walls of his house yellow) shares that information with the farmer.

Critique This Algerian film is the director’s second feature. Taken to France by his parents at the age of six months, he only returned to Algeria briefly to bury his father in 2002. The filming appears simple too: no flashy editing distracts the viewer, camera angles are unobtrusive, and the viewer’s sensibilities are soothed by the delightful strains of evocative oud (a string instrument) music. The oud player Fayçal Salhi, who provided the music for the film, was present at the 2008 International Film Festival of Kerala (IFFK) to collect, on behalf of the Algerian director, the Special Jury Award. The movie had earlier won the top award at the Valencia Film Festival, the Best Actor Award at the Osian (New Delhi) Festival, three awards at the Locarno Festival, the Special Jury Prize at the Carthage Festival, among other honours elsewhere. Sociologically, the film criticizes the lack of electricity in some villages of the oil rich country and yet commends the quick remedial intervention when lapses are brought to the notice of

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The Yellow House

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Tounés Ait-Ali Year:

2007

the Algerian government officials. The film is not about economic injustice or government apathy; even though these real issues are present in the backdrop. In the forefront of this wonderful film are issues that are more universal: strong family bonds between husband and wife, between father and children, dead and alive. Directed, written, acted (playing the lead role of Mouloud) and co-edited by Amor Hakkar, The Yellow House will win hearts anywhere. It is humanistic, deceptively simple and uplifting. Having seen the French/Arabic/Berber language film, the viewer will leave with one thought – there is goodness in all of us, whether Algerian or a citizen of any other nation. The film underlines everything that is positive about the Muslim world in a charming way that is not didactic. Ordinary individuals, who could easily have been indifferent to a poor man, go out of their way to lend a helping hand to a man coping with grief. What is remarkable about this film is the contribution of one man Amor Hakkar, who acts, directs and edits a delightful film that does not criticize at any point what is wrong in society and yet presents a realistic canvas of Berbers in Algeria. There is criticism of the economic disparity in the film but it is latent. The film also silently underlines the important supportive roles of young girls in a Muslim family, rarely underlined in Arab films. Hakkar’s film is one of the finest films to emerge from North Africa in recent years almost comparable to Mohamed Asli’s lovely 2004 Moroccan film, In Casablanca, Angels Don’t Fly/Al malaika la tuhaliq fi al-dar albayda, also about the Berber community. Hakkar has not just proved his mettle as a director but also as an interesting screenplay writer, who is capable of merging tragedy with low-key visual humour that never goes overboard. Hakkar’s dignified performance in the main role seems contagious – every other character in the film rises above petty minds to lend him a helping hand. The film’s screenplay underlines the need for all of us to tackle grief with courage and adopt a positive outlook at life’s continuity in all situations. It is a film that reiterates that one can attain the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow through dogged persistence in life, while being gentle and considerate to others.

Jugu Abraham

Bye Bye Africa Countries of Origin:

France Chad Languages:

French Chad Arabic Studios:

Images Plus 80 Reviews

Synopsis Bye Bye Africa, in the documentary format with a fictional twist, depicts the journey home of a Chadian film-maker who has been living in France. The film opens with a phone call in the middle of the night when Haroun receives the news of his mother’s death. He then returns home alone and begins filming as soon as he sets foot on his homeland – in the taxi; in the city streets while riding on the backseat of his friend’s motorcycle; during a casual stroll with his father; in the village, amongst various locations. During the course of filming and trying to find a producer for this film, he

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Télé-Tchad Director:

Mahamat-Saleh Haroun Producers:

Claude Gilaizeau Sylvie Maigne Screenwriter:

Mahamat-Saleh Haroun Cinematographers:

Stéphane Legoux Mahamat-Saleh Haroun Robert Millié Editors:

Sarah Taouss Mathilde Boussel Duration:

86 minutes Genre:

Fictional documentary Cast:

Mahamat-Saleh Haroun Garba Issa Aïcha Yelena Mahamat Saleh Abakar Khayar Oumar Defallah Year:

1999

discovers the struggling film industry that has gradually given way to television, video clubs and cassette tapes, as well as obstacles for actors to act in cinema in general. While striving to make the film in remembrance of his mother, Haroun makes numerous references to the western culture which he has grown accustomed to and which has informed his work as a film-maker. Freud and Godard, for example, are foreign names to his father, who argues that his films are for the whites, not for Africans. As he finds no financial backing or willingness to have his film produced in Chad, he decides to pass his camera to his nephew, who promises to keep him updated on his relatives by documenting their life with the camera. As he leaves the camera behind, the audience knows that he is taking his memories in the form of the footage he has shot back to France for post-production work, and the film with the very same title – unfolds before the eyes of the spectator. Is this thus the very film he has been making all along?

Critique Bye Bye Africa is a film about the making of the film with the same title, toying with reflexive irony as a consciously foregrounding element. Returning from France to his native Chad alone to pay tribute to his deceased mother and feeling the unbearable grief over his loss, film-maker Haroun decides to make a film to commemorate his mother but encounters the harsh reality of the near impossible film-making environment in his country. Embedded in this complex fictional documentary are themes of exile and cultural liminality, the economic as well as technical challenges of Chad’s film industry, and cinematic self-reflection. Although there are also significant issues concerning women in film that remain superficially represented or even seriously under-investigated, the director is most interested in a meta-cinema, thus leaving these problems unresolved. After a brief introduction about the circumstance of his return to Chad, after living in France for many years with his French wife and his children, and the opening credits, the film cuts to Haroun inside a taxicab holding a camera shooting street scenes. The presence of the camera immediately sets up an irony for the narrative: is the director shooting the film we are watching, or is he working on a separate project? In either case, it involves another camera, hidden from the spectator’s view, thus creating a second layer of filmic reality. Ultimately, the very presence of the director’s digital, handheld camera as a recurring motif functions as a rhetorical trope of reflexive irony and as a structural indicator. The key scenes in the narrative can be marked as follows: ‘taxi ride’, ‘promenade with father’, ‘memories of mother’, ‘Bye Bye Africa’, ‘the stolen images’ and ‘woman with AIDS’. They all can be linked with a common concern of the aesthetic nature of cinema and film-making conditions in Chad on the personal as well as the national level. Each scene presents a dilemma, leaving the audience searching desperately for an answer. Throughout the film, references to filming and screen culture are ample, such as projecting his mother’s images on an old videotape

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onto a white screen; mimicking Vertov’s filming process as a man with a movie camera on a motorcycle; discussing Godard’s philosophy of cinema; relating his own views on film-making; and conducting interviews with potential actors about their views of cinema and acting on film. As Haroun intends to transcend everyday seeing through his camera-eye, he is also keenly aware that he eventually needs to make films that would also transcend cultural boundaries and that would speak to the collective human experience, not just as constituents in the superstructure of the adopted French culture and its intellectual mainstream. However, by giving the same name to the ‘future film’ within the film, Haroun bids symbolic farewell to Africa after witnessing the impossible environment for film-making in Chad; he will have to continue to rely on the French métropole’s material conditions in order to make films, an economic reality for many diasporic film-makers. In the end, he suggests a possible alternative to rescue the crumbling film industry in many African nations – digital video, the very equipment used in this film. As a postcolonial film-maker living in France he must constantly ask himself, about identity, about authorship in relation to his viewers, about memories, about practicality and tradition, about cinema, love, exile, and about life. ‘How can one film life? That is the question,’ says Haroun in the film. By exposing the camera in the film, the film-maker partially answers the question – through a camera lens however difficult and paradoxical it might be – and at the same time critiques this very process as it unfolds.

Yifen T Beus

Heremakono: Waiting for Happiness Heremakono: En attendant le bonheur Countries of Origin:

France Mauritania Languages:

French Hassanya Mandarin Studios:

Arte France Cinéma Duo Films

82 Reviews

Synopsis Abderrahmane Sissako deliberately structures Heremakono’s plot to create a sense of geographical dislocation and character miscommunication as he tells the story of 17-year-old Abdallah visiting his mother in coastal Mauritania before immigrating to Europe. For example, the place Abdallah is supposed to have come from, and Mauritania itself, are indeterminate while Europe seems as unreachable as the horizon. Sad, unable to speak the local language, caught between a desired western culture and a misunderstood local (African Arab) culture, Abdallah (Mohamed Mahmoud Ould Mohamed) is at first self-distanced from local events and practices. Progressively, however, he interacts with people around him, each one with a story (to tell): as cases in point, the attractive Nana (Diakité) shares with Abdallah the loss of her daughter followed by her trip to Europe to inform the father, and Khatra (Ould Abder Kader), an inquisitive orphan boy, gives Abdallah his only ‘true moments of communication’ in the film, according to Sissako.

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Director:

Abderrahmane Sissako Producers:

Guillaume de Seille Naji-da Abdi Nicholas Royer Screenwriter:

Abderrahmane Sissako Cinematographer:

Jacques Besse Art Director:

Laurent Cavero Editor:

Nadia Ben Rachid Duration:

93 minutes Genre:

Drama Cast:

Mohamed Mahmoud Ould Mohamed Khatra Ould Abder Kader Maata Ould Mohamed Abeid Nana Diakité Year:

2002

Critique In order to piece together the narrative threads introduced in Heremakono, the viewer/theorist/critic would benefit from knowing that, like Sissako’s films made before 2002, Heremakono is very autobiographical. An ability to recognize the Mauritanian landscape and understand non-translated aspects of its visual and aural cultures displayed in the film would also help because Sissako makes them as indeterminate as possible. And yet, such knowledge and grasp notwithstanding, Heremakono may still remain elusive and challenging because Sissako did not make a film foregrounding the bleakness of exile, a traffic film and/or a film dealing with human trafficking per se. Thus, Heremakono does not fit neatly within any predetermined cinema theories, styles or categories, and should not be read as such. A recent example is Brown, Iordanova and Torchin (2010) who analyse Heremakono through theories of non-places such as can be found in Marc Augé’s Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity (1995), as well as through memory sites and human trafficking. I would contend that if a space becomes a place, through a process Augé (1995: 77) designates as ‘relational, historical and concerned with identity’, then Heremakono’s diegetic (African) space cannot, at the moment of becoming a place, be justifiably considered either a non-place and or a memory site. Abdallah is not yet/may never be a victim of trafficking. Therefore, Abdallah cannot be denied residence in a place with which he identifies historically and relationally through his mother. Such a place is not a zone of anonymity but has become a place through ‘practices of inhabiting’ or ‘the capacity to transcend the trope of the boundary’, to live ‘horizontally’; this form of resistance reconfigures conceptions of space while engaging ‘the most profound principles of Western epistemology: its passion for boundaries, its cultural and imaginative habits of enclosure’ (Ashcroft 2001: 15–16). Stated differently, Heremakono’s circular yet open-ended narrative does not evolve between spaces requiring constant cross-referencing to a map – mapping being a restrictive western epistemological habit. Rather, Sissako seems to have used plot structure and story to mobilize the useful concept of ‘horizon’ – as both trope of possibility and way of ‘reconceiving the bounded precepts of imperial discourse’ – in order to fulfil ‘the true force of transformation’ (Ashcroft 2001: 16). A case in point is the last shot of the film, an extreme long shot of a figure disappearing behind the dunes. Who is that elusive figure? Where has this person come from and where are they going to? Answers cannot be found because Sissako places him/her within the indeterminate, circular yet open, desert and horizon. That figure may well be returning to where their journey started, given that all attempts to emigrate shown or alluded to in Heremakono result in failure epitomized by the dead bodies washed up on a beach. Thus whether or not Abdallah manages to leave for Europe remains a central, yet unanswered, question of the film.

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In the end it is fair to say that Heremakono is ‘held together by the strength of Sissako’s emotions’ (Armes 2006: 199). Perhaps for this reason it might be safer to see Heremakono or Sissako’s films as driven by his sympathetic, respectful gaze and his commitment to mixed-modes of representation and mastery of film grammar. Failing that, the viewer/theorist/critic can just ponder Sissako’s thoughts at a time when Heremakono was ‘my next film’ because they are crucial to understanding issues of representation, film style, space and place in his cinema: When […] I joined my mother in Mauritania [from Mali], we lived in a small room. She no longer told stories; she had herself become a ‘story’. Within that small space, we took turns to move; it was like a modern ballet. All these images […] have had a very strong influence on me. I have constructed [...] my next film, with what took place in that room. I wanted to let others know about images that have possessed me as a way of bearing witness to the thousands of life stories that no one tells. Maybe this is what cinema is. (Sissako 2003b: 90)

Saër Maty Bâ

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Mythic Visions 85

DOCUMENTARY

DOCUMENTARY

Directory of World Cinema

Arlit: Second Paris/Arlit, Deuxième Paris (Idrissou Mora Kpai, Niger/France, 2004)

Ever since the birth of African film there has been ongoing debate about the ‘appropriate’ form for African films to depict African realities. In fact, it could be postulated that fiction was the preferred vehicle in most regions because of the negative depictions of Africans and reinforcement of the ‘Other’ in ethnographic documentaries by colonial administrators and missionaries. Despite this, there is undeniable appeal for both film-makers and audiences in the documentary form’s social dimensions of ‘truth claims’ and perceived ‘connection to the real world’ (Grant and Sloniowski 1998: 20). It was John Grierson, a British film-maker and founder of the National Film Board of Canada, who coined the term documentary as the ‘creative treatment of actuality’ since documentary film-makers, like fiction film-makers, select and organize details into a pattern. And today the ‘stylistic heterogeneity’ of documentaries makes categorizing them difficult as many blend several different types of approaches to meet their aesthetic objectives (20). For example, Djibril Diop Mambéty’s Contras’ City (1968), a short made in the ‘city symphony’ style of documentary, chronicles a ‘day in the life’ of the city of Dakar through juxtaposition of images of modern, ‘westernized’ and traditional, popular areas of the city. This film introduced the experimental aesthetics that would characterize Mambéty’s whole oeuvre. Some of the earliest documentaries produced by Africans on the African continent were news films and included, for example, the recording in 1909 of Mustapha Kamil’s funeral by an Egyptian (Shafik 2007: 11). N Frank Ukadike argues that documentary film-making responded to different agendas throughout the regions of the continent. The practice in the anglophone regions was modelled after British instructional films while that of the lusophone region was more focused against the liberation war with Portugal. Ukadike has further explained that documentary has ‘thrived’ in the anglophone and lusophone regions to the detriment of fiction production (Ukadike 2004: 162–63). In the case of South Africa, the Boers produced propagandistic newscasts as early as 1899 during the Boer War, but black, colonized Africans would use the medium and form as a means to get the message about apartheid out to the West with Nana Mahomo’s 1974 Last Grave at Dimbaza as one of the earliest anti-apartheid documentaries. The 1955 short Afrique-sur-Seine (Senegal) is held up as sub-Saharan Africa’s first documentary, filmed not in Africa, but on the banks of the Seine River in Paris by a student collective led by the Senegalese film-maker and critic Paulin Soumanou Vieyra. The film, considered a ‘docu-fiction’ by Maria Loftus, takes up the issue of the African immigrant experience in France, a topic revisited by the Mauritanian Sidney Sokhona in his 1975 Nationalité: Immigré/Nationality: Immigrant and the French Algerian Yamina Benguigui in her three-part documentary, Mémoires d’Immigrés, l’héritage maghrébin/ Immigrant Memories: Maghrebi Heritage (1998) in which she plumbs the depths of Maghrebi immigration in France through approximately 350 poignant interviews/testimonies of men, women and children’s lived

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experiences. More recently, the French Algerian film-maker Fatima Sissani also broached the topic of Algerian immigration to France in her 2011 award-winning La Langue de Zahra/Zahra’s Mother Tongue (France/Algeria). In the film, Sissani ‘gives voice’ to her Kabyle mother, Zahra, who, uprooted 33 years earlier from her native village in the Kabylia region of Algeria, lived in the northern working-class suburbs of Paris as an immigrant woman for years after Algerian Independence without speaking French. Often considered uneducated and ignorant, these women act as archives of oral tradition, history and poetry in a language their children often do not speak. It is important to note that Sissani doesn’t pit one culture against the other in an outmoded either/or binarism, nor does she seek harmonious synthesis of North Africa and France, but rather, suggests possible new ways of looking at language, culture, belonging and identity. Manthia Diawara (2010: 127) has argued that contemporary ‘African directors must excavate and record buried African histories’. He points to the example of Congolese film-maker Balufu Bakupa-Kanyinda who believes that the African film-maker is ‘in a unique position today to create archives that are testaments to African agencies and achievements in modern history’ (127). His television documentary, Afro@Digital (2003, Congo/France) takes aim at the assumption that the continent is completely without agency in globalized knowledge spaces. The opening narration contextualizes the documentary’s search for the ‘essence of digital technology’ within global flows of digital change by placing Africa in relationship with cities such as Paris, London, Brussels and New York, most of which also represent ex-colonial powers. In doing so, the film is evidencing a recent trend in African film that poses issues affecting the continent and its cultures within the dynamics of global politics and economics, where there is recognition that Africa must reach out and embrace development but also ensure that development serves local needs under local control. The early 1990s was an era of growing disillusionment with the failure of independence to free African cultures from economic exploitation and political oppression. Two documentaries of this period undertook the task of excavating history to interrogate and represent lived African experiences. David Achkar’s 1991 Allah Tantou: À la grâce de Dieu/Allah Tantou: God’s Will Be Done (Guinea) uses archival footage, re-enactment and reflexive voice-over narration to attempt to understand his father Marof Achkar’s arrest and imprisonment by Guinean President Sékou Touré’s government in 1968 and his eventual death. Jean-Marie Teno’s equally bleak Afrique, je te plumerai/Africa, I’ll Fleece You (Cameroon, 1991) also blends voiceover (his own) with re-enactments, archival and stock footage and interviews to lament the persistent cycle of violence, oppression and poverty in his beloved Cameroon. Women’s issues have provided the subject matter of many African documentaries through the decades. Selbe et tant d’autres/Selbe and So Many Others (Safi Faye, Senegal/France, 1983) focuses on the social and economic responsibilities of women in rural Senegal through one women’s personal situation. The more contemporary Sisters-inLaw by Florence Ayissi and Kim Longinotto (Cameroon/UK, 2005) foregrounds women’s contributions to the legal system in Kumba, Cameroon, and follows state prosecutor Vera Nkwate Ngassa and court president Beatrice Ntuba as they mediate a variety of cases involving women’s rights and well-being. In Cinderella of the Cape Flats by Jane Kennedy (South Africa, 2004) many low-wage labourers in South Africa’s textile industry live in abject poverty but aspire to compete in the beauty pageant sponsored by the rival textile companies. Simon Wood’s Forerunners (2011) portrays the efforts of four black young South Africans who have struggled to rise above poverty and join the ranks of the new black middle-class. A number of recent documentaries have emerged that can be described as performative documentaries in which historical evocation and emotive connection to the subject matter is as important to the film-maker as factual referencing (Nichols 1994: 96–97). For example, Cameroonian film-maker Osvalde Lewat’s performative feature-

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length documentary Une Affaire de nègres/Black Business (Cameroon/France, 2009) traces the Operational Command Unit’s tragic attempts to eliminate banditry in the coastal region of Douala in 2000. Lewat’s narration provides the grammatical structure for her documentary with her voice-over acting as the ‘glue’ or central organizing principle of the content which includes interviews with victims’ families, human rights activists and soldiers, as well as archival footage of aftermaths of slaughters, and some re-enactment scenes. Another interesting documentary that casts African experience in the flow of global histories is Cape Verdean film-maker, Guenny K Pires’s, The Journey of Cape Verde (2004). Pires draws on the journey motif so familiar in key fiction films such as Yeelen (Souleymane Cissé, Mali, 1987), Wend Kuuni/God’s Gift (Gaston Kaboré, Burkina Faso, 1982) and Touki-Bouki (Djibril Diop Mambéty, Senegal, 1973). Pires travels over a period of four years around the islands of Cape Verde and its emigrant communities in Spain, Portugal, France, Netherlands, Italy, United States, Angola, Islands of Sao Tomé, Principe and Madeira, asking interviewees from this diaspora what it means to be Cape Verdean. Mauritanian film-maker Abderrahmane Sissako’s 1997 Rostov-Luanda chronicles his own journey across war-ravaged post-independent Angola in search of his student friend Afonso Baribanga, whom he knew in Russia sixteen years earlier. A globalizing Africa must necessarily embrace issues of sustainability and environmental responsibility. Idrissou Mora Kpai’s Arlit: Deuxième Paris/Arlit: Second Paris (2004, Niger/ France) exposes the effects of the uranium industry and the open strip mines at Arlit in Niger on the environment, local economy and most importantly, the health of residents and mine workers who suffer the effects of radiation exposure in excess of international norms. Land Rush (USA/UK/Cameroon, 2012), co-directed by Osvalde Lewat and Hugo Berkeley, reveals how multinational agribusiness threatens African farmers’ abilities to produce enough food for their communities. Modern African identities mean that LGBTI (Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals, Transgenders, Intersexuals) have come a long way since Bocahut and Brooks’s 1998 Woubi Chéri, which portrays a few days in the life of various members of Abidjan, Ivory Coast’s gay and transgendered community. Several new documentaries from the Southern African region include: Busi Khesw and Zethu Matebeni’s Breaking Out of the Box (South Africa, 2011) about six high-profile lesbian role models in the South African townships; Katherine Fairfax Wright and Malika ZouhaliWorrall’s Call Me Kuchu (Uganda/USA, 2012) about David Kato, Uganda’s first openly gay man; and Lauren Beukes’s Glitterboys and Ganglands (South Africa, 2011) about the Miss Gay Western Cape competition. Finally, the eruption of a plethora of Maghrebi (especially Tunisian) documentaries in the past couple of years has created a sort of North African New Wave, chronicling the Arab Spring events and mobilizing the masses just before, during and after the Revolution. Franco Tunisian Nadia El Fani’s 2011 Laïcité, Inch’Allah!/Neither Allah, Nor Master (Tunisia/France) documents Ramadan festivities in Tunisia but foregrounds ‘Ramadan resistance’, freedom of speech, democracy and secularism before and after the fall of President Ben Ali as director El Fani pursues her quest for a secular Tunisian state which she believes begins with a secular constitution. Tunisian Mohamed Zran’s 2012 Dégage, le peuple veut/Get Out, It’s What the People Want is a searing portrait of all phases of the Tunisian Revolution ‘on the run’. And Tunisian Hinde Boujemaa’s C’était mieux demain/ It Was Better Tomorrow (2012) follows the efforts of a young woman in Tunis who must reconstruct her life and provide for her children after the Revolution. With no regrets she is confident that a better future awaits all Tunisians.

Sheila Petty

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Afrique­-sur­ Seine Country of Origin:

France Language:

French Directors:

Paulin Soumanou Vieyra Mamadou Sarr Production Companies:

Le Groupe Africain de Cinéma Comité du Film Ethnographique Duration:

21 minutes Genre:

Docu-fiction Year:

1955

90 Africa

Synopsis Afrique­-sur­-Seine holds the proud claim of being the first subSaharan docu-fiction. The spectator follows different groups of emigrants going about their daily routine in Paris with the directors seeking to show the correlation between success and luck, social status and studies. The origin of the emigrants is not specified and the spectator is left to determine whether they are beggar, street cleaner, restaurant owner, student, etc. and to evaluate how each type engages with emigrant life and the trials and tribulations which this entails. The narrative thread weaves itself around the seemingly haphazard meetings of these different types, taking pains to foreground the splendour of the Parisian cityscape. Whilst optimism is the thrust of the thinly sketched plot, it does ebb and flow and occasionally plunges to depths of despondency with the resultant intermittent lapses of realism revealing the harshness of the emigrant experience.

Critique This short film is of immense historical and aesthetic importance. It was shot during a period of significant political turmoil that would mark the end of French colonization in West Africa but ironically it was shot in Paris due to the oft-cited Laval Decree of 1934. The latter forced directors to submit a detailed account of the film they intended to shoot in the colonies and subsequently led to watertight censorship, both governmental and self-­imposed. In an attempt to silence the increasingly loud dissident voices in the 1950s, the French government invited a select number of African students to attend its prestigious national film school, the IDHEC (Institut des Hautes Études Cinématographiques), with Vieyra and Sarr figuring amongst its first graduate cohort. Vieyra would go on to become one of Senegal’s most renowned film critics and historians and indeed a director in his own right. This apparently apolitical film is couched in double entendres primarily articulated through voice­-over and ambiguous imagery. As the film was shot before the advent of synchronized sound, the voice-over commentary accompanying many of the shots conveys a message and guides the spectator. It alternates between collective address and the occasional use of a first-person singular register. The narrator virtually engages in sentimentalizing the image, often attributing a particular sentiment with an act and hence directing the spectator in his or her affective interpretation. The result may be somewhat didactic but in that era of pre-synchronization Vieyra and Sarr allowed themselves to use this instructional mode for fear that the image might not be sufficiently self-signifying. The opening sequence begins with idyllic imagery of children playing in the river Niger, accompanied by lively African music. These images, however, were not filmed by Vieyra or Sarr but by French film-maker René Vautier in 1950. These said images of Vautier’s resultant film Afrique 50 were heavily censored for years

Directory of World Cinema

under the Laval Decree. In Afrique-sur-Seine, Africa is depicted as a rural utopian playground for children and reference is made to the economic necessity to emigrate but otherwise Vieyra and Sarr do not touch on other difficulties of African existence. The voice-over informs us that these were good times in Niger, a time when the kingdom of children reigned supreme. However, it continues with ‘it was time to grow up and to leave the homeland to go to Paris, capital of the world, capital of Black Africa’. The poetic overtone of this politically charged statement renders it all the more subversive and we are led to question the ironic tone that is used in the commentary throughout the film. The spectator is quickly confronted with the reality of urban, anonymous living. The dream of mythical wealth crumbles when the voice-over wonders, over the first sequence shot of Parisian rooftops: ‘Where are the roads paved in gold that we heard about in our childhood stories?’ With this immigrant’s initial reaction to France, the deconstruction of the utopian immigrant dream is resolutely underway. The African student living in Paris, probably inspired by the directors’ own privileged experience of student life, is prominent in the film. The student jumps on a bus and we follow him to the scholarly Latin Quarter. He is greeted by smiling friends of different nationalities. All are dressed the same and visibly espousing the western way of life. Vieyra and Sarr are careful to clearly situate this stratum of society within the scholarly section of Paris’s left bank, the Latin Quarter, with this area’s famous streets being enumerated. Within these ideological, geographically defined limits, France welcomes all students of various ethnic origins. This hopeful tone is destabilized when the voice-over informs us that it is in this very area that he learnt about the ‘Civilisation of outstretched wanting arms’. With that we see the student being approached by a shabbily dressed black man who solicits help and to whom the student hands some money. The interlacing of the studentimmigrant experience with that of the socially destitute drives the narrative process. This notion of fraternity and solidarity is important in this film and is indeed a central theme in many African immigrant films that are to follow. Melissa Thackway (2003: 124) comments that ‘inter-community solidarity is developed in later works to such an extent that it actually emerges as one of the immigrant community’s defining characteristics’. Some shortcomings in Vieyra and Sarr’s filmic representation of categories of immigrants are evident. The characters are not fleshed out and as a result they never rise above the status of being ciphers. Because the film-makers wanted these immigrant types to be easily recognizable, they are nearly too explicit. Their social status is a little too extreme in nature. No contextualization or development of an individual character is attempted and as such the filming is slightly imbued with an ethnographic gaze. With the exception of a few close-up shots, the spectator must be content with hovering over the elaboration of these types, which is taking place more from a sociological point of view than from an emotional perspective. However, the film’s right to posterity lies in the very fact that it

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managed to be made during an era of draconian censorship at a time when French authorities controlled the representation of colonization in talking pictures more severely than they had in silent films (Vieyra 1969: 40). This led to self-censorship, and hence perhaps, for Vieyra and Sarr, the necessity to tread ideologically lightly.

Maria Loftus

Zahra’s Mother Tongue La Langue de Zahra Countries of Origin:

Algeria France Languages:

French Kabyle Studios:

Le Mans Télévision 24 Images Coproduction Director:

Fatima Sissani Producer: 

Farid Rezkallah Cinematographer:

Olga Widmer Editor:

Anne Lacour Duration:

93 minutes Genre:

Documentary Year:

2011

92 Reviews

Synopsis Fatima Sissani’s mother, Zahra, escaped the Kabylia region of Algeria during a time of political unrest. Neither able to stay nor wanting to leave, she and her husband moved to France. She was chased from her country, without a formal education or an income, separated from the help of her family and friends. Yet, even though her daughters were raised in the French education system and her future being decided, Zahra chose to reject her new home, and retained the language, religion and customs of her people, the Kabyle. Now, her daughter, Sissani, documents her mother’s displacement, her time in France and her return to the rustic Algerian countryside, visiting the gardens and homes of her ancestors. Sissani discovers how the simple domestic activities of cooking, swathing hay and watching the sun rise over the mountains are all sources of cultural knowledge. Sissani and her sisters share an admiration of their mother’s decision to maintain the language and traditions of her homeland that act as sources of inspiration and strength for them and their children. Yet, it is through Zahra’s own voice and her use of the Kabyle language, in the compliments she shares, the singing of songs and the recitation of poetry that her culture is carried forward to future generations.

Critique Two themes reoccur in African cinema: the effects of diaspora and of colonization on individuals and peoples. Yet, the issue at the centre of Zahra’s Mother Tongue is that the film explores how both of these subjects lead to an individual’s displacement. For Zahra, she lives neither here nor there, but in a state of limbo, holding to a past to which she can never return. Although the film does not explicitly state, it can be assumed that the film-maker’s mother had to leave her homeland due to the tensions raised from the threefold effects of the War of Liberation, the National Liberation Front’s rejection of French colonialism, and the effects of the Berber Spring in 1980, when demonstrators demanded that the Berber language be recognized in Kabylia. Immigration to Europe for the Kabyle was once an option, beginning prior to World War I for economic and familial reasons

Directory of World Cinema

but when tensions escalated over the politics of identity, options were limited, and emigration became an answer. Sissani considers this notion of displacement by shifting between her apartment in France and her mother’s journey back to Algeria. Despite a clear division between the urban and the rural, the viewers are never sure exactly where they are located. It is with an early domestic conflict in the film, the threading of a needle, that Sissani finds a metaphoric meaning as she stitches these two locations together, fastening these separate parts of the same cloth. As a strategy to counteract this displacement, Sissani allows for moments of pause, still life shots in the documentary without the key players. For example, rain on a window or a city street, the bustling of a park, or the light on a table decorated with flowers, not located geographically, centre the action on quiet domestic moments in space. They operate like Japanese film-maker Yasujiro Ozu’s pillow shots, also known as curtain shots where, between scenes, he would insert carefully framed shots of the surroundings to signal changes in settings. What is more important though is that Sissani incorporates the language of Zahra to locate the audience. The Kabyle speak a Berber language that is unique to Kabylia. It is in these quiet conversations between mother and daughters, sisters, nieces and aunts, that the unembellished culture of the Kabyle is carried forward. By employing the language in songs and poetry, or by the sharing of stories, it is passed on. Thus, these quiet domestic moments when one is cooking, or eating a meal with family, become the important connective tissue that binds a person with their people. Within the politics of identity, the importance of language of one’s culture is contained in words. This notion is most resonant when Zahra tells her daughter about a man who is killed because he decides to sing. If forgetting the words makes people disconnected from their past, then to deprive them of their language is to strip them of their heritage. Zahra’s reluctance to adopt the French language and continue to speak Kabyle makes her a steward of her culture, whether she is located in Kabylia or not. Zahra’s Mother Tongue won the Prix Radio-Canada de la communication interculturelle for the best feature-length documentary at the 2012 Festival International de Cinéma Vues d’Afrique in Montreal.

David Gane

Afro@Digital Countries of Origin:

Democratic Republic of Congo France Languages:

English

Synopsis Afro@Digital is a documentary that explores how digital technologies are being used in Africa and the promise they hold for African people. Africa is generally thought of as a have-not continent on the ‘wrong side’ of the digital divide and not contributory in any way to world advances in science and technology. However, Afro@Digital illustrates that digital technologies such as the Internet, cellphones Documentary 93

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Afro@Digital

French Jula Yoruba, with English subtitles Studio:

Akangbe Productions Director:

and digital video cameras are increasingly important tools for globalized Africans, many of whom have journeyed between Africa and Europe and are, in many ways, the products of multinational experiences. Afro@Digital also demonstrates how certain African traditional practices have benefited from embracing digital technologies, sometimes in very creative and inventive ways, thus challenging old notions of static cultures.

Balufu Bakupa-Kanyinda Producer:

Critique

N’Diagne Adechoubou

Afro@Digital is very conventional, organized in the expository mode of documentary film-making. Interviews with individuals involved with digital technology in Africa are juxtaposed with scenes showing how this technology is used by Africans from all walks of life. Balufu Bakupa-Kanyinda presents the current state of digital technology in Africa and where it is headed. The documentary begins with an historical analysis of technology in Africa through interviews with academics and other authorities in the field. From here it shows how technology is being used in contemporary Africa through interviews with people who use it as an integral part of their lives and in unique ways. For example, both a Marabout (religious leader and teacher) from Burkina Faso and a Yoruba Fa priest discuss how cellphones allow their clients to access them quickly and easily, in contrast to the postal service. Digital technology is becoming increasingly important in Africa, but as this importance grows, many questions arise about the implications new technologies have on Africa and its peoples. These issues are addressed in the numerous interviews that illustrate both people who work in the field of digital technology and African citizens from all areas of the continent. With the coming of new communication technologies, Africa is opening up to further globalization. As many in the film remark, Africa is tied to the logic of poverty: not only does the world consider the development of Africa as being restricted by the immense poverty, but Africans

Cinematographers:

Phillipe Radoux-Bazzini Eric Nikoule N’Diagne Adechoubou Enoch Bohiki Editor:

Laurence Dubrulle Duration:

52 minutes Genre:

Documentary Cast:

Georges Kamanayo John Akomfrah Oumou Sy Mactar Sylla Ola Balogun Year:

2003

94 Reviews

Directory of World Cinema

themselves hold this view. So the emergence of digital technology brings about issues relating to how Africans use it to overcome the logic of poverty while not allowing it to cause further damage as a result of its connection to globalization. In response to this potential threat, many African individuals involved with digital technology are shown in the documentary to have been successful in resisting this outcome and using these technologies in new ways that positively influence Africa and its people by connecting Africans all across the continent and with the rest of the world. The film illustrates how Africans from all walks of life are using digital technologies to benefit their lives. Notably, African filmmakers who are interviewed are shown to rely heavily on digital technologies to create their art in a quick and economical fashion. Indeed Afro@Digital itself is proof of this as Bakupa-Kanyinda shot the documentary with a digital camera for these reasons. It not only allowed the director an economical means to make this film, but also allowed for interviews and footage to be shot all across Africa with equipment that is quick and efficient to use and meets the demands of a film that would otherwise have required a lot of travel to obtain footage as the documentary did. Another piece of technology that the film focuses on is cellphones, which are increasingly important in the day-to-day lives of Africans. Proof of the widespread use of cellphones is that Africa is the most profitable continent for cellphone wireless providers. This is demonstrated in the film through interviews with those in the cellphone industry and with scenes of Africans utilizing cellphones in all parts of the continent. For example, the Yoruba Fa priest describes how his cellphone allows him to reach a wider audience across Africa with his message. The growth of Internet cafes that offer Internet access to Africans who would otherwise be isolated is shown with scenes of these establishments and interviews with those who operate them. Additionally, the use of teleconferences to connect Africans from all over the continent to develop dialogue is shown to be a beneficial means of spreading knowledge and education amongst all people. The documentary also suggests that technology can be seen as originating in Africa. This argument is made in interviews with several academics who have studied the Ishango bone, which scientists claim is the first mathematical instrument developed in the history of human beings, dating back 20,000 years. Another interesting fact brought up in these interviews about Africa and its contribution to the advancement of technology throughout history is that it is the largest source of coltan (a mineral used in microprocessors) in the world which is located in the Democratic Republic of Congo. While the mining of coltan has led to immense economic exploitation and wars in eastern Congo, those interviewed on the subject emphasize the place of Africa in the history of technology in the world because of this mineral. Afro@Digital demonstrates that digital technology can serve the interests of Africa in a major way as it repositions human beings in a more aware relationship with the world around them. A significant example of this in the film is shown to be the Internet as it opens up countless possibilities for people to gain more knowledge

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and further their horizons. Afro@Digital suggests that the Internet is akin to a global community and acts as a repository of cultural memory. In this sense, digital technology is not just a tool, but a mindset. Digital technology is connected to globalization, which assimilates people from all cultures. Some may think that in order to survive one must use digital technology according to the dictate of globalization. However, Afro@Digital proves that Africans use digital technology in original and fascinating ways that benefit the continent and its populations.

Brett AB Robinson

Allah Tantou: God’s Will Be Done Allah Tantou: À la grâce de Dieu Countries of Origin:

Guinea France Languages:

English French Studio:

Archibald Films Director:

David Achkar Producer:

David Achkar Screenwriter:

David Achkar Cinematographer:

Anne Mustelier Art Director:

Guy Galleran Music:

Lumumba Marrouf Jr. David Achkar Francois Corea Editor:

Anne Guerin-Castell

96 Reviews

Synopsis Allah Tantou: God’s Will is the story of Marof’s son, David Achkar (played by himself), a film-maker and documentarist, seeking answers about his father’s imprisonment and the truth of who he was. Marof Achkar (himself and impersonated by Michel Montanary) was a leading figure in the Ballets Africains and served as UN Ambassador for the new government of Guinea. He was recalled back to his home country and arrested without cause or trial on 17 December 1968, by President Sékou Touré’s government. Some reviewers suggest the charge was linked to an arms sale to South Africa but the film never links this specifically to Achkar’s arrest. Imprisoned in Camp Boiro, he was left in a small, dark, damp cell, to be humiliated, starved, tortured and left in his own excrement, until he signed a falsified confession. Despite being told of his potential freedom, he remained in prison for over three years. Although he struggled with thoughts of suicide and mental and physical deterioration, he found a spiritual freedom within himself. Yet, by the time a Portuguese commando unit landed in Camp Boiro to release their men, he was too blind and ailing to escape and was eventually recaptured. It wasn’t until after President Touré died of a heart attack, that Achkar’s wife and son, themselves being exiled, received a death certificate in April 1984 saying that Marof Achkar was shot on 26 January 1971.

Critique David Achkar knew his father was a hero but he wanted to know what that meant. In doing so, he uses the techniques of the autobiographical and biographical documentary with elements of the fiction film, to dig beneath what he knows about his father, from family and friends, and the words of his father’s secret prison journal. He weaves the film between home movies, photographs, newspaper clippings, newsreel footage and fictional re-enactments, and shifts between first, second and third narrative perspectives, to shape narrative coherence to his father’s story. Yet, because we are both drawn into his father’s story and yet held back in an isolated position from the political situation that landed him in prison, we are placed

Directory of World Cinema

Duration:

60 minutes Genre:

Documentary Cast:

David Achkar Marof Achkar Michel Montanary Year:

1991

into limited perspective, seen from his father’s cell. Critics have often wrestled with the notion that an autobiographical African film is impossible, because the collective national narrative overtakes the individual subject, pressing it to a place of a secondary position. Yet, this film places us in an autobiographical position as David Achkar tries to understand and imagine his father’s circumstances and the conditions that he endured in prison. David Achkar tells us at the start that ‘Many sons admire their fathers. The little I know of mine I gleaned from my mother, from friends and from letters father wrote us from prison’. At times, he speaks directly to his father, and other times he gives his father a voice, and in the final sequence of the film, he manifests

Allah Tantou: God’s Will Be Done

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Marof’s words after his death: ‘It was a morning like this one, on a road like this, I was shot. It was January 1971.’ The individual’s story transcends the national narrative; we feel Marof Achkar’s experience and we empathize with the film-maker’s search. This is an intimate film, in subject matter but also in film-making approach. Many critics have mistakenly said that David Achkar plays his own father in the re-enactments but in fact he has cast his mother’s nephew, Michel Montanary, in the role. Even when Achkar went to Amnesty International to request funding to finish his film, he was told that he should not have made a film about a family member. It is believed that an Amnesty film should speak in third person, not in the multiple voices that Allah Tantou uses, and it should be ‘about a group or collective and not an individual’ (Gabara, Accessed 2012). Yet, despite Achkar’s approach to such a personal subject, the film never becomes overly sentimental. It is voiced in the fractured, fragmented cadence of many solitary voices: a son, a father and a country navigating the immense personal and political cost of human rights abuse and the search for any identity after the old one has been stripped away. Since the film denies us one solitary, authorial voice, we are left with an experience, that of imprisoned Marof Achkar, unsure of his fate until the final frame. Allah Tantou is a courageous and controversial piece of personal documentary film-making, a testament of the many untold stories expunged from history through the abuse of power.

David Gane

Africa, I’ll Fleece You Afrique, je te plumerai Countries of Origin:

Cameroon Language:

French Director:

Jean-Marie Teno Producer:

Jean-Marie Teno Editor:

Chantal Rogeon Duration:

88 minutes

98 Reviews

Synopsis In Africa, I’ll Fleece You Jean-Marie Teno attempts to grasp the persistent cycle of violence, oppression and poverty in his home nation of Cameroon following the nation’s claim to independence from France in 1960. Using a variety of documentary techniques (stock footage, re-enactments, interviews and voice-over) the film depicts the long period of Cameroon’s colonial past and the legacy of colonial violence that still plagues the nation even though their French oppressors have long since left. Teno tells of a long night of tyranny after independence under the reign of Ahmadou Ahidjo and Paul Biya; of Cameroon’s struggle for democracy and its battle with poverty and neglect; of the suppression of the free press; of a country thrice-colonized by the Germans, the English and the French; and of brutally enforced labour and suppressed democratic parties, uprisings and protests. Most poignantly Teno tells of the struggle for Cameroonian identity, for literacy in Cameroon and the power of language to shape Cameroonian hearts and minds.

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Genre:

Documentary Year:

1991

Critique Africa, I’ll Fleece You begins with Teno’s compelling voice-over describing his conflicted relationship with Yaoundé, his home city. Teno’s mellifluous prose overlays footage of a city street wrenched apart by violence between protestors and a thuggish Cameroonian military, under the command of a dictatorial regime. The bloodied corpse of a child lies in the streets. This opening attests to the stakes of Cameroon’s struggle for liberty in the wake of colonization, a model of governance still tearing apart Cameroon as it was handed down by the French colonizers to Cameroon’s leaders. Africa, I’ll Fleece You is comprised of two entwined streams. The first is Teno’s exploration of Cameroon’s colonial past and its recent political history in an attempt to understand ‘how a country, composed of well structured traditional societies, could fail to succeed as a state so that people could live simply from the fruit of their labours’. The second stream is an exploration of Cameroonian identity in the face of colonial oppression, in particular a look at the dominance of European literature and the suppression of Cameroon’s indigenous languages as they were replaced by French. One of the film’s most memorable segments is Cameroon’s struggle for freedom of the press illustrated by the story of Cameroonian writer Celestin Monga and his open letter to Paul Biya called ‘Bogus Democracy’. Teno incorporates an interview with the paper’s editor, Pius Njawe, who recounts how after the paper was released, he and Monga were kidnapped, imprisoned and charged with showing contempt to the President of the Republic. The city of Douala, ‘always the rebel’, Teno claims, took to the streets to protest and to demand the release of Monga and Njawe. Teno includes extraordinary footage of the protestors holding Le Messager to their breasts as they chant ‘Vive la démocratie!’ This segment of the film powerfully illustrates the struggle for a free press in Cameroon in 1991. Teno also uses clever humour. In a mock re-enactment of what it is like to produce a documentary like this one, Teno recreates a meeting with a TV director who demands to know ‘How much?’ Satirizing the profit-minded TV director who demands to know why anyone would want to watch a documentary rather than a show like Dallas, Teno illustrates the narrow-mindedness of his nation’s television media and those within their ranks and their dependency on vacuous Euro-western pop culture. The flustered director finally scoffs at Teno’s ideals: ‘Liberty, what use is liberty? Huh?’ In an ironic juxtaposition, Teno also incorporates segments of European documentaries championing colonial imperialism. By positioning them against the backdrop of the conditions of Cameroon, and the detrimental effects of French colonization, he subtly critiques their posturing and their overbearing voice-of-god narrators. Teno contrasts this paternalism with the story of those forced into brutal, dehumanizing labour. In this segment of the film there is a close-up of a Cameroonian chopping down a majestic tree at the root, a powerful metaphor for the ways in which the Cameroonians have been coerced in cutting themselves off at the core of their own traditions and identities.

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The most powerful segments of Teno’s film are his exploration of identity, and the power of words, language and literature. As we are shown footage of the people of Yaoundé socializing, eating, working and laughing, he claims: ‘Who better than writers can record our era? Their words reveal or deform reality.’ To answer this question he searches the libraries for Cameroonian authors but unfortunately this quest is left wanting. Cameroonian literature, even African literature, is always a tiny section overshadowed by European and foreign books. And yet the thirst for knowledge and the love of literature is high in Cameroon. Books are voraciously devoured when made accessible as in the Librairie du Poteau, the book cemeteries in Cameroon where people come to collect discarded literature as well as the makeshift bookshops attempting to cater to the schoolbook market. And yet the oral tradition abounds in Teno’s storytelling as he weaves together the story of his childhood playing football, reading the ‘Illustrated books’ (comic books) of his youth, and attending the local movie theatre with his friends to watch Bollywood imports with beautiful Indian princesses like Mangala, who harbour the ‘voice of a nightingale’. He recounts his school vacations in the village and his grandfather’s tale of the larks, told to us against a backdrop of vibrant village life. The country of the larks, once a prosperous land was visited by strange hunters. The hunters settled in and brutally enslaved the larks. Then one day the hunters left, but before parting, they left behind a new chief, a sorcerer who used his powers to shed his body and become a new breed of lark, a malevolent one who would betray and continue to enslave his brothers. This tale is a profound metaphor for the detrimental effects of colonization in Cameroon and the learned cycle of oppression still firmly entrenched within its borders. Poignantly, Teno leaves us with a moving image of a man by the side of the road teaching his two children how to read and write as he is too poor to put them through school. For Teno, this man is representative of resistance, the education of the next generation of Cameroonians despite all barriers.

Mazin Saffou

Selbe and So Many Others Selbe et tant d’autres Countries of Origin:

Senegal France Language:

Serer

100 Reviews

Synposis The 1983 Senegalese documentary Selbe and So Many Others focuses on the social role and economic responsibility of women in African society. Selbe’s personal struggle to make a living and negotiate social expectations presents a metaphor for the broader issues facing women in developing countries. Like La Noire de…/ Black Girl (Sembène, Senegal/France, 1966) the film provides an insight into the lived experience of oppressed women, controlled not by men but by neo-colonial economics. It is set in rural Senegal, where families still live in a traditional fashion (though men seasonally migrate to the city for work), in a small but self-sufficient community. Indeed this is one of many African-made films that have

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Studio:

UNICEF Director:

Safi Faye Producer:

Safi Faye Cinematographer:

Safi Faye Music:

Safi Faye Duration:

30 minutes Genre:

Documentary Year:

1983

sought to rewrite the dominant western representation of Africa as starved and helpless through their exposition of healthy subjects and fertile lands. Selbe runs several village businesses and takes care of her family and home, while her husband, as a result of his position in the patriarchal order and perhaps also as a result of his impotency as a neo-colonial subject, does nothing. The use of her subjective story, narrated in her own voice, foregrounds the need for social and political change and allows the voice of women to dominate the cinematic space and thus, public sphere. Faye, the first sub-Saharan female film-maker, exposes social and economic struggles in her films by privileging the voice of the female. As an ethnologist, Faye focuses on identity, belonging and culture. Her films can be read as feminist films, but also as Third Cinema tools for liberation.

Critique Selbe bears close similarities to Trinh T Min-ha’s 1982 film Reassemblage (USA), which also observes the lives of Senegalese village women. Selbe presents women who diminish the division between ‘us’ and ‘them’ in their recognizability and identifiability. The film follows local women as they perform their daily routine, and centralizes the figure of Selbe who speaks directly to the camera about her daily lifestyle. While Faye was influenced by the style of Jean Rouch, her film stands in contrast to and evades the polarization of his film Moi, un noir/I, a Black Man (France, 1958), where he literally speaks for his black male subject as he narrates the young migrant’s progress. (Rouch’s main ‘subject’ in this film, Oumarou Ganda, the former tirailleur [light infantry] from Niger who told his life under the nickname Edward J Robinson, later on directed several feature films.) Safi Faye’s film instead follows on from that of early African film-makers like Ousmane Sembène in its desire to allow Selbe (and thus her community culture) to speak for herself with as little manipulation as possible. Rouch can be said to have paved the way for Faye’s trademark realist approach, and her combination of documentary forms with fictional elements. Much of Selbe is comical and whimsical, suggesting that it might be more contrived than observed. It is an ambiguous film which refuses to take sides. It presents life through Selbe’s eyes but also through the objective camera lens. Shots range from medium close-ups of Selbe bemoaning her idle husband to wide shots of him moving around the village. The title plays on this formal ambiguity; while this is Selbe’s story, it is also the story of the women around her and around the world, just as it captures the impotence of men in a colonized political structure. While Faye promotes the position of women in the village through her centralization of Selbe, she avoids idealization by utilizing multiple visual perspectives and bringing in aspects of humour. Selbe’s husband may appreciate the money she brings in, but he is less than happy at being regarded as inferior by her. Their arguments range from general nagging and sniping, evoking elements of the romantic comedy, to a more in-depth analysis

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of the shift in the gender dynamic which led women to become career-focused bread winners. While she is presented as active, he is passive, and his immobility can be read as both stubborn laziness and an expression of the ‘male crisis’ which was also explored in many American films of the time (e.g. Nine to Five [Higgins, 1980], Baby Boom [Shyer, 1987], Fatal Attraction [Lyne, 1987], Die Hard [McTiernan, 1988]) but always with regard to the white male. Faye’s camerawork is not inconspicuous; Selbe and the other characters who talk to the audience via the lens are clearly responding to questions, and responding to the spectators as subjects. Selbe thus evades the tendency to present filmed construction as real life. While the film is about real people, real places and real conversations, these are knowingly framed and filmed; the contributors are clearly aware of their part in creating the finished work, and the director’s awareness of her spectators’ desire for entertainment removes the film from social commentary. The uneasiness which can accompany voyeuristic works is thus absent and perhaps this is what makes the spectator so willing to laugh with – or at – the subjects as equals rather than pity or patronize them. We see ourselves in the characterizations of Selbe and her husband, we identify with their points of view, and thus we see the comedy in their trials and tribulations. Selbe is an expressive and independent person but also a symbol of the struggle for equal representation, as she battles to overcome fixed mythologies of gender and race with humour and hope. The presentation of black women as subjects, and African women at that, was unique at the time of Selbe’s release. In contrast to foreign films about the continent, there are no good or bad guys here; instead, we meet rounded people with attributes and flaws. Yet, as in Bamako (Sissako, Mali, 2006) and Sembène’s work, Selbe implies that women – once afforded equality – will positively reinforce and reshape the future of Africa.

Zélie Asava

Sisters-in-Law Countries of Origin:

Cameroon UK Language:

English Studio:

WMM Directors:

Florence Ayissi Kim Longinotto

102 Reviews

Synopsis Following Ousmane Sembène’s unfinished trilogy on female heroes in everyday life – Moolaadé (Senegal, 2004), Faat Kiné (Senegal, 2001) and Apolline Traoré’s feminist film of the same year (Sous la clarté de la lune/Under the Moonlight [Burkina Faso]) – Sistersin-Law celebrates the work of two women determined to defend women’s and children’s rights, challenge patriarchal structures and make society a fairer place. Sisters-in-Law is a documentary on the female contribution to the legal system in Kumba, Cameroon. State prosecutor Vera Nkwate Ngassa and court president Beatrice Ntuba are the stars of the piece as they negotiate a series of trials brought forth by women. They struggle to bring a collective vision to a

Directory of World Cinema

Producers:

Peter Dale Kim Longinotto Cinematographer:

Kim Longinotto Editor:

Oliver Huddleston Duration:

104 minutes Genre:

Documentary Cast:

Vera Ngassa Beatrice Ntuba Year:

2005

place divided by a series of colonial battles, religious conflicts and disparate traditions. Their quest for equality is visualized in five legal cases where they, along with legal aide Veraline, support women under pressure from their local communities to stay silent. Vera and Beatrice take their jobs far beyond the confines of the courts; visiting women at home, at shelters, in prison, and supporting them long after the case has ended. They are both professionals and sisters to these women, while somehow finding time for their own families and themselves. Glamorous and focused, they are powerful and inspiring. Sisters-in-Law is an informative and refreshing look at the courts from a female perspective.

Critique Sisters-in-Law, the winner of the Prix Art et Essai at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival, uses an unobtrusive cinematographic style to observe the lives of female law professionals in Kumba. There is no narration in this film, there are no intertitles, establishing shots or intrusive zooms and there is little music. The camera, shooting at medium-distance, provides understated access to the hidden world of these self-determined women’s daily lives. It is an observational documentary which presents independent women working, mothering and providing for their community, thus defying the notion of women – and particularly that of women in the developing world – as passive. In this way, it follows on from the documentary form and style of African film-maker Anne-Laure Folly, with its focus on identity, autonomy and power, presenting a new way of looking at Africa, women and the law. Sisters-in-Law was made by Kim Longinotto, a feminist filmmaker, and Florence Ayissi, a diasporic African film-maker. Their combined influence gives the film at times the intimate, private feel of the insider, and at times, the objective, critical perspective of the outsider witnessing events. The film follows the female judges, solicitors and barristers who bring the trials of oppressed women to court and thus change society by improving civil rights legislation. Their local battles therefore become of global significance. A key scene at the end of the film shows Vera (who holds a second job as a lecturer) bringing two women into her lecture hall to inform her law students how women are transforming civil rights policy in their country. The two women are modest Muslim Africans, thus unlikely revolutionaries, and yet with their testimonies have brought about the first convictions for spousal abuse in Cameroon in seventeen years. These women are changing their world. Sisters-in-Law explores representations of identity in new terms, centralizing the Othered, the feminine and human rights. After winning a case against a violent husband, a newly divorced Amina is visited by Vera. In a series of shot-reverse-shot sequences, we come to see how Vera and Amina are forming a new society where women support other women in successfully overcoming injustice. The film-makers capture the open celebration of Amina’s female neighbours as they find new ways of challenging and escaping the restrictions imposed upon them. Thus, the traditions of Muslim communities and African patriarchy come under question as the

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women learn the value of the legal system in protecting their rights as civil members. Another case involves a rapist who claims his position as a Nigerian foreigner in Kumba made him weak. As he stands in the court weeping, his now 9-year-old victim stands firm and judge Beatrice sentences him to prison. In yet another violent case, a local female child abuser uses her gendered and raced position to try to influence Vera, who is unimpressed and fires back: ‘Don’t you “sister” me!’ Thus, the film presents challenges to fixed ideologies of race, nation and identity through the demystification and empowerment of the feminine figure in West African cinema. The legal cases with which Vera and Beatrice deal present a slice of African women’s experience as seen in films like Folly’s Femmes du Niger/Women of Niger (Togo, 1993) and Femmes aux yeux ouverts/Women with Open Eyes (Togo, 1994). As in these films customary local practice is brought into sharp contrast with the system of equal civil rights as Vera and Beatrice battle against a society which refuses to accept the latter. The film-makers focus on the intertwined legal and emotional care offered by these women. One scene presents Vera giving Manka, a 6-year-old physically abused by her aunt, a pretty outfit and making her smile for the first time in the film. The latter case could be seen as the most moving of all given the girl’s age and the aunt’s obviously disturbed state. It is also the case which best demonstrates Vera’s capacity for affection; despite her anger at the aunt’s inexcusable behaviour, she visits her in prison and brings her care packages. Vera is a reminder to all of us of the importance of forgiveness. Her office becomes a site of truth and reconciliation, as well as the usual denials and accusations. She brings humour and humanity to legal matters and is one of the great strengths of this surprisingly uplifting documentary.

Zélie Asava

Cinderella of the Cape Flats Country of Origin:

South Africa Languages:

English Afrikaans Director:

Jane Kennedy Producers:

Penny Gaines Jane Kennedy

104 Reviews

Synopsis Jane Kennedy’s documentary follows the story of various contestants enrolled in the Spring Queen beauty pageant, a beauty competition between rival textile companies in Cape Town, South Africa. The film documents the experiences of South African textile labourers like Micaela and Beverley, two workers with significant hardships in their lives who participate in the competition. These two labourers and their fellow co-workers see the Spring Queen competition as a chance to achieve success in a workforce that has limited opportunities for promotion. The friends and coworkers band together throughout the documentary to produce the beautiful clothing for the competition and to help fellow workers and family feel a sense of community and accomplishment. Although the documentary does an excellent job highlighting

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Cinderella of the Cape Flats

Editor:

Susan Korda Duration:

58 minutes

the positive elements of the competition, it also traces the pitfalls and limitations – such as poverty – which plague many of the competitors. Cinderella of the Cape Flats shows the factory-level competition, the national preliminary competition, as well as the final competition of Cape Town’s 2003 Spring Queen competition.

Genre:

Documentary

Critique

Year:

Cinderella of the Cape Flats begins by stating that over 100 factories and 86,000 workers take part in the annual competition to crown a new Spring Queen in Cape Town. The film, part of the Real Stories From a Free South Africa series, offers a behind the scenes look at the work, the energy and the hope that many South African textile labourers contribute to the competition each year. Factory owners also support the Spring Queen competition because the televised event showcases their newest fabrics and styles, advertising their products to South Africans outside the textile industry. Balancing the highs and lows of the 2003 competition, Jane Kennedy reveals the labour, racial and gender restrictions that affect many contestants while also showing why many women dream of winning the competition. From the outset, workplace conditions and duties are a primary focus for the documentary. Many of the scenes contain workers completing everyday tasks in the background or include interviews with women at their work stations; most interviews are conducted while the seamstresses continue to sew and adjust sewing machines, capturing the speed and constant efficiency that their jobs require. Camera shots of the work floor illustrate the repetitiveness of the women’s work environment which makes the Spring Queen competition seem like a happy break from the mundane. However, the annual excitement is sharply contrasted throughout the rest

2004

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of the film when we witness the pressure to succeed that many colleagues place on competitors. The interviews also reveal the insecurity of many of the women’s jobs. Poverty is a large hindrance to the women competitors because they are expected to produce their own garments. In one scene we see a finalist negotiating with management at her company to purchase an expensive fabric. Although the film shows a committee that helps to raise funds for the dress of Rex Trueform’s representative, the distribution of finances between companies is unequal and makes some contestants feel as though they need to spend more if they want to win the Spring Queen competition. In fact, many of the women interviewed view the competition as an opportunity to escape from the cycle of poverty. For example, Beverley the finalist from Rex Trueform, who is the only wage earner in her household, hopes to improve her position within the company. The competition, however, opens few doors and Beverley becomes dismayed at having gone so far and achieved so little. Consumerism, fellow labourers’ praises and company managers fuel contestants’ belief that the competition will elevate them out of poverty. In Beverley’s case, her request for a promotion is abated with the offer of computer courses which she feels are unlikely to materialize. Cinderella of the Cape Flats also focuses on gender issues surrounding the Spring Queen competition. Debates develop when two transgendered seamstresses from Rex Trueform join the competition. Although both are allowed to enter, they suffer from exclusion. Because the event is intended for seamstresses, it is decided that these two workers cannot be crowned Spring Queen and represent the company at a national level. Instead they are allowed to compete only for enjoyment, both doing so to raise awareness of their exclusion from the final. Poignantly, the protestors are raising awareness of their exclusion from the Spring Queen final by competing at the lower levels of the Spring Queen pageant. The competition’s willingness to allow this form of protest raises hope that change is possible and inclusion is only a matter of time. Many of the film’s interviewees praise the performances of the transgendered seamstresses, suggesting a wide-ranging social acceptance of their choices and pinning the exclusivist policy on the shoulders of the Spring Queen organizers. By directing our attention toward the downfalls of the competition, Jane Kennedy foregrounds the important problems facing many of the low-wage labourers in South Africa’s textile industry. The women live in near poverty and this competition is often romanticized as being their one chance to escape perpetual destitution. In Kennedy’s film, the competition is often the antithesis of the Cinderella story, rarely bringing the overnight success that many contestants dream of. The film traces the plight of women seeking an escape from disempowerment and impoverishment while contrasting the difficult realities of contemporary South Africa with competitors’ ambitious dreams of success, wealth and fame.

J Coplen Rose

106 Reviews

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Forerunners Country of Origin:

South Africa Languages:

English isiZulu Sotho Xhosa  Studio:

SaltPeter Productions CC Director:

Simon Wood Producers:

Simon Wood Paul Egan Caitlin Robinson Screenwriter:

Simon Wood Cinematographers:

Felix Seuffert Simon Wood James Adey Composer:

Shane Cooper Sound:

Caitlin Robinson Editor:

Khalid Shamis Duration:

52 minutes Genre:

Documentary Cast:

Miranda Puza Mpumi Sithole Martin Magwaza Karabo Malupe Year:

2011

Synopsis The documentary film Forerunners explores what it means to be black and middle class in South Africa. It follows four young professionals who are part of the first generation of black South Africans to rise from poverty and join the country’s ‘middle class’. They must balance the traditional views learned in childhood with the western consumerism that rules their professional lives. Mpumi Sithole is a project manager with two young boys. She is managing the biggest project of her career, the construction and launch of a community care centre in Rorke’s Drift, Kwazulu Natal, more than 500 km from her office in Johannesburg. We follow another woman, Miranda Puza, from the end of her pregnancy. Tension with her in-laws soon leads to the dissolution of her relation with the child’s father. The now-single mother tries at first to drown her sorrows in work, but only finds peace once she visits her grandparents’ graves and the rural village they lived in. Martin Magwaza lives in a security complex in Johannesburg, but it does not feel like ‘home’ to him. His father advises him to consult a medium or nthandazi. At first he is sceptical, but he soon realizes that her insights have given him much to reflect on. Likewise, Karabo Malupe becomes more responsible. After losing his father, he supports his unemployed mother financially and takes in his rebellious younger sister to try and keep her in school.

Critique The South African documentary film Forerunners has been selected for numerous international festivals including two of the most prestigious, Cannes and IDFA (International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam). At IDFA in Amsterdam it was listed among the ‘Best of the Fest’, and it won the Dikalo Special Jury Prize (2011) at the Festival du Film Panafricain in Cannes and Best Cinematography at the United Nations Film Festival in San Francisco. It is a stunning film to look at. Focus, composition, colour and movement are used to signify the internal conflicts faced by the film’s four main characters. The two men and two women must each face their own battles between traditional African values and contemporary western consumerism, work and family, success and failure. Compositionally divided frames are used repeatedly as metaphor for the conflicts the characters face and to enhance the feeling of isolation they all express to a greater or lesser degree in their interviews. When Karabo visits his mother in Soweto, for example, the ‘Soweto’ title appears on the right-hand side of the frame superimposed over an interior wall, with the mother on the left side of the frame. The doorway to the lounge where the two are seated creates the vertical divide in this image. The mother faces right to left, seated in a chair in the lounge beyond the doorway. Her head is compositionally cut off by the wall edge. This divided image, combined with the uncomfortable framing of the mother, signifies the disconnect between mother and son: she does not understand him or his western way of life.

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The editing is subtle and sophisticated. Clever transitions amplify the contrasts and parallels between the four stories and visuals are juxtaposed to emphasize the divide between rich and poor in South Africa where First and Third World coexist in constant tension. The first shots of the introductory sequence alternate between a time lapse shot of a highway with streams of cars speeding past and a shot of a beggar at an intersection. By the third cut from the highway to the beggar, he kneels down in exasperation as cars keep passing him without stopping to lend a hand. Wealth and poverty are repeatedly juxtaposed in Forerunners. The illusion is created that there is interaction between elements in the shots and the titles superimposed over them. At one point, for example, it looks as if a shopping trolley that is pushed down a road wipes the ‘Soweto’ title in front of Karabo’s parental house offscreen. A ‘Johannesburg’ title looks as if it is attached to the side of a building. And when Miranda is pictured in an over-the-shoulder shot at her baby-shower, the chyron (caption placed in the lower part of the screen) showing her name is flipped so that it looks as if it is seen from behind, just as she is. These self-reflexive devices lead to an awareness of the constructedness of the film and invite a critical consideration of the film-maker’s role and position in representing actuality. And this is appropriate, considering that the director, Simon Wood, is Caucasian and English, while his four subjects are African. There is a hint of magic realism in Forerunners. The sound of the wind is woven through several scenes and almost becomes another character in the film. When Miranda visits her grandmother’s grave the second time, it is as if the ancestral spirits show their presence through the sound of the wind in the trees. Shane Cooper’s haunting soundtrack adds to the effect of the ambient sound. The director has said he believes that ‘change is a constant in our lives and I wanted to demonstrate that in the film’. The soundtrack forms a metaphor for the changes evident in the stories of the subjects, and for the social and political changes that had occurred over the course of seventeen years of democracy in South Africa. The film never feels slow, and yet there is time for the viewer to process events and emotion. The focus is on character, not on plot. Moments of stillness in the film invite viewers to draw comparisons and to insert their own interpretations. Forerunners provides viewers with an aesthetically pleasing and emotionally engaging glimpse into the lives of four ambitious South Africans. It highlights that climbing the ladder of success is not without complications and it is often a lonely pursuit, especially in a country where status, wealth and culture can divide people as easily as advance them.

Liani Maasdorp

108 Reviews

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Black Business Une Affaire de nègres Countries of Origin:

France Cameroon Languages:

French Bamileke, with English subtitles Studio:

Ciné Live Director:

Osvalde Lewat Producer:

AMIP-Waza Images Cinematographer:

Philippe Radoux Editor:

Danielle Anezin Duration:

90 minutes Genre:

Documentary Year:

2009

Synopsis Osvalde Lewat’s award-winning documentary Black Business opens with the image of a rifle and hands that appear to be cleaning, oiling and preparing to shoot it. We do not know who the gun belongs to. In the next scene, a grave is being dug in a clearing where the sun beats down. We see sullen expressions on the faces of several people walking in procession. A woman bears a framed photograph of a young man. A man chops down a banana tree, which he then deposits into the grave. The tree is apparently replacing a missing body so the funeral can take place. Mother and father speak briefly about their son, Kuete Romain Fabrice. A gunshot commemorates the burial. In the next scene Lewat asks in a voice-over: ‘What was I doing on February 20, 2000?’ (when army, police and firemen joined forces in a unit created by the Cameroonian government to eradicate growing crime in Douala). Lewat continues, ‘By 2003, I discovered all these families waiting. I wanted to forget them. But I knew I had to make this film’ (Chilcoat and Ndiaye 2009. All quotations from Lewat are translated from French by M Chilcoat). Black Business documents the activities of the ‘Commandement Opérationnel’, which begin with the establishment of a hotline phone number anyone could call to anonymously report any crimes observed or known. Over a two-year period and relying in part on the anonymous reporting, the unit outright murdered well over a thousand young men without trial. Those who murdered these young men did so with complete government-granted immunity. Government officials often told families that their sons, brothers and husbands had run away or were being held in a prison somewhere until a trial could be arranged.

Critique Through interviews, archival footage and re-enactments, the film exposes events the Cameroonian government does not want the public to see. Following the first scenes about a burial in absentia, headlights illuminate a house (much of the unit’s killing occurred at night, in fields, along roads, using jeep headlights to track the victims). In a rare appearance, we see Lewat’s silhouette as she enters a lighted doorway in the night, and hugs a man who turns out to be the father of one of the victims. From here on in, scenes alternate between day and night, signifying the repetitive nature of the murders (the victims were abducted in broad daylight as well as at night), the endless waiting of the families, the agonizing passage of time, and the frustrating search to uncover the truth as well as a consciousness among ordinary citizens that does not seem forthcoming. Through another dimly lit doorway at night, we see a woman making fried donuts. This is Denise Etaha whose husband was taken away one night as she nursed one daughter and several others slept. Barely able to speak, so fresh is her pain, Denise describes a life of bare subsistence. At night, she makes and sells the donuts to

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try to feed her family. Each day, they live the hardship and stigma of a missing husband and father whom neighbours deem guilty simply by virtue of his disappearance. Through Denise Etaha and family members of other victims, Lewat’s film shows the strength of even the most timid and soft-spoken of Cameroonian citizens. Although many of the families are bought off by the government or are so shamed by the stigma of the presumed criminality of the missing family member, others persist in the monumental task of exposing the government corruption. This includes civil rights lawyer Momo Jean de Dieu who relentlessly pursues the cases of the ‘Bepanda nine’, which include Denise’s husband and the son’s burial in the film’s first scene. Momo continues to represent these families despite death threats issued on official-looking stationery to him and even his young daughters. Other information comes from Olivier Sade, one of the few men able to escape from the Commandement Opérationnel death camp known as ‘Kosovo’, where he witnessed many murders, and where he was forced to beat other inmates. There is also the journalist Haman Mana who brings media attention to the scandal. Lewat even interviews one of the ‘soldiers’ of the Commandement Opérationnel, who enthusiastically re-enacts a night hunt under the headlights of Lewat’s car. Using a stick to represent his machete, the ‘soldier’ proudly replays how he obeyed his captain’s orders in hacking and stomping his victims to death. As Lewat is making her documentary, the Commandement Opérationnel is shut down, though not one among them is charged with any wrongdoing. Black Business represents Lewat’s effort to seek justice in Cameroon, a country that is supposed to be democratic and not impacted by the civil war and large-scale corruption and violence overwhelming so many African countries. If Cameroon is supposed to be a democracy, and not some watereddown, corrupted, ‘tropicalized’ version of it to use Lewat’s term, then democracy is being annihilated, in part because the very people who make democracy happen (i.e. a country’s citizens) are turning a blind eye. One of the most disturbing moments of the film occurs after its final scene, when the credits roll. In street interviews, when asked their opinion of the Commandement Opérationnel, all but one interviewee say they would welcome its return. Black Business struck a major chord with government and military authorities in Cameroon. In an interview she gave while on a US tour in 2007, Lewat said a shorter version of the documentary was broadcast on France 5 in Cameroon. Lewat knows Cameroonian government officials were critical of her film because just as she arrived in the United States for her film tour, she was contacted by them and asked to ‘explain herself’. The response she gave reveals much about how Lewat conceives her role as film-maker: I said I didn’t need to explain myself. They said I was contributing to sullying the image of Cameroon. And I told them that a tragedy had occurred in Cameroon eight years ago that no one is talking about. There are families waiting for a

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response. If my film can answer their questions, so much the better! (authors’ translation) (Chilcoat and Ndiaye 2009: 395) Black Business received third prize in the documentary category at FESPACO, and received the Human Rights Award at the Vues d’Afrique Festival in Montreal. Nevertheless, under pressure from the Cameroonian military, the film was withdrawn from Yaoundé’s 2009 Écrans Noirs Festival, Central Africa’s largest cinema event. The bitter irony of its removal is that the theme of the 2008 Écrans Noirs was ‘Women and Cinema’ and Lewat was one of the women directors honoured there.

Michelle Chilcoat and Cheikh Ndiaye

The Journey of Cape Verde (In Search of Identity) Countries of Origin:

Cape Verde Languages:

Creole English French Portuguese Studio:

Txan Film Productions & Visual Arts Director:

Guenny K Pires Producer: 

Guenny K Pires Screenwriter:

Guenny K Pires Cinematographer:

Guenny K Pires Editor:

Rui A Lopes da Silva Duration:

82 minutes Genre:

Documentary

Synopsis After the April 1995 eruption of Mount Fogo near his hometown in Mira-Mira, film-maker Guenny K Pires began to reconsider what it meant to be from Cape Verde. Travelling around the archipelago of his country and visiting the immigrant communities in Portugal, United States, France, Holland, Spain, Italy, Madeira and the islands of São Tomé and Principe, he asked people from his country this question, and what they felt their role was being Cape Verdean. The Journey of Cape Verde tells the story of these travels. Pires shares his love of a country whose culture is shaped by its deep and rich history, and reveals a nation whose political and economic past is as rocky as its volcanic geography. It is a film that considers the identity of a country through a rich multicultural background, its recent period of political revolution and the continual diaspora of its people. Pires asks whether the framework of a person’s culture and identity is more than that of location, which in this case, has risen out of the ocean through an eruption of fire and rock.

Critique Throughout the documentary, Pires meets residents and emigrants that describe life as ‘sabi’ or fine in Cape Verde, despite its challenges and difficulties. Pires’s approach is to contextualize this response in a poetic and performative manner as in performative documentary where the film-maker plays a self-reflexive role within the film itself. Sheila Petty (2008: 164) theorizes the concept of performative documentary in relation to Salem Mekuria’s Deluge (Ethiopia/USA, 1997). Pires draws on the country’s rich traditions, and stresses a subjective position that he designates as an emotional journey of this world. It is a personal film and it is his passion for Cape Verde that draws attention to its people, music, food, poetry and rich Creole rituals, yet it functions unconventionally in an experimental and poetic manner. It links Pires’s personal journey meeting his fellow compatriots to the country’s historical and political realities. The purpose of Pires’s

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Year:

2004

documentary is not to describe history but to evoke it from a personal and national point of view. Yet, Pires rejects the linearity of colonial time and space which advance towards a fixed point of progress and perfection. He discards causal action, and revises it to a more abstract position. He moves between events indeterminately, shifting back and forth between moments that match neither geographically nor thematically. Similarly, he travels almost arbitrarily around the nine inhabitable islands of Cape Verde and disrupts the viewer’s understanding of space, not allowing for a geographical positioning of place. The construction of the film may appear haphazard, but Pires and editor Rui A Lopes de Silva discard the western space– time continuum, and allow the viewer to consider the messiness of the forces that shape and define a culture and the difficulties of locating oneself within that space.  Without a fixed point, a western audience may find Pires’s strategy disconcerting. It may help to know that Cape Verde is a horseshoe-shaped group of ten islands and eight islets formed by volcanoes, located on the western tip of North Africa. It was colonized by Portugal, and it was the first slavery port of West Africa in the early 1700s and a key position along the Atlantic slave trade routes. In 1975, after years of armed rebellion between the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC) and Portuguese and African soldiers, Cape Verde took its first steps towards independence. Even though this is a short description, it might position an imperial perspective to a point to help better understand the film. Yet, the film is not made for a western audience. The intention of this documentary is not to comprehend Cape Verde from a historical or geographical perspective, but to move outside of the colonizer’s viewpoint and consider it from Pires’s, and the rest of Cape Verde’s position. The film-maker seeks a site to construct and consider identity. He achieves this through a decentred frame of reference, from a history of people who have been shifted outside of their time and space by external forces. Just as the volcano has both created and disrupted his homeland on the island of Fogo, Pires considers how colonialism is equally a part of Cape Verde’s history and a source of rupture of the identity of its people. It is his use of film-making that works as a performative act, an attempt to create a shared space and remove the boundaries that colonialism and diasporas have formed. This documentary may not be able to repair the damage, but through food, music and stories, it is a common place where the people may regroup and restore the identity of Cape Verde.

David Gane

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Rostov-Luanda Countries of Origin:

Angola France Germany Mauritania Languages:

French Portuguese Russian Studio:

Movimento Production, in coproduction with ZDF, RTBF and Morgane Films Director:

Abderrahmane Sissako Producers:

Pierre Hanau Christian Baute Dominique Andreani Screenwriter:

Abderrahmane Sissako Cinematographer:

Jacques Besse

Synopsis Through its blending of travelogue, autobiography and documentary, Rostov-Luanda narrates the problems facing post-independence Africa and attempts to recover a sense of hope for its future. The film documents Sissako’s journey across war-torn Angola as he tries to locate his old friend, Afonso Baribanga, a young Angolan radical with whom he studied Russian in the USSR sixteen years earlier. Armed only with a tattered school photograph, Sissako traverses the country in search of Baribanga. His journey is presented through a series of encounters with Angolan residents who share their experiences and opinions of post-independence Africa. Rostov-Luanda opens with Sissako returning to Kiffa in Mauritania to visit his place of birth (Sissako’s family having immigrated to Mali soon afterwards). From here, Sissako commences his journey to reconnect with his old friend, who we eventually learn is living in former East Germany and is himself preparing to return to Angola. The stories that the Angolans share with Sissako as he undertakes this journey, as well as his own, are similarly marked by ideas of return as they address the notions of homeland, belonging, exile and displacement. However, while Sissako’s search for Baribanga lends structure to the documentary, it is only ostensibly the story. In fact, the reason for the search remains somewhat elusive and Sissako’s journey appears episodic. Similarly, we neither discover anything about Baribanga nor witness his eventual reunion with the director. Rather, the focus of the narrative wanders as Sissako engages with the stories of each person he meets.

Editor:

Critique

Claudio Martinez

Rostov-Luanda is perhaps best understood as a response to Afropessimism, a concept that gained currency in the late 1980s to refer to the impossibility of sustainable economic development or stable democratic governance in the post-independence era, and which is taken up by several contemporary African films, including Allah Tantou (Achkar, 1991), Les Yeux bleus de Yonta/The Blue Eyes of Yonta (Gomes 1991), Hyènes/Hyenas (Mambéty, 1992), and Tableau Ferraille (Absa, 1997). Angola is arguably Afro-pessimism’s Ground Zero, given the lengthy civil war that began immediately upon the conclusion of Angola’s War of Independence in 1975 and was still ongoing at the time of filming Rostov-Luanda. As the film makes clear, the Angolan conflict was a strategic component of the Cold War, as the communist MPLA and the anti-communist UNITA factions were supported by the USSR and the United States respectively. However, rather than replaying the grand narratives of colonialism, independence and Cold War antagonism at the ideological level, Rostov-Luanda reframes such issues through their impact on individuals. As such, the supposed ‘objective’ content of the documentary is recast as personal narrative, and the story is located in the shifting currents of common memory – the memory of Baribanga, of the hopes of independence, of conflict and civil war – rather than in historical fact.

Duration:

58 minutes Genre:

Documentary Year:

1997

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Sissako structures Rostov-Luanda around a constellation of personal experiences, what he refers to as a series of ‘physical and biographical benchmarks’ from which certain themes radiate outwards (Sissako n.d.). The film lays out a network of experiences that interconnect in order to cognitively map an image of contemporary Angolan life in a way that is non-totalizing, but instead is contradictory and without specific focus. Consequently, the narrative emphasizes heterogeneity, with each encounter standing independently within the film’s totality. This constellatory form is echoed in the film’s structure, which presents a seemingly random series of encounters. These encounters are each connected with scenes of the film crew in transit but the sense of direction and geographic connection between locations remains absent. Such unsystematic movement permeates the film on multiple levels with the repeated long shots of various locations taken from a moving vehicle, simultaneously evoking the displaced nature of Angolan life, Sissako’s own travels, and thus the movement of the African diaspora, as well as the constantly shifting nature of African identity in general. By using differing personal narratives as a structuring device, Rostov-Luanda relinquishes the sense of objectivity typically thought to characterize the documentary genre and instead presents itself as a scattered and subjective narrative. As such, Rostov-Luanda stands in significant opposition to ethnographic documentary, a genre notorious for its reaffirmation of imperial ideology through supposedly authentic representations of African life. Sissako’s subjective narration of the postcolonial condition instead emphasizes ‘getting lost in the rumours of the city [and] complying to one’s sensations before abandoning one’s entire self to haphazard distances and routes’. Rostov-Luanda privileges conjecture and feeling over objectivity or linearity, and the relinquishing of a unified sense of self compelled by Sissako’s journey produces a multilayered presentation of Angola that undermines the idea that film can document any such objective authenticity. Rather, Rostov-Luanda favours the idiosyncrasies of memory and affect. More significantly, perhaps, this refusal to integrate the opinions of the interviewees into one unified vision means that Rostov-Luanda presents a heterogeneous portrait of Africanity that recognizes and allows for points of difference. As such, the film does more than respond to ethnographic documentary; it also takes up the African identity politics that characterize the independence generation and the films of that era. In opposition to the essentialism of negritude or the autochthony of cultural authenticity thought to typify most post-independence radical cinema, Rostov-Luanda presents a heterogeneous model of identity that refuses such concepts. These two contrasting moments of essentialism and heterogeneity come together in the photograph that Sissako carries. This image from the past that evokes Baribanga’s radical political sensibility is brought into the present to forge a link between the hopeful ideology of the post-independence

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moment and its contemporary manifestation. The photograph is an affective trigger, and, as the basis of film, it becomes another inscription of the relationship between cinema and feeling. Similarly, upon his arrival in Angola, Sissako comments that his journey is about ‘gathering fragments here and there to try and recompose [Baribanga’s] image’ while the camera simultaneously cuts between various shots of present-day Angola. In this way, the image-track looks to contemporary life to recapture, against the current of Afro-pessimism, the feeling of revolutionary hope that Baribanga’s image represents for Sissako. As the film progresses and Sissako talks with different people he comments, ‘The memory of Baribanga is getting blurred. Not that I’m forgetting him, but his features are drawing new faces, which my search leads me to.’ Sissako’s narration combines with the cinematography to emphasize the relationship between the image (be it photographic or cinematic), memory and affect so that Rostov-Luanda becomes about the recovery of this emotion now recast through a multiplicity of viewpoints as opposed to the singularity intimated by Baribanga’s image. In Rostov-Luanda, then, film and photography combine as technologies of memory, as mediums that enable recollection and collective feeling. Gone are the objectivity of ethnographic documentary, uniform cultural identity or sense of authenticity that mark the post-independence generation as well as the grand illusions of history that depersonalize master narratives. In their place we find the diversity of personal experience that RostovLuanda uses to rediscover the hope that Baribanga evokes and that the intervening years of war have eroded. This sense of hope, however, is different; no longer rooted in a singular sense of Africanity, it is instead characterized by difference and movement and by the possibilities of building connections across these lines.

Sarah Hamblin

Arlit: Second Paris Arlit: Deuxième Paris Countries of Origin:

Niger France Languages:

French Bariba Hausa Tamashek, with English subtitles

Synopsis Arlit: Second Paris is set in Arlit, a once booming uranium-mining town in Niger. It can be loosely divided into three sections. The first part introduces the audience to the town and its inhabitants, migrants from different parts of Africa, and the Tuaregs who live there. The audience learns about the town of Arlit, often referred to as a ‘Second Paris,’ and the situation today. The second part looks at migrants who can no longer get work in Arlit and their transporters, as they wait to undertake the hazardous journey to Europe. The final part examines the health concerns of the mineworkers, pollution and the illness due to radiation.

Critique Arlit: Second Paris shot in Niger in 2004, is representative of new approaches to African documentary film-making. Idrissou Mora

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Arlit: Second Paris

Director:

Idrissou Mora Kpai Producers: 

Jeanette Jouili Idrissou Mora Kpai Screenwriters:

Idrissou Mora Kpai Isabelle Boni-Claverie Cinematographer:

Jacques Besse Editor:

Vera Memmi Duration:

75 minutes Genre:

Documentary Year:

2004

116 Reviews

Kpai’s film subverts traditional documentary film by taking it to an artistic level that engages with the local environment. The film is set in a desert uranium-mining town in Northern Niger. Mora Kpai allows the inhabitants to tell their own stories which he then interweaves with evocative local music and images to consider the impact of extractive industries on a community now decaying in poverty and illness (most likely from radiation). The interviews are set against the backdrop of a now desolate boomtown. The film raises many issues including migrations, and the impact of unrestricted uranium mining. Arlit has no voice-over narration at all. Instead, Mora Kpai tells his story through carefully edited interviews with no text, names or background information. His cinematographic style shows similarities with Abderrhamane Sissako and with Djibril Diop Mambéty’s Hyènes/Hyenas (1992), in its use of local music and of the colours of the desert and coloured cloth to produce exquisite portraits in carefully framed shots, many of which could be exhibited as stills. The town of Arlit was built specifically for workers and next to the uranium mine, and, as one of the local activists points out ‘too close to the town’. It was also built on an area that had been part of traditionally used Tuareg lands for hundreds of years. Furthermore, rather than employ Tuaregs, the mine imported labour from all over Africa so that Arlit is a town of migrants and Arlit itself is a paradigm of African migrations both for work within Africa and

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later as an exodus to Europe. The community of shifting migrants in the middle of the desert has created what Arjun Appadurai refers to as an ‘Ethnoscape’, an assortment of peoples that come and go and stay as a part of the shifting world we now live in, brought together by other forces than ethnicity, in this case by the lure of opportunities offered by the presence of the multinational uranium company (1990: 296). This allows for intercultural exchange and production, yet, at the same time, the community is also disassociated within itself, with people maintaining their roots and cultural traditions in other places. The town is now decaying and many of its inhabitants are forced to take the risky journey north to Spain in their search for more work. The second part of the film deals with the migration from Arlit. Now desperate people from different parts of Africa are waiting for a chance to get to Europe. There are no longer jobs, and for many, not at home either. Many see Europe as their only hope of not returning home penniless. Then the camera turns to the transporters themselves. Instead of camel caravans, the Tuaregs now provide trucks carrying illegal immigrants across the Ténéré desert to Tamanrasset in Algeria. They carry 30–35 people or more. The journey is 1,500 km and there are no towns – just wells some 300 km apart. The road is dangerous but the Tuareg drivers say they make the runs out of necessity because there is no other work. The migrants have to be hidden and smuggled across the border. If they are caught the trucks are confiscated and the passengers are sent home. Those who make it are then left to find their way across the remaining desert. Thus Arlit shows us one of the many ‘dépôts’ from which more and more Africans are leaving to take the overland desert route to Spain and Europe. The final part of Arlit focuses on the illness of the workers and the continuing risk of too much radiation in the community. When they began mining the workers did not know what uranium was, or what its potential dangers were. We then learn chillingly that they went to work and came home wearing the same clothes and played with their children. Only later did they learn that when someone gets sick and starts to swell up they had radiation poisoning from uranium. They become aware of the situation as the sick person started to waste away and the radiation destroys the lungs. The workers had no idea of the dangers they could be working in. They were given no protective uniform, masks or warnings. They did receive annual medical check-ups but the doctor and the company both said the same thing: the results of the check-ups were always fine. But a few months later workmen started to get ill and die. Much of this part of the film focuses on one of the first immigrants to Arlit, Al Haaj from Benin, who we had met earlier in the film and who is used as a device to explore the history of the town throughout the film. He had been employed as an electrician and raised his family in Arlit. After becoming sick he returned to Benin and had just returned to Arlit to say goodbye to his friends. Arlit is a beautifully made and intensely interesting feature-length documentary. It is a work of cinematic art and it also draws attention to some of the most vital debates in Africa today, such as mine

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contamination, not only of the inhabitants, but also of the deep well water that the Tuaregs rely on, and the cost of ever increasing migrations.

Victoria Pasley

Contras’ City Country of Origin:

Senegal Languages:

Wolof French Studio:

Maag Daan Director:

Djibril Diop Mambéty Producer:

Djibril Diop Mambéty Screenwriter:

Djibril Diop Mambéty Art Director:

Georges Bracher Duration:

21 minutes 30 seconds Genre:

Docu-fiction Cast:

Djibril Diop Mambéty Inge Hirschwitz Ibu Diouf Moussa Sene Absa Ben Diogaye Beye Wasis Diop Year:

1968

118 Reviews

Synopsis Contras’ City’s narrative cloaks itself in the fragmented mode of a city tour involving a virtual French female tourist and his male African guide (Mambéty). It features two contrasting series of shots, both descriptive of the city, its inhabitants and its sociocultural practices. First, the camera lingers on artefacts of modernity such as concrete steps, stairs and quaint monuments high above ground. In a second movement it describes in full shots characters that are typical of an urban environment still criss-crossed by rural elements. The second series of images in Contras’ City feature daily life in poor areas of Dakar (Colobane, Medina). The spaces featured (the market, a popular bridge) are teeming with men and women walking towards or away from the camera; merchants and artisans at work or seeking work; porters and hagglers of all kinds; children at play or foraging the garbage bins in the market; men preparing for the afternoon prayer amid decrepit wooden houses. In these shots, the vegetation is mostly represented by the majestic baobab tree under which barbers have set up shop. The ground is largely unpaved and cluttered with debris. No voice-over is heard in these shots: the soundtrack features a traditional kora melody typical of the times and often used in intermissions between radio programmes.

Critique Shot in the late 1960s, Contras’ City was Djibril Diop Mambéty’s (b.1945–d.1998) first foray into film-making. Its production budget was almost nil; its cast consisted of a few friends (Ibu Diouf, Moussa Sene Absa, Ben Diogaye Beye and Mambéty’s brother, Wasis Diop). The film rushes were donated, the camera borrowed from an employee at the French Cultural Centre and the editing table made available by the same centre. None of the actors were paid. Yet for many film-makers and actors of the same generation, Contras’ City has grown into a ‘fetish’ film, revered by all, retold in many versions and constantly referred to as a memorable experience. In the first instance, the voice-over playfully describes the artefacts of modernity as leftovers of the French ‘fathers’. The camera pans these spaces vertically and horizontally, most often in medium to long shots. As the view shifts from the French baroque architecture in the opening shot, the classical sound score fades into the familiar noises of a horse-led carriage. Buildings flanked by luxurious palms and other trees subsequently come into view. The camera lingers on two types of architecture: the white Sudanese style and the western high-rise type complete with glass balconies

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and windows. The sound score alternates between the noises of the city, utter silence and the chirping of birds usually heard at night. Contras’ City is an experimental film which explores the potential of the camera, assesses the expressivity of spaces and weighs the meaningfulness of various character types within the urban Senegalese context. For one, the camera zooms on the names of various spaces (Place d’Oran) connoting cultural icons of the Middle and Far East. Far in the distance, almost hanging from a pristine blue sky, conic oriental-style rooftops fill the screen. The presence of a man dubbed as a friend, mysteriously and jealously guarding his oil reserves is suggested by the voice-over as the camera pans the logo of the Total oil company. Further descriptive shots feature the interview of a circumcised boy whose words are artfully parodied by the voice-over. A scene from Macbeth performed at the National Theatre follows, then a series of posters of French (Sylvie Vartan, Dalida) and American (The Golden Gate Quartet) music icons. Finally, a parodic imitation of then President Senghor’s voice urges an audience of conference participants to work towards improving the condition of Senegalese women. African identity, this film seems to suggest, is not monolithic but informed by whatever historical and cultural experiences have ushered in these artefacts, names and melodic sounds. Beyond its playfulness Contras’ City is a film that bucks the emergent Sembène-like social realism. Instead of a dialogic narrative, it features the city and its various cultural sources. The characters it depicts are as destitute as Sembène’s Modou and Fatou in Borom Sarret (1963) and their neighbours. Contras’ City foregrounds a dissident kind of aesthetics which will resurface in Diop Mambéty’s later films, framing their iconoclast characters, non-linear narratives and jazzy rhythms.

Sada Niang

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COMEDY

COMEDY

The Franc/Le Franc (Djibril Diop Mambéty, Senegal, 1994)

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Comedy may be the most popular genre with large audiences but it is not the most glamorous of film genres among critics. In France, a legacy from Aristotle, which was appropriated by Molière in the seventeenth century, requires that comedy, which is ‘an imitation of people of little virtue’ – be redeemed by some moral lesson alongside the comic elements; on the screen, however, such bias does not prevent French audiences from raving about their favourite comic actors and about foreign farces, in particular American ones (that may be wanting in ‘moral lesson’) (Moine 2002: 27). On the African scene, comedy may not be considered a priority by film-makers who depend on European, in particular French, subsidies for making films. The exceptions could be independent expatriate director Jean Odoutan, originally from Benin, who has made a name with his migrant comedies, such as La Valse des gros derrières/The Waltz of the Fat Bottoms (2004) and Henri-Joseph Koumba Bididi from Gabon, who directed and produced Les Couilles de l’éléphant/The Elephant’s Balls (2002), an allegory of political inefficiency based on male impotence, a comedic version of Sembène’s Xala (1974). Such self-declared comedies (‘bottoms’ and ‘balls’) are rarely discussed in publications on African cinema and are unfortunately not reviewed in this edition. Critics indeed tend to lambaste popular comedies. Nakache and Toledano’s Les Intouchables (France, 2011), a film that attracted almost 19 million entries in France in less than three months, was presented in Australia as ‘a crowd-pleaser’ by David Stratton and dismissed as ‘pretty mediocre’ by Margaret Pomeranz on their respected show (At the Movies, ABC, 24 October 2012). The same film was also criticized by Olivier Barlet (2012: 212) who found that the choice of an African actor (Senegalese actor Omar Sy) for the caregiver’s part in the film, in preference to an Arab actor since the real-life caregiver was Moroccan, was meant to benefit from the usual stereotyping of black Africans – muscular body, big smile, wild dancing – in a performance comparable to that of Isaach de Bankolé in Black Micmac (Gilou, 1986). The racist condescension towards black actors’ roles in many French films, including the two characters just mentioned, is also pilloried by Régis Dubois in Les Noirs dans le cinéma français (2012). Farces nevertheless, are carried by key actors, typecast or not, and secure commercial success. In Africa as elsewhere, comedy is the genre that reveals favourite film actors. Habib Dembele in Mali, Rouiched in Algeria, Abdoulaye Komboudri in Burkina Faso, Dieudonné Kabongo in Congo-Kinshasa, and the list could go on – all have the charisma that enthrals local filmgoers and communicates a sense of fun to foreigners. Roy Armes (2006: 110–11), however, finds comedy a rarefied African genre and remarks that there are only two instances of studies of African comedy: Barlet’s chapter on ‘Black humours’ (Barlet 2000: 129–42) and Kevin Dwyer on Moroccan cinema, although Dwyer’s laconic title (‘One country, one decade, two comedies’) is hardly encouraging (Dwyer 2004b). From Dwyer, I retain for the benefit of our chapter on comedy the need for moderation in mockery (referring to Dwyer’s book in English [2004a] rather than to the CinémAction article [Dwyer 2004b] quoted by Armes [2006]) and from Barlet, the concept of ‘cathartic parody’. The two exceptional gems discussed by Dwyer are Moroccan director’s Mohamed Abderrahman Tazi’s À la recherche du mari de ma femme/Looking for My Wife’s Husband (1993), the most popular comedy ever made in Morocco and its sequel Lalla

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Hobby (1997). According to Islamic law, if a woman divorces a man and the deserted husband wants to retrieve his wife, she must first marry another man and divorce him before she can go back to her former legitimate husband; such is the cultural context of the mystifying title. Hajj Ben Moussa decides to go to Belgium and find a divorceable husband for Houda, his second wife who has fled the household. The sequel, Lalla Hobby, about the first wife’s resourcefulness after her husband has gone chasing his second spouse, was less popular because it was meant to be more subtle, Tazi explains in his ongoing interview with Dwyer (2004a: 250–51). Tazi’s leitmotiv is indeed the notion that deriding people or institutions is only as efficient as the ridicule stays within the limits of dignity. Satire must be moderated by respect, which is a condition for the spectators’ identification and acceptance (Dwyer 2004a: 60–64). Tazi did not see his film as disrespectful towards polygamy as a concept of family but he expected some leniency towards such a ridiculous and naive character as both Lalla’s and Houda’s husband, an established man ill-prepared for the migrating experience. If laughter is commonly seen as a weapon, one could make the distinction between the use of a weapon in an attack as in political satire or in self-defence as a way of overcoming trauma. In his chapter ‘Humours noirs’ Barlet (1996: 154) quotes Djibril Diop Mambéty as the cinematic master of ‘cathartic parody’, referring to this Senegalese director’s juxtaposition of shots that show the extreme injustice in a developing society and the way ‘ordinary people’ – the title of Mambéty’s trilogy – cope with their tribulations. Many African films contain strands of parody while they tackle sensitive social issues. Strictly looking at their content, such films, which could qualify for other genres, such as drama, fable, political protest and of course comedydrama (comédie dramatique), would characterize many films focusing on family life. The polygamous and/or rural context may seem exotic to foreign audiences but the principle of good-hearted subversion is recognizable. The tested comic device of gender reversal is one strong example. The American classic Some Like It Hot (Billy Wilder, 1959) found its African cultural equivalent in Taafe Fanga/Pouvoir de pagne/Skirt-Power (Adama Drabo, 1997), with enormous success in Mali due to the incongruous sight of men carrying jars on their heads and offering water to their wives with one knee on the ground, as tradition requests from their wives. (Unfortunately for the late director, Adama Drabo, his masterpiece was not released in France and he was not rewarded with international recognition in his lifetime.) In various films with a serious topic, the signal for laughter rather than despondence comes through the language register of the dialogue. Jokes as a major aspect of comedy may be dampened by subtitles for foreign audiences, or may be lost to people who do not understand an African language used in a film and cannot read the subtitles, whether in French or English. Felicitous dialogue nevertheless prompts crosscultural sense of fun, in particular when the verbal inventiveness illustrates a defining function of laughter in the narrative, for example the restoration of self-esteem. In Cheick Oumar Sissoko’s Nyamantan /u /a Leçon des ordures/The Garbage Lesson (1986), colourful language is the only weapon against misery. When a little boy comes home in tears because the headmaster dismisses children who don’t bring their own desk to school, his father retorts in Bamana (Bambara) (translated into French in the subtitle): ‘Is he in the army? Is he a colonel? Does he wipe his arse with an axe? [Estce qu’il se torche le cul avec une hache?].’ There is no such expression in Bamana, I was told, but it may have been inspired by picturesque expressions used to dismiss pretentiousness, such as ‘Go and pick your teeth with a rail!’ The child laughs and forgets his misfortunes as probably did the local audience who must have appreciated the fearless hint at Dictator Colonel Moussa Traoré, who was eventually ousted from power in March 1991 after his 23-year reign.

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The films reviewed below are presented in a loose order of increasing indictment, if we go by the metaphor of laughter as a weapon, progressing from dismissing daily ailments with a joke to blaming cultural dysfunctions, such as abuse of power among official representatives of religion or revision of historical events. Downsizing daily frustrations with harmless humour characterizes two joyous works by Burkinabe film-makers – a police station television series Commissariat de Tampy/ Tampy Police Station (Missa Hébié, 2006) and a feature film about disgruntled returned soldiers (Tasuma le feu, Daniel Kollo Sanou, 2003). Personal and social issues are tackled in the following five films in the satiric rather than dramatic mode. Deborah Gardner-Paterson’s Africa United (2010) shows the playful resilience of Rwandan youth in the wake of genocide and HIV epidemic. A somehow subversive approach to maternity is illustrated in Charles Shemu Joyah’s Seasons of a Life (2009), one of two films representing Malawi in this edition. In a video-film, King Ampaw from Ghana extends this self-derision from marriage to death in L’Ultime hommage/No Time to Die (2006). Immigration is experienced by Africans in Gilou’s Black Micmac and by Algerians in Merzak Allouache’s Salut cousin!/Hi,Cousin! (1996), both sharing the same exaggerated eccentric manners and a bizarre French accent attributed to migrants from the African continent. The next two films revisit history with a comic slant. Dated ethnographic representation of the natives is debunked in the review of the controversial The Gods Must Be Crazy (Jamie Uys, 1990), and a demystified representation of independentist fervour in Algeria unmasks a boastful coward in Lakhdar-Hamina’s Hassan ‘Terro’ (1967). Cultural subversion appears in strands of movies concerned with cultural certitude or religious faith. Lyès Salem’s Masakhra/ Mascarades (2008) exposes the manic preoccupation with status and the taboo on disability in Algeria, while Mambéty’s Le Franc/The Franc (Senegal, 1994) and Yaméogo’s Wendemi (Burkina Faso, 1993) present religious believers who cannot escape their weaknesses. The chapter concludes with Bekolo’s Le Complot d’Aristote/ Aristotle’s Plot (Cameroon, 1996), a film that questions the specificity of African films in relation to their inspirational sources. Adama Drabo’s Taafe Fanga and comedies about polygamy, such as La Vie est belle/ Life is beautiful by Mweze and Lamy (Zaïre, 1985) as well as Une Couleur café (1997) and Bal Poussière/Dancing in the Dust (1988) by Ivorian director Henri Duparc, not omitting Mahamat-Saleh Haroun’s Sexe, gombo et beurre salé/Sex, Okhra and Salted Butter (Chad, 2008) are not included in this volume and should invalidate the argument of a dearth of comedies in African cinema.

Blandine Stefanson

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Tampy Police Station Commissariat de Tampy Country of Origin:

Burkina Faso Languages:

French Moore Diola (Jula) Studio:

Faso Films.com Director:

Missa Hébié Producer:

Missa Hébié Screenwriters:

Noraogo Sawadogo Missa Hébié Cinematographer:

Gomina Charles Baba Art Director:

Missa Hébié Music:

Smokey Editor:

Bertin B Bado Duration:

25 minutes each episode Genre:

Comedy (TV series) Cast:

Sekou Omar Sidibé Simon Pierre Joseph Tapsoba Eugene Bayala Josiane Ouédraogo Modibo Barra Clémentine Papouet Samira Sawadogo Roger Zami Guébré Year:

2006

124 Reviews

Synopsis Tampy Police Station, through twenty-minute episodes, recounts stories that broach social issues under the guise of police investigations full of humour and surprises. The investigations pertain to events taking place in a working-class area called Tampy, a name that rather sounds like Tampouy, a south-western suburb of Ouagadougou, capital of Burkina Faso. The investigations are briskly conducted by the energetic pair of detectives Rock and Mouna (Omar Sidibé and Samira Sawadogo). They are assisted by Constable Jacquou (Modibo Barra) and Brigadier (Simon Pierre) who plays the role of the nasty police officer always keen to use his baton to ‘make everyone speak, even the dumb’. Most episodes deal with such various issues as marital conflicts, suitors’ rivalries, theft, child trafficking and belief in ‘disparition de sexes’ (disappearing penises). Viewers are entertained by the action-packed investigations and the love rivalry between Constable Oyou (Eugene Bayala) and Chacho (Joseph Tapsoba), the coffee-merchant. Without fail, Detective Zami (Roger Zami Guébré) congratulates his investigators and is never short of proverbs or colourful sayings in order to teach the lessons of each episode.

Critique In the last fifteen years, South American series such as Marimar (Beatriz Sheridan, Televisa, Mexico, January 1994 - August 1994), Dona Beija (Wilson Aguiar Filho, Brazil, Rede Manchete de Televisão, Brazil, 1986) and Rosa Salvaje/Wild Rose (Inés Rodena, Canal de las Estrellas, Mexico, 1987-1988) or the European and American homicide detective series such as Derrick (Helmut Ringelmann, Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen, 1974-1998) and Columbo (William Link & Richard Levinson, NBC & ABC, 19682003) were great favourites among TV viewers in West Africa. Affiliated with both the detective novel and oral genres, TV series have become a new African genre that is gaining huge popularity because film-makers can produce them at affordable prices. Having garnered numerous prizes for his first feature film, Le Fauteuil/The Armchair (2009), director Missa Hébié is making a name with Tampy Police Station, which was first broadcast on RTB (Radiodiffusion Télévison du Burkina) in 2006 and later on was aired on popular channels in francophone Africa such as TéléSud and TV5. Tampy can be acknowledged as one of the first comic detective series in the region, whereas others tended to be dramatic. In Tampy Police Station, the enquiries are conducted in-depth and in such a jovial atmosphere that viewers laugh their heads off all along. The director strikes a balance between the seriousness of the themes and the humour that goes with hilarious situations and personable actors. The casting of the series has a sub-regional dimension because, in addition to talented beginners, it includes well-known stars such as Soukey and Cléclé, the leading roles of the series Les Bobodiouf (Patrick Martinet, Africa Productions/France, 2002–08) and Ma Famille/My Family (Akissi Delta, Lad Productions/

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France, 2002–09). Les Bobodiouf is a comic series shot in BoboDioulasso, the second largest city in Burkina Faso, in which the stars Soukey and Siriki entertain the viewers with their accoutrements and their simpletons’ roles. The name Bobodiouf combines Bobo, short for Bobo-Dioulasso, and Diouf, a Wolof surname that is meant to express the actors’ fondness of Senegal. My Family is a comic and sentimental series shot in Ivory Coast. Unlike other African film genres, the TV series is characterized by the development of urban themes, hence the use of the official language (French) as a favoured tool of communication. The urban environment is dominant in Tampy, a series that abounds in petty crimes that people commit to overcome the daily frustrations of their city lives. In the episode of the thefts of the Sonabel main switches (state-run electricity company), a man called Bouba, alleging his unemployment, justifies his illegal monthly resale of electricity to his neighbours. A medicine hawker puts forward the same rationale to cure some people’s fear of ‘disappearing penises’(‘disparition de sexes’). The choice of one language only is dictated first by the need to streamline the production cost, avoiding for example the complex subtitling of several languages, and second by the wish to access international markets through the cable channels. In Tampy, all characters use French, apart from a few words borrowed from Moore or Diola (Jula) sayings that usually express irritation, surprise or disappointment in a particular situation. The meaning of these expressions can be guessed from the actors’ facial expression and the context. One such case is clear enough when, on the threshold of the police station, Chacho and Madame Rocheteau (Clémentine Papouet) greet each other with the Moore word tampiri (bastard). Missa Hébié can be said to have masterfully handled the encoding system of the police TV series. The setting up and upholding of the suspense through action-packed episodes prompts the viewers’ enjoyment and longing for resolution. Inspectors Rock and Mouna repeatedly follow one or two leads that soon prove to be wrong, and the story finds its closure with the arrest of the character who is the least likely suspect. The proliferation of secondary plots is another dilatory technique that intensifies the mystery and suspense. In the child trafficking episode, Rocky Junior’s absence is presented as though Inspector Rock’s son is a victim whereas he is at a summer camp. In the same episode, Aïcha’s blackmailing of Inspector Rock is a digression devised by the film-maker in order to enhance in due course the dismantling of the child traffickers’ ring. At first sight, Tampy is structured like any other cop series, but Missa Hébié introduces two specific features, namely humour and the African version of the classic epiphany that concludes every episode. Detective Constable Oyou, a keen consumer of dolo (millet beer) plays the role of the failed cop. Chacho, on the other hand, sees himself as much more than a coffee-merchant whose store is opposite the police station. He stands to attention anytime he sees a police officer while keeping an eye on who is going into the police station, hoping that his information might translate into money. Chacho (pronounced Shasho in English), from the local pronunciation of the Comedy 125

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French sang chaud (hot blood), is the hot-blooded man who misses no opportunity to ridicule and embarrass his rival Oyou in front of Poupette (Josiane Ouédraogo), as in turn does Oyou. Being both enamoured of Poupette, each one hopes to emerge as the winner of their never-ending rivalry. Thanks to his verbal virtuosity, Inspector Zami reprimands all parties – his colleagues and subordinates, Brigadier – as well as the defendants and viewers. He warns Kadre that ‘those who keep deceiving other people eventually fall into their own trap’. He says to Adissa, ‘Whoever walks bent over can be seen by those who are standing’, thereby implying that all secrets can be exposed. Thus, by way of proverbs and metaphorical expressions, orality reinforces the narrative of each episode in that the ending reminds the viewers of a traditional story from which the listeners are supposed to draw lessons. No crime remains unresolved at Tampy because, as Brigadier explains with his baton in hand, ‘at Tampy Station, bad citizens are always severely punished’. The film-maker seems to hope that he will incite viewers to change their attitude and behaviour. This review was adapted from French into English by Blandine Stefanson.

Boukary Sawadogo

Tasuma, Fire Tasuma, le feu Countries of Origin:

Burkina Faso France Languages:

French Diola (Jula) Fulfulde Studios:

Les Films du Mogho ClapAfrik Director:

Daniel Kollo Sanou Producer:

Toussaint Tiendrebeogo Screenwriter:

Daniel Kollo Sanou Cinematographer:

Nara Keo Kosal

126 Reviews

Synopsis Tasuma, Fire is a feature film about Sogo Sanou (Mamadou Zerbo), a returned soldier from the colonial army who fought within the French Army in Indochina and Algeria from 1953 to 1963. Sogo, nicknamed ‘Tasuma’ (Fire), expects the administration to honour his request for a returned soldier’s pension. One Monday morning, Sogo is on his way to Bobo-Dioulasso to collect his pension. Due to a computer breakdown at the Office of the Treasury, the returned colonial troops (former tirailleurs) are asked to come back the next day. On Tuesday morning, encouraged by both Khalil (Raoul Besani Khalil), a Lebanese retailer, and Adama (Stanislas Sore), a door-to-door salesman, the confident Sogo buys on credit a flour grinder to replace the cumbersome grinding stones which the womenfolk use to make flour for the daily tô, a staple millet dish. Indeed, Sogo’s wife once hurt her finger while handling the stone grinder. The village celebrates the purchase of the modern grinder and the chief offers his daughter Oumou (Sonia Karen Sanou) to Sogo as a second wife. Sogo declines the offer, invoking Oumou’s right to choose her husband herself. Sogo’s glory, however, is short-lived because he is still waiting for his pension. In his determination to have his rights acknowledged, Sogo is arrested and remanded in custody for having threatened with a gun the regional chief administrator.

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Editor:

Andrée Davanture Music:

Cheick Tidiane Seck Duration:

90 minutes Genre:

Comedy Cast:

Mamadou Zerbo Raoul Besani Khalil Sonia Karen Sanou Stanislas Sore Serge Henri Year:

2003

Critique Trained in Ivory Coast, France and Canada (Institut National des Arts [Abidjan], Conservatoire Libre du Cinéma Français [Paris], Office National du Film [Montreal]), Daniel Kollo Sanou devoted several years of his film career to the national TV in his native country, Burkina Faso (until 1983, Upper Volta). He directed several short films, documentaries, TV series and feature films, among others Paweogo/L’Émigrant/The Migrant (1982), Jigi/L’Espoir/Hope (1992) and Sarati/Le Poids du serment/The Weight of the Oath (2009). The first feature film produced in Burkina Faso (Le Sang des parias/The Pariahs’ Blood, directed by Mamadou Djim Kola) was released in 1972 but Burkina Faso’s film production only took off in the early 1980s, not only with the works of Gaston Kaboré, Idrissa Ouédraogo and Daniel Kollo Sanou himself, but also with the establishment of Cinafric, a private production studio. The initial Tasuma project, which was started in 1987, dealt with the life of former tirailleurs such as Kollo Sanou’s father who had served in the French Army. It was not until the director teamed up with producer Toussaint Tiendrebeogo that Kollo Sanou decided to incorporate into his script the issue of unpaid pensions. In the same vein as Sembène’s Camp de Thiaroye (1988) and Bouchareb’s Indigènes/Days of Glory (2006), Tasuma is as much a topical as a historical feature film that inspires viewers to respect men of honour. Wounded in his pride yet contented with his social and historical standing, Sogo takes his fate in hand by demanding that his pension be paid. Without being a flag-waving film, according to the director, Tasuma prompts the viewers to reflect on the fate of the returned soldiers through humour. Sogo’s inclination to avail himself of all possible means to claim his pension creates playful incidents that suggest that Sogo is a pacifist in spite of acting the tough guy. His friend Tinga, for example, notices that on pension payday, Sogo carries ‘a ready to use grenade’. Similarly, waving an unloaded gun, Sogo orders the Prefect to put his pension claim in writing to General de Gaulle, even though the latter ‘died a long time ago’. In addition to Sogo’s antics, the director utilizes the ‘joking kinship’ to entertain the viewers, be it in solemn circumstances such as the village council meetings or commemorative ceremonies for the deceased of the preceding year. The joking kinship, called rakiré in the Mossi language, is a playful antagonism that allows differing ethnic groups to tease each other without harm and thus is a regulatory principle that defuses interethnic tensions. The joking kinship that binds the Fulani and Bobo ethnic groups is called upon in Tasuma when Diallo, a Fulani, has no qualms about hurling abuse at the Bobos about Sogo’s ‘reward’ (the beautiful Oumou). Even though Sogo’s sacrifice for France is downgraded by both the local and the French administrations, his community acknowledges his value. He holds a place of honour at the village meetings in Koro, for he sits to the right of the chief. As nonconformist and progressive as many of the tirailleurs that can be found in villages in Burkina Faso, Sogo is motivated by the search for justice and consensus. Such pacifism is consolidated not only by

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the fact that Sogo’s gun is not loaded but also by the closure of the film with Zao’s song, which is a hymn to peace. The director threads the secondary strand of the purchase of the grinder in order to broach the theme of women’s status. Sogo’s stand on male contribution to the daily family chores and his rejection of arranged marriage are examples of his commitment to the improvement of attitudes to women. Tasuma offers an innovative representation of women since they are the ones who, in the face of the men’s inertia, go to the police station and obtain that Sogo be freed. (Sogo’s homecoming is crowned by the announcement that his pension has been granted.) Such female heroism echoes that of the female lead characters of Collé Ardo and Kiné in Ousmane Sembène’s Moolaadé (2004) and Faat Kiné (2001). Tasuma’s aesthetic attraction derives from the combination of beautifully lit long and close-up shots with chants that are an integral part of the narrative. Doba the madman, well interpreted by Serge Henri, sustains the narrative with different songs for each day of the week when Sogo rides out to Bobo-Dioulasso. Doba’s simple songs, reinforced by the children’s chorus, gives rhythm to the events: ‘On Friday morning, on his bike with his gun and haversack, Sogo heads for the Treasury, dying of sadness; Sogo does not give a damn, his gun in hands, he is ready to shoot.’ The character of the madman comments on Sogo’s trials. The representation of the fool as a visionary, in the manner of Karfa in Dani Kouyaté’s Sia, le rêve du python/Sia, the Dream of the Python (2001) differs radically from that of the popular image of the lunatic bereft of reason. Tasuma holds the viewers spellbound thanks to Sogo, the nonconformist who always finds extraordinary solutions to obstacles. ‘It is interesting to wander in Sogo Sanou’s world,’ comments the griotte (woman singer and storyteller). Even when the events are dramatic, the viewers keep smiling thanks to the joking kinship or the sight of women brandishing sticks and chasing the police. This review was translated from French by Blandine Stefanson.

Boukary Sawadogo

Africa United Countries of Origin:

Rwanda South Africa UK Language:

English Studios:

Pathé Productions Footprint Films

128 Reviews

Synopsis Africa United showcases the spirited journey of five African youths as they travel 3,000 miles to the FIFA 2010 World Soccer Cup in South Africa. The film introduces us to Dudu (Eriya Ndayambaje), an endearing Rwandan HIV-positive orphan who fashions soccerballs out of condoms; his smart and prayerful sister Beatrice (Sanyu Joanita Kintu); and his best friend Fabrice (Roger Nsengiyumva), an upper-class boy who excels at soccer, so much so that he is asked to try-out for the FIFA 2010 opening ceremonies in Johannesburg. Unfortunately, the trio sneaks onto the wrong bus, and instead of ending up in Kigali, they end up in the Democratic Republic of

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Link Media Productions Out of Africa Entertainment BBC Films Director:

Deborah ‘Debs’ GardnerPaterson Producers: 

Mark Blaney Jackie Sheppard Eric Kabera Screenwriter:

Rhidian Brook Cinematographer:

Sean Bobbitt Animation Director:

Simon Willows Editor:

Victoria Boydell Music:

Bernie Gardner Duration:

84 minutes Genre:

Comedy Cast:

Eriya Ndayambaje Roger Nsengiyumva Sanyu Joanita Kintu Yves Dusenge Sherrie Silver Emmanuel Jal Year:

2010

Congo. They decide to pursue their journey regardless, crossing the DRC, Burundi, Tanzania, Zambia, Zimbabwe and South Africa. Along their way, they are joined by a child soldier aka Foreman George (Yves Dusenge) and Céleste, a sex slave (Sherrie Silver). The travellers face a number of obstacles, including border crossings, refugee camps, illness, encounters with wild animals and feral children as well as escape from Tulu, a war lord (Emmanuel Jal). Their quest ends with a surprising, bitter-sweet twist.

Critique A Rwandan/South African/British co-production, Africa United represents the attempt of Rwandan cinema to go global – to attract foreign financing and appeal to western audiences. It also aims to move beyond themes related to genocide and postgenocide reconciliation which have largely characterized Rwandan indigenous cinema to date. Director Debs Gardner-Paterson, who previously directed We Are All Rwandans (2008) with the Rwandan Cinema Centre, repeatedly emphasized in interviews that the film aims to portray a ‘different kind of story about Africa’ (Williams 2010). Rwandan co-producer Eric Kabera echoes her sentiments, characterizing this uplifting film as ‘dismantling all sorts of stereotypes’ about Rwanda and Africa (Hron 2009). Despite acquiring funding from various sources, Africa United is still a lowbudget film, at £4 million for a number of overseas locations. It also features a cast of first-time child actors and was shot quickly, over a span of eight months. Though it premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, Africa United has only been widely released in theatres and on DVD in the United Kingdom and Europe. Notably, 25 per cent of the DVD proceeds go to Comic Relief, a British charity working with disenfranchised children. Africa United explores Africa through the imaginative and optimistic lens of Africa’s future generations – its children. In tandem, distributor Pathé marketed the film as a family or children’s film. Yet, the film also deals with a number of serious human rights issues – such as HIV/AIDS, war, child-soldiering, sexual slavery, humanitarian aid and the plights of refugees – albeit, often in a comic and light-hearted way. The film’s conclusion takes on a more serious tone, which only makes viewers realize the gravity and incongruity of the film’s subject matter. Because of the protagonist’s HIV-positive status, AIDS is at the forefront of this film, yet its treatment of the disease or of Dudu never lapses into conventional pathos or victimhood. For instance, the film opens with a close-up on orphan Dudu teaching his audience how to make a soccer ball out of a condom, while lecturing them to ‘be safe sexing … to make football, not war’ or that ‘if President Obama wears one [a condom], so can you. Just do it’. Such witty dialogue, which often plays with hackneyed clichés, characterizes most of the film. Throughout the film for instance, Dudu’s speech is peppered with malapropisms, such as ‘The world is your ostrich!’ (oyster) or ‘Impossible is nothing’, which aptly convey his wise griot-like (story-teller-like, yet also childlike, status. The dialogue also often serves to convey sharp critique. For example,

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when the team is rescued by a children’s charity, Dudu counters preconceived assumptions about Africans being poor, diseased victims in need of succour, by querying whether the aid worker has ‘the flu of pigs’ (‘swine’ flu or H1N1). The cinematography also contributes to the film’s subject matter. Stereotypes of ‘dangerous Africa’ – shots of warfare, slums and refugee camps – are interpolated with representative images of ‘natural Africa’ of waterfalls, jungle, wildlife, etc. However, the artificiality of this montage is sharply accentuated and put into question by the addition of vibrant primary colours, bouncy musical montages or quick cuts, thus lending the film more of a magic realist feel, rather than a social realist one. Particularly striking are the animated sequences that periodically interrupt the plot. These cartoon-like sequences, representing Dudu’s dreams and stories, refer to the role of griots and storytelling in African cultures. Yet they also offer pointed allegories of the real-life conditions of the children in Africa, and stress the much-needed role of imagination in order to address these complex issues. Reception-wise, Africa United received mixed reviews. While some viewers enthusiastically lauded it as a family film that did not infantilize or patronize its audience, others insisted on its 12A UK rating, because of its mature subject matter and sexual references. Most film critics generally insisted on comparing Africa United to the 2008 blockbuster Slumdog Millionaire (Danny Boyle, Leveleen Tandan [2008])– in fact, the film was dubbed ‘the African Slumdog Millionaire’. Because Africa United lacked Slumdog’s pathos and gravitas, or requisite elements of the poor-boy-does-good narrative, critics largely dismissed it as too maudlin and light-hearted in its treatment of serious issues. It is clear from these reviews that general audiences are not yet ready to welcome light-hearted comedies about ‘dark Africa’, which portray African children not as pitiful victims, but as subjects with agency, imagination and a sense of humour.

Madelaine Hron

Seasons of a Life Country of Origin:

Malawi Language:

English Studio:

First Dawn Arts Director:

Charles Shemu Joyah Producer:

Charles Shemu Joyah

130 Reviews

Synopsis Kondani (Bennie Msuku) and Thoko (Neria Chikhosi) live in comfort and appear to be a blessed couple. Thoko, the legitimate wife, however, cannot conceive and laments over this to Kondani who arrives home at midnight from a pub. He does not look or behave drunk but has an agenda. He convinces Thoko to become a mother by adopting a child. They proceed to do so, underscoring the theme of motherhood. The working couple will require a nanny and a session of interviews sees 16-year-old Sungisa (Flora Suya) joining the household as a nanny. Three years later, Kondani and Sungisa indulge in sexual escapades resulting in her pregnancy. He asks her to have an abortion to protect his marriage and reputation but she refuses and moves out to live with her aunt. He follows her and tells her that he can support her as long as she does not disclose that he is the

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Screenwriter:

Charles Shemu Joyah Cinematographer:

Peter Mazunda Art Director:

Michael Phoya Music:

Overton Chimombo Editor:

Abraham Mithi Duration:

103 minutes Genre:

Comedy Cast:

Flora Suya Bennie Msuku Neria Chikhosi Tapiwa Gwaza Crispin Vyazi Hope Chisanu Zondwayo Juba Year:

2009

father. She agrees and in turn gets financial support from Kondani. When Sungisa gets a scholarship to study at university, Kondani conceives a plan to get his son into his home. He convinces Thoko that they should adopt another child and asks Sungisa to leave her son at an orphanage, where he and Thoko then will adopt the child. Thoko has no idea that they have adopted her husband’s son. However, six years later, things come to a head when Sungisa comes back to claim her child. Helped by her sharp-talking feminist friend and lawyer, Tabitha (Tapiwa Gwaza), she sues for custody of the child. The question is: will Sungisa return her biological son to Kondani and Thoko?

Critique The author, producer and director, Charles Shemu Joya is ironically a consultant in land matters in Malawi’s commercial capital, Blantyre. His five-time award-winner debut is the culmination of an accomplished poet and story writer’s journey to satisfy a thirst for the Arts. Seasons of a Life is an epic story of hope, motherhood, love, deception and reconciliation. In Malawi as in most of Africa, impotence/infertility is a huge embarrassment and is associated with evil. Breaking such news to a spouse therefore requires nerve; hence Kondani is out drinking to acquire the courage he needs to swallow the family pride as he suggests adoption. Enhanced by Overton Chimombo’s original fifteen thematic tracks, the narrative feature draws emotion and emphasizes the plot, telling the story through a series of flashbacks. The music departs from the conventional language of the script, leaving the melody and rhythm to complement the scenes. The music provides a rather general lacing to the acts without the soundbites that signal emotional action. For instance, when Kondani makes his first advances at Sungisa, he spills tomato sauce on his night gown and asks Sungisa to wipe it off. In the process he smears some of it onto Sungisa and wipes off the sauce from her breast. Thoko leaves town to attend a workshop. Kondani takes advantage of, and sleeps with, the nanny. She threatens to report but she does not do so. The two continue to meet secretly. During a family outing, no sooner has Sungisa swallowed her ice-cream cone than her suspicious nausea starts again. She packs up and bids farewell to little Yamikani without noticing the expected quizzical, curious, child’s innocent interrogation. She says no to abortion even when Kondani dangles a whiff of fat cash. Horrified by such suggestions, Sungisa literally escapes from the antenatal theatre, into a corridor where the lit ‘exit’ wall sign lights up a smile on this desperate soul. Sungisa, typical of the meaning of her name keep or protect, runs to free her unborn baby. Motherhood is once more exalted and the accompanying music enhances the film’s mood. She arrives at her auntie’s high density township home without the expected display of concern for illegitimate conception. This is mitigated by Kondani’s arrival to announce his change of heart. He will financially support Sungisa. She manages to pay for her

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education as she studies hard. At university she meets Tabitha who later becomes her workmate at a time when she is seriously contemplating custody of her child. Finally she begets a son and Kondani scrupulously arranges to legally adopt him. Drama ensues during her visit to the Kaliras when Kondani refuses to release the child and Sungisa reveals to Thoko her husband’s infidelity. Thoko’s life is in turmoil. She leaves her matrimonial home to regain sanity. Despite its serious topic, the film is entertaining and packed with suspense. Comic scenes culminate in Kondani and Sungisa’s romantic hide and seek on Thoko. Thus, as his wife returns to their bedroom twice to collect forgotten items, Kondani successfully conceals Sungisa under the blanket in the couple’s bed, pretending to read a book. The husband comments: ‘this is very exciting!’ Tabitha’s courtroom cross-examination of Kondani introduces another series of humorous emotional drama. It is not easy to take the apology of motherhood seriously in this comedy, looking at Sungisa’s series of dilemmas leading to the sudden return of her son to Kondani and Thoko.

Peter Mitunda

No Time To Die L’Ultime hommage Countries of Origin:

Ghana Germany Language:

English, with French and Dutch subtitles Studios:

Filumé Filmproduktion Afromovies True Lines Entertainment Director:

King Ampaw Producers:

Wolfgang Panzer Bernhard Springer Screenwriters:

King Ampaw Klaus Bädekerl Cinematographer:

Edwin Horak

132 Reviews

Synopsis No Time To Die is a comedy that mixes life, love and death with its story of a hearse driver named Asante (David Dontoh) and his undying quest to marry the woman he loves. Asante is successful at his job, but unlucky in love. It seems that Asante will never find someone to love until one day a woman named Esi (Agartha Ofori) comes into his workplace requesting a hearse for her mother’s funeral. Asante volunteers for the job and falls in love with Esi. He goes above and beyond his duties as a hearse driver. Asante does everything that he can to show his love for Esi who acknowledges this but is put off by the fact that he deals with dead people for a living. Asante does not give up his efforts to win over Esi and eventually she falls in love with him. However, Esi’s father Owusu (Kofi Bucknor) does not want his daughter marrying a hearse driver. Nevertheless, Asante will not stop until Esi is his wife.

Critique No Time To Die draws from many conventions of slapstick comedy in its depiction of a hearse driver in search of love. The film’s protagonist Asante is a hopeless romantic who has an unusual job. As a character, Asante can be described as goofy and quirky. He seems to dress himself in such a way as to put on an air of sophistication that seems desperate and forced. Asante tries to wear dapper attire consisting of a tailored suit and top-hat. However, as a result of the hard work that he does on a daily basis and the climate of Africa, his clothes are beat up, tattered and coated in sand from the dusty roads he travels throughout the city and the African

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Art Director:

Claudia Sontheim Music:

Ben Mankhamba Editor:

Claudio Di Mauro Duration:

98 minutes Genre:

Comedy Cast:

David Dontoh Agartha Ofori Issifu Kasimu Kofi Bucknor Year:

2006

countryside. Asante in many ways looks like a cross between Charlie Chaplin’s ‘Tramp’ character and a ringmaster at a Barnum and Bailey circus. In fact there are many visuals in the film that bring to mind carnivalesque imagery such as the various animals and livestock loitering in every shot throughout the busy city streets and African countryside; in addition, Asante’s hearse looks like an old-fashioned circus car used to transport exotic animals such as lions and zebras. In addition to his Chaplin’s-wardrobe style Asante’s over-the-top mannerisms and facial expressions are akin to comedies from the Silent Era. These characteristics are emphasized by comical sound effects such as the trademark kissing noise that Asante makes when he is flirting with Esi. The dialogue in No Time to Die can be described as again channelling slapstick comedies as it is fast paced and full of puns. This can be seen in the witty banter between Asante and his assistant Issifu (played by famous Nigerian dwarf actor Issifu Kasimu). Issifu is a serious counterpoint to Asante‘s light-hearted goofiness and well-meaning actions. This creates many humorous situations as the small man reprimands Asante for his feeblemindedness throughout their daily operation as funeral workers. An instance of this is when Esi hires them to drive her mother’s casket to her funeral, but does not have the required funds. Asante goes so far as to help buy Esi an aeroplane-shaped casket for her mother who had always wanted to fly, and to donate a large sum of his own money at the funeral to Esi and her family. Throughout the film, the funeral traditions of African cultures are put on display and are shown to be a surprisingly entertaining means of celebrating an individual’s life. In many ways, funerals are shown to be more like wedding celebrations in their aesthetic and atmosphere. This certainly adds to the comical courtship of Esi by Asante. An example of the spectacle of the funeral is when the aeroplane casket holding Esi’s mother is pushed into her grave off a makeshift ramp, comically simulating a plane’s take-off. Death can also be viewed in an impersonal sense as demonstrated when Asante’s boss states, ‘more dead people, more funerals, more business, more money.’ In Africa, death is an ever-present reality as a result of poverty and sickness. In No Time To Die one character even makes the comment that ‘people are dying like flies’ in Africa. However, the film approaches death from a light-hearted and comedic perspective by showing the understanding of African cultural traditions that life should be lived to the fullest and a person’s death should be a celebration of life. No Time To Die offers a positive message of death through its story of romance and comedy set against the love story that develops between Asante and Esi. An example of this is at her mother’s funeral when Esi ties a red cloth on Asante’s hand. These red cloths are worn by all those attending the funeral and as such can be seen to represent death. However, Asante seems to see the red cloth that Esi gave to him as a sign of love. Another humorous example occurs when the hearse breaks down. Asante and his friends wave down a passing driver who agrees to take Issifu back to town to find a way to fix the hearse. While stranded alone on the side of the road in the dark of the night, Asante and Esi have Comedy 133

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sex in the hearse. True to the film’s slapstick form, the big and cumbersome vehicle creaks and bounces with over-the-top sound effects that suggest the hearse’s shock absorbers have not been greased in decades. No Time To Die is structured around the ironic juxtaposition of death and love through the character of Asante and his quest to win the love of Esi.

Brett AB Robinson

Black Micmac Country of Origin:

France Language:

French Studio:

Chrysalide Films Director:

Thomas Gilou Producers:

Monique Annaud Christian Fechner Screenwriters:

Thomas Gilou Cheik Doucouré Patrick Braoudé Cinematographer:

Claude Agostini Art Director:

Martin Meissonier Music:

Ray Lema Editor:

Jacqueline Thiédot Duration:

93 minutes Genre:

Comedy Cast:

Isaach de Bankolé Jacques Villeret Félicité Ouassi Sotigui Kouyaté

134 Reviews

Synopsis Set in Paris, Black Micmac tells the story of intransigent hygiene inspector Michel (Jacques Villeret) harassing a community of African immigrants whose building/squat (or foyer) is considered unsanitary. When Michel threatens to evict them, community leaders decide to bring a Marabout (so-called holy man) from rural Africa who will use his knowledge to change Michel’s mind. The chosen Marabout (Sotigui Kouyaté) will be paid generously enough to build a new mosque in his village. On the plane, a suspicious young man named Lemmy (Isaach de Bankolé) gets rid of the Marabout after the latter shares with him the aims of his journey to Paris. On arrival, Lemmy introduces himself as the Marabout’s son. From then on, a series of funny micmacs (dubious dealings) begins, with well-scripted and wellperformed shifts and turns: will the true Marabout reappear in the film and Lemmy’s ploy be discovered? Will a foyer, crucial to the survival of African immigrant communities, be saved from closure?

Critique Black Micmac exceeded box office expectations with more than 800,000 tickets sold in France (400,000 in Paris). Its audience was more than ‘ethnic’ while its success was also due to the twenty years producer Monique Annaud had spent in Africa, to director Gilou’s passion for the cinema, and to Isaach de Bankolé’s award-winning performance (the first black actor to win a French César, in 1987). Black Micmac was not the only black-/African-themed popular comedy in 1980s France. Other examples include Romuald et Juliette (Coline Serreau, France, 1989). Simultaneously, Black Micmac struck a different chord with the wider French movie-going public. This point bears repeating because Black Micmac confronts serious issues like immigration, police brutality, racism and a divided French public opinion about them. While some saw Black Micmac as racist, others perceived it as simply a hilarious parody of racism in France. This unfortunate divide does not do justice to a complex film. In order to fully appreciate why, it is necessary to situate Black Micmac within the contexts of 1980s French cinema and the film’s purported reinforcement of strong negative stereotyping of Africans.

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Year:

1986

Black Micmac was one of very few films that confronted social reality head on. Indeed, most of 1980s French cinema was almost ‘attempting to escape reality by a double movement of nostalgia and return to childhood’; films such as Fort Saganne (Alain Corneau, France, 1984) and La Vie et rien d’autre/ Life and Nothing But (Bertrand Tavernier, France, 1989) were built on ‘regressive stereotypes’ (Powrie 1997: 7). Furthermore, whereas Black Micmac was attracting hundreds of thousands of spectators, French cinema overall was losing viewers at the national level: nearly 32 million from 1986 to 1987 and 32 per cent for the whole of the 1980s (Powrie 1997: 1). Last but not least, French viewers in the mid-1980s were attracted to American films despite the development of a video culture and the growing number of films appearing on TV. A major cause for that attraction was that comedy remained overall ‘a formulaic repetition, particularly of the male couple of comics’ (Powrie 1997: 7). Therefore Gilou’s film contributed to save French cinema from a crisis, at the same time as it challenged American film imports. With this line of thinking, if and when addressing Black Micmac’s alleged reinforcement of negative stereotypes of Africans (e.g. that they all believe in sorcery and keep live animals for black magic sacrifice) we must not overlook other important points. First, the film tapped into a set of lived experiences and publicized them through exaggeration/satire. Second, I watched the film twice with other Africans represented therein (in Dakar first, and then in Paris seven years after de Bankolé’s César): we laughed at white France’s naivety about Africans, appreciated de Bankolé’s performance and Félicité Ouassi (Anisette)’s and the other sisters’ sensuality. The uproar caused by the film (justified, politically motivated and marginal) could not stop us from laughing at our own satirized onscreen selves. I believe that Black Micmac is cross-cultural and anti-racist. A prequel to Gilou’s later comedies such as La Vérité si je mens/ Would I Lie to You? (1997), on French Sephardic Jews, Black Micmac is very different from more militant immigration-themed films like Philippe Lioret’s Welcome (2009). And, of course we should not forget that there was no Ministry for Immigration in France when Black Micmac was made. Therefore, nowadays it may be more useful to watch Black Micmac in light of contemporary French racist immigration laws. At the same time however, if, afterwards, one holds the film responsible for (some) problems facing African immigrants (and black French citizens!) in the 1980s or now, then, in my view, one is yet to grasp the aims, objectives, and limitations of Black Micmac. Perhaps, that is why some UK-based academic scholarship on ‘French National Cinema’ routinely overlooks this film and other Africa-/black-themed films as serious, influential texts able to redefine French film history, theory, culture and entertainment.

Saër Maty Bâ

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Hi, Cousin! Salut cousin! Countries of Origin:

Algeria France Belgium Luxemburg Language:

French Studio:

Artémis Productions Director:

Merzak Allouache Producer:

Jacques Bidou Screenwriter:

Merzak Allouache Cinematographers:

Pierre Aïm Georges Diane Art Director:

Bruno Delahaye Music:

Safy Boutella Editor:

Denise de Casabianca Duration:

98 minutes Genre:

Comedy Cast:

Gad Elmaleh Mess Hattou Mégaly Berdy Year:

1996

136 Reviews

Synopsis Hi, Cousin! tells the story of young Algerian Alilo (Gad Elmaleh) who arrives in France from Algeria to collect a suitcase of counterfeit designer clothes for his Algerian boss. In Paris, Alilo stays with his cousin Mokrane (Mess Hattou). Mok, as he prefers to be called, is a gambler, an eccentric aspiring rapper convinced that, ethnically and legally, he is not Algerian. Much of the hilariousness of Hi, Cousin! emerges from the cousins’ idiosyncratic relationship; its tragicomic intrigues centre on the suitcase, and on Mok’s connections to Paris, his family, the police and French citizenship. Having collected the suitcase, Alilo decides to stay in France illegally, following his romantic involvement with a black woman named Fatoumata (Mégaly Berdy). Unbeknownst to him, Mok, his host, is arrested and told that he will be deported to Algeria. Consequently, one would agree that Hi, Cousin! explores ‘what happens when individuals wish to grant hospitality but the state has the power to thwart them’ (Rosello 2001: 85–86).

Critique Algerian director Merzak Allouache had first been an immigrant to the Hexagon (‘six-sided’ France) in the late 1960s when he studied film at the Institut des Hautes Études Cinématographiques. When he returned to France thirty years later to become an exile and wrote Hi, Cousin!, France was as problematic a country of residence for Allouache as his native Algeria. Allouache, like Alilo, is an outsider from the outside (Algerian immigrants) while Mok is an outsider from the inside (a marginalized French citizen). Thus, Hi, Cousin! is part of the 1990s ‘banlieue films’ (set in the outer suburbs), overwhelmingly preoccupied with French-born youths of different ethnic-immigrant origins and their often conflict-ridden relationship with the police, such as Ma 6-T va crack-er (JeanFrançois Richet, France, 1997) and La Haine (Mathieu Kassovitz, France, 1995). However, Hi, Cousin! differs from banlieue films in two crucial ways: first, police brutality is peripheral to its narrative thrust; second, Mok and Alilo share the same ethnic and immigrant origin although they are presented as very different characters. The character Alilo is important to a critique of Hi, Cousin! not only because he is central to its story and plot, but also because actor Gad Elmaleh draws his brilliant performance from his own North African origin, his experiences of exile and migration in Canada and France and his stand-up comedy acts. Indeed, Elmaleh ‘exaggerates regional North African modes of enunciation and fashions a simplistic, almost childlike way of speaking, limited to the present tense and peppered with linguistic slips and naive neologisms’ (Waldron 2007: 38). Moreover, Elmaleh is a Moroccanborn Jewish pied-noir (a European settled in North Africa) who moved to France in the early 1990s in order to attend theatre school; his Jewishness stands against any homogenization of North African/Arab ethnicities and generates new ways of reading Alilo’s character. Stated differently, Elmaleh’s corporeality efficiently builds

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bridges between ethnic, national and religious cultures for Hi, Cousin! and, as such, gives credibility to the multi-ethnic narrative of the film. Mok, the fictitious character, is convinced of his Frenchness and wants nothing to do with Algerians. His often fractious relationship with Alilo is accentuated by differences in their places of birth and experience – France/Paris vs Algeria/Algiers. And yet, the French State considers Alilo and Mok as one and the same: (sons of) immigrants. Nonetheless, French culture cannot fully account for Mok’s contradictions. This is because Mok embodies national, transnational and international flows: posters in his flat (e.g. Jimi Hendrix and Public Enemy), fashion, rap music and the way in which he relates to his family are cases in point. For example, Mok warns his cousin that his two brothers are likely to die of AIDS or substance abuse, his father is unemployed, his sister is a prostitute and his mother suffers from depression. When Alilo visits his cousin’s, however, he discovers, in a comical sequence, that Mok’s two brothers are studying in the United States, his father is retired, his sister is a taxi driver and his mother is free from depression. Mok’s futile attempt to escape ethnicity through distancing himself from his family is compounded by ways in which he fits Mireille Rosello’s description of ‘the children of immigrants’ whom, ‘[w]ith one hand on the suitcase, […] are caught in an eternal no-man’sland: they are not going, they are not staying’ (2011: 114). As an illegal immigrant, Alilo also fits this description, although he is not a son of an immigrant. In relation to France, what do the cousins collectively signify? To argue that Mok, Alilo and Hi, Cousin! reclaim French symbols (for example, Mok’s Jean de la Fontaine’s fable about the city mouse and the country mouse or Alilo’s Eiffel Tower) is insufficient. Additionally, the act of reclaiming is no guarantee against precarious French citizenship, marginalization or expulsion from France. Neither host nor guest, Mok is sitting in limbo with one hand manacled, symbolically, to a suitcase (or sports bag). To conclude, I would suggest that Mok’s goldfish and the two (aurally invoked) mice in his rap raise an important question: what could these little animals signify in relation to the marginal spaces Mok, the Parisian, has to offer his visiting cousin, Alilo?

Saër Maty Bâ

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The Gods Must Be Crazy Country of Origin:

South Africa Languages:

English Studio:

CAT Films Director:

Jamie Uys Producer:

Jamie Uys Screenwriter:

Jamie Uys Cinematographers:

Jamie Uys Buster Reynolds Robert Lewis Production Designers:

Wilhelm Esterhuizen Piet Esterhuizen Music:

John Boshoff Editor:

Jamie Uys Duration:

105 minutes Genre:

Comedy Cast:

Marius Weyers Sandra Prinsloo N!xau Louw Verwey Michael Thys Paddy O’Byrne Year:

1980 (distributed by Twentieth Century Fox in 1983)

138 Reviews

Synopsis A pilot flying over the Kalahari Desert throws a Coke bottle out of the window of his plane. It lands in the midst of a family of Bushmen. While the strange object is initially considered useful, a gift from the gods, it soon sows jealousy, possessiveness and anger, and it is agreed that the object must be discarded. Xi (N!xau) decides to walk to the edge of the world and throw the bottle away. Meanwhile, bumbling biologist Andrew Steyn (Weyers) drives his recalcitrant Land Rover to collect Kate Thompson (Prinsloo), who is starting work as a teacher in a remote rural village. The third story involves ‘terrorist’ Sam Boga (Verwey), whose band of rebels shoot up the cabinet of the fictional country of Burani before escaping, with the military police of Burani hot on their heels. Boga enters the rural school in which Kate works, takes the school children captive in a bizarre hostage plot and heads off into the bush. After Xi is arrested for stealing a goat, he ends up in the employ of Steyn and his mechanic/assistant M’pudi (Thys). While out on a research expedition, the three come across Boga, Kate and the village children…

Critique Time has not been kind to Jamie Uys’s hugely successful comedy which, for a long time, was the signal representative film about South Africa for audiences in the rest of the world. Though well received by critics abroad at the time of its delayed release in the early 1980s, The Gods Must Be Crazy was also taken to task for its condescending racism, naivete and evading the reality of apartheid. Now, even what was comic at the time seems very dated and Uys’s passive or unintended racism appears especially out of place in South Africa. (It doesn’t help that the most widely available copy today is the international release of 1983, which selectively dubs over the South African English accents with tinny American voices.) However, it would be a mistake to disregard the significance of Gods within the context of South African film. As a comedy, the film combines silent-era slapstick with heavyhanded satire. Weyers plays Steyn as a traditional wilderness hero – tough, resourceful, bold – until he comes within range of Kate, whereupon he becomes prone to every physical gag in the book, falling over tables, stepping in waste-paper baskets and breaking things. Uys reserves the best comedy for Steyn’s Land Rover (dubbed ‘the Antichrist’ by M’pudi, his assistant), speeding up the film in places to emphasize the vehicle’s hair-raising malfunctions, whether rolling down a hill or being winched into a tree. The film’s most memorable sequence involves Steyn opening a series of farm gates while valiantly attempting to control the brake-less Land Rover. While Uys critiques urban, western living (in the fauxdocumentary voice-over by well-known South African radio personality Paddy O’Byrne), he balances this exaggeration with a

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painfully idealistic view of Bushmen society that echoes Montaigne’s essay ‘On the Cannibals’, first published in French (Des Cannibales, Essais 1, chapitre 31) in 1580: the Bushmen have ‘no crime, no punishment, no violence, no laws, no police, no judges, no rulers or bosses’. More troubling is the persistent notion that the Bushmen – ‘pretty, dainty, small and graceful’ – are so close to nature that they become, like animals, one with the natural world. Uys’s celebration of Southern Africa’s flora and fauna – an important element in his film-making since the 1960s – serves to elevate Xi and Steyn’s characters, who are passionate about living in and conserving nature. The movement from the film’s quasiethnographic opening to the narrative catalyst (the discarded Coke bottle) is fluid and sets up the weaving together of genres seen in Uys’s earlier films like Animals are Beautiful People aka Beautiful People (1974) and Dirkie aka Lost in the Desert (1969). However, the moment Boga’s story takes over, this balance is disturbed as every imaginable negative stereotype of black people erupts on the screen: obedient rural villagers in need of white education (and rescue), moronic and murderous revolutionaries, natives with mystical powers beyond the ken of civilized (white) men. When Boga’s men shoot up the cabinet of Burani, the shocking mass murder is filmed as slapstick. In the same sequence, the line between psychological torture and prank is also deliberately blurred. This cruel and simplistic satire of African political independence not only sours the film’s otherwise warm-hearted comedy, but also alludes to a political commentary that is ultimately left incomplete. Is this a Marx Brothers-style spoof of political mayhem in the manner of Duck Soup (1933), or a warning to white South Africans about the consequences of black rule? The cities of ‘civilized Man’ in South Africa might be full of tired, overworked modern humans, but there are no gunmen shooting wildly in the streets. And, of course, no mention is made of apartheid South Africa’s own violent repressions. It is clear that Uys wants to put some distance between his critique of consumer capitalism (seen in the pilot’s casual disposal of the Coke bottle as much as the bottle itself) and the thorny issue of apartheid. This distance is made literal by setting the story in the remote Kalahari which allows the characters to interact believably beyond the apparent reach of apartheid authority. The remoteness of the setting and the extreme marginalization of the Bushmen – who live, in Uys’s words, ‘in complete isolation quite unaware that there are other people in the world’ – effectively manipulates apartheid to the margins and it becomes a structured absence in the film. So why bother with The Gods Must Be Crazy today? Historically, Uys is a significant figure in South African film; as an independent film-maker, as a film-maker working predominantly in Afrikaans and as an auteur in the most literal sense (note the many roles he assumes in the making of this film). Of the more than twenty films he directed, this film was his most successful globally and, for better or worse, it is a film in which many people around the world caught a glimpse of South Africa. Of more interest for the

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contemporary viewer, perhaps, is the way in which the film ‘frames apartheid mythology’, to quote Tomaselli (1992: 191–231) through its benign, apolitical representations. The film’s simplicity belies the complexities that were inherent in the film at the time, complexities which have deepened as South Africa has carried its traumatic past into the turbulent present.

Ian-Malcolm Rijsdijk

Hassan ‘Terro’ Country of Origin:

Algeria Languages:

Arabic French Studio:

L’Office des Actualités Algériennes (OAA) Director:

Mohammed Lakhdar-Hamina Producer:

Farès Sélim Screenwriter:

Mohammed Lakhdar-Hamina Cinematographer:

Mohammed Lakhdar-Hamina Art Director:

Hassen Chafaï Music:

André Chamoux Editors:

Rabah Dabouz Youcef Tobni Duration:

90 minutes Genres:

Fiction Historical comedy Comedy drama Cast:

Rouiched Keltoum Larbi Zekkal Hassan Hassani

140 Reviews

Synopsis Mohammed Lakhdar-Hamina’s first foray in film-making began during the Algerian War of Independence from France and the majority of his films revisit this theme. Hassan ‘Terro’ is the director’s second fiction. Based on comedian Rouiched’s own play (Hassan Ettero), it is set in 1957. The struggle has intensified with a wave of terrorist attacks, and what will become known as the Battle of Algiers is raging. To crush the insurrection and put a stop to the growing fear among the French population, Paratroopers have been called in from France. Hassan is a middle-aged timorous bourgeois living with wife Zakia and their teenage son. Ahmed is an Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN) activist, relentlessly assassinating French civil servants and senior army officers. He is wanted by the French Army and in need of a hideout. He sends fellow activist Jaafar to persuade his old school friend Hassan to shelter him for a couple of weeks. In spite of his fear, Hassan acquiesces. This arrangement proves to be the harbinger of his trials and torments.

Critique In the opening sequence, Hassan (Rouiched) leaves his workplace and obsequiously greets the sentinel. Frightened at the sight of compatriots threatened by a French soldier with a machine gun, he timidly lumbers to the bus stop. As a platoon approaches, he looks up and notices a poster that reads: ‘Algeria, ten million French citizens.’ Anxious that he may also be arbitrarily arrested, he whistles the French national anthem as the soldiers pass by him. At the grocer’s, he overhears a FLN meeting in the back room. The speech being delivered is a fervent call for armed action. Alarmed, Hassan declines the invitation to join the group and makes his exit. Director Lakhdar-Hamina overlays the continuing speech with shots of Hassan walking home. The further Hassan walks away, the louder the speech becomes. Looking nervously behind him as though followed by the speech itself, an out of focus shot of Hassan’s face further expresses his apprehension. Arriving home in a cold sweat, he jumps at the mere greeting by his wife. Hassan’s actions, reinforced by these techniques, introduce him as a spineless antihero, sold out to the French. During an arrest, Hassan establishes that Ahmed (Larbi Zekkal) is a chief terrorist. Back home and in a state of stupor from the revelation, he feels he can no longer carry the burden of his secret

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Mahieddine Bachtarzi Year:

1967

alone. His wife must bear it too. Not only is Zakia (Keltoum) aware that Ahmed is a chief terrorist, she has been hiding his firearms. The inevitability of the death penalty should they be found out, brings Hassan’s terror to its paroxysm, prompting him to faint. This unexpected scene convincingly conveys the unassuming resourcefulness and steadfastness of Algerian women during the war. When Ahmed bursts in one evening pursued by the Paratroopers, Zakia swiftly hides him in a concealed trap under the floor to the bewilderment of her husband, completely unaware of its existence. Zakia’s courageous participation also reinserts the anticolonial struggle into a collective endeavour, in stark contrast to Hassan’s decidedly servile and self-centred behaviour. Remarkably, Hassan’s cowardice is matched by his boastfulness. Having witnessed one of Ahmed’s assassinations, Hassan’s elder brother comes to seek refuge. Hassan brags that he is sheltering Ahmed, exhibiting the arms. When the Paratroopers who followed closely on Ahmed’s heels, find Hassan hiding his face under a blanket from fear, they assume that the imposing home belongs to his brother. Too self-important to permit the confusion, he sheepishly corrects it. Soon, Ahmed’s guns are found by the Paratroopers. The panic at being exposed compels Hassan to impulsively sing in a quavering voice, this time the Algerian national anthem. So as to save his friend and spare his family from torture and probable death, Hassan claims ownership of the arms. At last, his sense of responsibility is being teased out of him. To the Paratroopers, this act instantly turns him into a notorious terrorist: Hassan ‘Terro’. Hassan is escorted to the police station, and, puffed up by his new persona, his hesitant gait morphs into a swaggering selfconfidence. Ahmed had demanded that silence must be kept for 24 hours so as to render any information unusable, but Hassan does not comply. Instead, he offers to collaborate, pretending to know all the FLN leaders and their location. His gift of the gab is put to some sort of good use for once. During the following 24 hours, he tirelessly accuses dozens of innocent men, and even overcomes a truth serum by offering more invented information, buying himself and his friend as much time as possible. His newfound consciousness is put to the test when a tortured and haggard Jaafar is brought to him. In a moment of extraordinary self-control and through subtle nuances in his gaze, Hassan recognizes Jaafar but successfully denies knowledge of him or his involvement with the FLN. This well-executed performance also invites the audience to glimpse Hassan’s dignified humanity and identify with him. Though Hassan will not divulge information for the required time, the film’s ending remains uncomfortably open, as he is unmistakably taken to be tortured. The first of a popular quadrilogy, Hassan ‘Terro’ does not glorify the heroics of a nascent nation, but intimates the struggles of a man overwhelmed by circumstances. It is a credit to Rouiched’s great talent that he creates in Hassan a complex and likeable character, despite his many flaws. Rouiched had played a cameo role in Gillo Pontecorvo’s Battle of Algiers made in 1966, and the

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similarity in historical events and issues explored is inescapable. Unlike Pontecorvo’s harrowing depiction of humiliation and torture, in Hassan ‘Terro’ it is not silence, but a sharp tongue that is the weapon of resistance. Using colloquial Arabic and more specifically idioms from Algiers, Rouiched and Lakhdar-Hamina’s take on a moment in the battle of Algiers is a hilarious yet sophisticated comedy that attests to the power of the word, without resorting to farce or slapstick. A light-hearted counterweight to Pontecorvo’s affecting piece, it is a rare film daring to portray tragic events in a transgressive, witty and engaging way.

Rosa Abidi

Mascarades Masakhra Countries of Origin:

Algeria France Language:

Arabic Studios:

Dharamsala Laith Media ARTE France Cinema Director:

Lyès Salem Producers:

Isabelle Madelaine Yacine Laloui Screenwriters:

Lyès Salem Natalie Saugeon Cinematographer:

Pierre Cottereau Art Director:

Jaoudet Gassouma Music:

Mathias Duplessy Editor:

Florence Ricard Duration:

90 minutes

142 Reviews

Synopsis In a little town in rural Algeria life is taking its course, with little excitement shaking its inhabitants out of their routine. Mounir (Lyès Salem) is a young, over proud man with a wife and son, working as a ‘horticultural engineer’ – hear gardener. Mounir’s attractive younger sister Rym (Sarah Reguieg) suffers from narcolepsy, causing her to fall asleep uncontrollably. Unbeknownst to her brother, Rym has been dating his best friend Khlifa for some time. When Mounir finds out that his sister is victim to local gossip because of her condition, he is deeply wounded. Drunk, he announces that a rich foreigner has asked for her hand. To Mounir’s delight, this invented story changes his social standing overnight. To put a stop to the effervescence in the town, Mounir’s wife Habiba (Rym Takoucht) suggests they visit a luxurious hotel, after which his sister will declare her disinterest towards the fake suitor. However, Rym confirms the impending nuptials to a ‘William Vancooten’, so as to prompt Khlifa into asking for her hand. The anticipation of the townspeople reaches dizzying heights, and Mounir cannot help but revel in the aggrandizement.

Critique Mounir stands wearing a gold chain, tracksuit bottoms and a matching jacket over a white vest. His macho demeanour is complemented by an abundant moustache whilst the pair of flipflops clash beautifully with the sports kit. Holding a live cockerel by its feet, his bombastic posture is that of a man who wishes to command respect in spite of the incongruity of the sight: a lone man in the middle of nowhere. When his ride arrives, an ungrateful Mounir scolds Khlifa for letting him fry in the scorching sun. He proudly states that the cockerel is a treat for his sister, who loves chicken. In the neighbourhood, he is invariably dismissed. Finding his son and his friends dismembering a scarab, Mounir admonishes Amine for his lack of compassion and chases the friends away. However, when Habiba asks her husband impatiently about a long-awaited microwave, she stares dejectedly at his meek attempt to reassure her.

Directory of World Cinema

Genre:

Comedy Cast:

Lyès Salem Sarah Reguieg Rym Takoucht Merouane Zmirli Mohamed Bouchaïb Mourad Khan Guemra Oum El Kheir Year:

2008

Mounir’s first appearance sets the tone perfectly by exposing the dynamics of the key relationships, as well as his yearning to feel validated by his peers. An example of this is his association with neighbour Redouane (Mourad Khan). Until the ‘betrothal’ announcement, Mounir’s had been Redouane’s unwitting bane. Now that he has become the talk of the town, on seeing Mounir running an errand, Redouane eagerly insists on offering him a lift. The ingratiating nature of the gesture becomes instantly apparent: a few yards on, the car abruptly stops and Mounir gets out. Similarly, when Mounir passes by pretending to speak on the phone in broken English, his neighbour lets him in on a scam to get easy cash for the wedding. By the end of the drinking spree celebrating their lucrative swindle, they are buddies. In a later scene, Redouane rehearses a speech to ‘Mr Williams’. Speaking to himself in the mirror, he declares in earnestness that they will accomplish great things together, adding that he must meet his mother and taste her delicious traditional cooking. Mounir’s illusion is only surpassed by the townspeople’s overwhelming craving for its veracity. Mounir may be cocky and impressionable, but he is also softhearted towards his sister. Every evening, Khlifa posts himself at Rym’s bedroom window and they converse. One evening, Mounir walks in as Rym is in mid-sentence. She throws herself in a state of anguish, simulating a nightmare and calling out her brother’s name, so as to warn Khlifa. Unsuspecting, Mounir affectionately comforts his sister. Later on, Amine confides in his mother that Mounir would be willing to eat pork, should it heal Rym. Alcohol and pork are forbidden to Muslims, and whereas the drinking of alcohol can somewhat be tolerated in Algeria, the consumption of pork is an indubitable transgression. Mounir’s mere willingness to consider this option is an emphatic sign of his devotion to his sister. When Khlifa finally asks for Rym’s hand, Mounir’s retort is both revealing and touching: his sister is a princess, and her suitor must prove his worthiness through tests. Despite Khlifa’s success, the obstinate and protective Mounir does not relent, still considering his friend undeserving of his sister. Out of options, and with Habiba’s blessing, Rym and Khlifa elope. Mascarades is a great comedy of manners, with Salem using a wide register to keep audiences amused. Under its light-hearted surface, it is a sharp social study on the importance placed on status at the expense of integrity. Mounir’s aspirations and contradictions are refracted back at us with pathos and acuity. In addition, several underlying themes inject drama and poignancy. In this, Mascarades is unusual in touching on a taboo subject in Algerian as well as African societies in general, that of disability. It is also to Lyès Salem’s credit that the love of a brother for his sister is so sensitively portrayed, an original choice since it is a topic seldom explored in African cinemas. Mascarades was a hit, winning the Best Arab Film Prize at the Cairo and Dubai Film Festivals in 2008, and the Bronze Etalon de Yennenga at FESPACO 2009. With a tight script and fine acting all around, it is an entertaining and ambivalent piece, wellpaced and full of verve.

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The Franc Le Franc Countries of Origin:

Senegal Switzerland France Languages:

Wolof French English Studio:

Maag Daan Film & TV (Dakar) Scolopendra Productions (Paris

Synopsis Le Franc, Mambéty’s second last film, focuses on Marigo (Madieye Masamba Dieye), an absent-minded eccentric, who among other mishaps tries to put out a cigarette butt with his bare heel. He needs to retrieve from his landlady his beloved congoma, a musical instrument that looks like a modified cardboard box, which the formidable woman has confiscated until he pays his rent. Welladvised by his friend – a dwarf who makes a living by selling lottery tickets – Marigo buys the lucky number although he cannot prove his win because he has glued his ticket onto his door under a poster of Yaadikoone Ndiaye, a historical character who is his role model. Marigo dreams of becoming a famous musician and simultaneously of playing the role of a wealthy and generous Muslim. In the final sequence, he is waddling in the rock pools by the seashore, hoping to detach the winning ticket from his door.

Director:

Critique

Djibril Diop Mambéty Producers

Le Franc, a fable released after the 50 per cent devaluation of the Franc CFA currency that was announced in fourteen countries of the West African Franc zone on 12 January 1994, could be subtitled ‘A day in the life of a would-be holy man’. On the one hand, when the dwarf character invites Marigo to the restaurant, quoting the slogan of the day (‘Devaluation – Consume African made’), as though mocking international monetary decisions, the dinner consists of peanuts. On the other hand, the title of the film refers not only to the trauma of the 1994 devaluation, but also to the ‘frank’ man, both brave and provocative, in the style of Yaadikoone Ndiaye, the real life and now legendary swindler who, like Robin Hood, was reputed to steal money from the rich for redistribution to the poor. Every morning, Marigo responds to the call for prayer by bowing to his door, which is adorned with the poster of Yaadikoone Ndiaye ‘the protector of children and of the weakest’ – his guide in the quest for justice. After his early routine, Marigo wanders around the city, dreaming of taking on the role of a wealthy and influential Muslim. The desire for notoriety through business affiliation to Muslim brotherhoods has been shown to be the reason for Islamic expansion in West Africa (Brenner 1993). There is confusion in Marigo’s moral allegiances. The disentangling of his confusion, which is expressed by poetic editing, leads to some lesson to be learnt from his actions, hence my notion that this film is not only a poetic comedy, but also a fable that warns the weak against the squandering of their moral values. The cinematography emphasizes the competition between the voice of Islam in the calls for prayers and the lure of instant wealth promised by the winning number of the National Lottery, repeated again and again by the dwarf. The sight of the dwarf lying on a windowsill and nervously shaking his foot alternates with the shot of the winning number on the screen (555) to the sound of the call for prayer. The close-up of the dwarf’s sacrilegious foot emphasizes the

Silvia Voser: Screenwriter:

Djibril Diop Mambéty Cinematographer:

Stéphane Oriach Music:

Moussa Ndiaye Madieye Masamba Dieye Issa Cissoko Aminata Fall Editor:

Stéphane Oriach Duration:

45 minutes Genres:

Fable Comedy Cast:

Madieye Masamba Dieye Aminata Fall Year:

1994

144 Reviews

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The Franc

subversive preference for money over religion. Capitalism competes with Islam, as can also be seen in inscriptions on the sides of buses where the logo of the national lottery, LONASE (Loterie Nationale du Sénégal) is next to the religious incantation transcribed into Latin letters ‘Alhamdoulihali’ (‘God be blessed’). Elsewhere, in an emphatic montage of shots, Marigo is filmed standing with his arms wide open against the background of the BCEAO (Central Bank of West African States) and dangling his prayer beads. Inserts of bank notes appear while jazz is laced with the call for prayer on the soundtrack. My interpretation of the jazzy saxophone music, as

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a signifier of capitalist temptation that distracts worshippers from their duty, differs from the director’s intentions. Indeed, Mambéty explains that the rich sound of the saxophone celebrates the creator and is comparable to the muezzin’s chant (Wynchank 2003: 102). Yet the blues sung in English and Wolof by Marigo’s landlady (Aminata Fall) also invokes American consumerism. Flashback and flashforward inserts emphasize the contradiction between the genuine Marigo, the one who dreams of being a philanthropist and griot, and the social climber who seems to think that money will give him the dignity of a holy man. The most obvious symbols of loss of ideal are expressed by the shots of the Yaadikoone Ndiaye poster and Marigo’s bowler hat floating away in the surf at the end of the film while, with exaggerated laughter, the man rejoices over his retrieved lottery ticket. One could purport that Marigo has slowly forgone his early dream of ‘protecting the weak’. The flight of seagulls in the middle of the final laughing and praying session of Marigo trying to unglue his lottery ticket from his door echoes previous images of his powers as a magician. In the past, the musician appeared to let flocks of tiny yellow birds fly out of his congoma to enchant children. Now, the predatory seagulls may symbolize Marigo’s squandering of ideals. Le Franc, like Mambéty’s previous films (Touki-Bouki [1973] and Hyenas [1992]), shows that monetary greed threatens African spiritual values. This medium-length fiction, which won many prizes including the Best Short at FESPACO 1995 and the Golden Gate Award (San Francisco), is also the legacy of three Senegalese artists now deceased: Mambéty himself, Aminata Fall (the landlady) and Dieye (Marigo), a generous musician who used to sing for sick children in hospitals.

Blandine Stefanson

Wendemi, the Good Lord’s Child Wendemi, l’enfant du bon dieu Country of Origin:

Burkina Faso Language:

Moore (Mossi) Studios:

Laafi Productions (France) Les Films de l’Espoir (Burkina Faso)

146 Reviews

Synopsis ‘Go away and come back only when you tell us who made you pregnant!’ so speaks Zacharie (Gustave Sorgho) to his daughter Cécile (Sylvie Yaméogo) in the opening scene of the film, just as she is about to give birth. The next day, after Cécile has vanished, women find a baby in the bush. Back in Koudougou, the babe is handed down from one person to the other until Michel (Alassane Dakissaga), whose spouse first spotted him, starts negotiating with the police, the village chief and Father George ways of finding a home for him. The priest (Célestin Zongo) advises Michel and his spouse to raise the child because he is ‘a gift of God’, and the new parents call the boy ‘Wendemi’, meaning ‘The good Lord’s child’ in Moore. Growing up, Wendemi (Sylvain Minoungou) becomes unruly. Being ill-treated by his adoptive parents, he is entrusted to Koudougou’s chief, whom Wendemi is to accompany on official trips. One day, Wendemi injures his foot and is passed on to a

Directory of World Cinema

Thelma Film AG (Switzerland) Director:

Saint Pierre Yaméogo Producer:

René Sintzel Screenwriters:

S P Yaméogo René Sintzel Cinematographers:

Moussa Diakité Jürg Hassler Music:

Mahmoud Tabrizizadeh Sound:

Emmanuel de Soria Issa Traoré Editor:

Michèle Darmon Duration:

94 minutes Genres:

Drama Quest for identity Adventure Cast:

Sylvain Minoungou Abdoulaye Komboudri Sylvie Yaméogo Alassane Dakissaga Célestin Zongo Gustave Sorgho Sotigui Kouyaté Year:

1993

new tutor. As an adult, Wendemi, wants to marry Pogbi, his tutor’s daughter. To carry this out, he follows an elder’s advice (Sotigui Kouyaté) on how to obtain land. He then goes and searches for his mother in order to find out his real name. His quest brings him to Ouagadougou where he meets a local pimp known as ‘Son of Man’ (Abdoulaye Komboudri). Reduced to work with Son of Man, Wendemi manages to escape this dead-end by saving a girl from prostitution. Will these adventures reveal to Wendemi his father’s identity?

Critique In Pierre Yaméogo’s films, characters walk a lot and often at a brisk pace. For each leading role in Wendemi, Yaméogo’s third feature film, walking amounts to either a quest or an escape or both. Wendemi’s quest consists in fleeing from his unknown origins before returning to the village and discovering his ancestry. Likewise, his mother escapes from her fate by relinquishing her son until she launches a search for him after she has lost him a second time. Indeed, Wendemi’s mother does not reveal her identity to her son when he asks for the bracelet, which is a symbolic link between them. The quest takes a comic turn when the baby found in the bush is handed around from one institution to the other. The comic strand derives from the verbal enumeration of events that have already been staged on the screen. Thus, Michel, Wendemi’s first adoptive father, recounts his negotiations not only with his spouse but also with the police, the village chief, the priest and various social services even though the viewers have already seen on the screen the unlucky fellow’s wanderings. By a twist of irony, Wendemi or ‘The good Lord’s child’ is well named since it becomes clear that this phrase is to be understood in the literal as much as in the figurative sense, for indeed, Wendemi is Father George’s child. All the comings and goings that are linked to Wendemi’s quest for his origins foreground larger movements. First, in relation to the film’s structure, the quest is reminiscent of the bipolar structure that juxtaposes the city and the village. In the course of his travels from one village to the next, Wendemi leaves his adoptive village to join his mother in the capital Ouagadougou. The contrast between the here and elsewhere is not alien to Yaméogo as the theme of the exodus from the village to the city presides in Delwende (2005) and in Dunia (1987), in the same manner as Moi et mon blanc (literal translation: Me and My White Man [2003]) is hinged on the alternation between Paris and Ouagadougou. The search for parents in Wendemi refers to a necessary homecoming, as the birth village is the initial space of a crisis that must be overcome: mother and son return to the village in order to designate the boy’s father. As far as Wendemi is concerned, these movements lead to Father George’s church, and several low angle shots and other shots, which are emphasized by the roaring of thunder, indeed testify throughout the film to the all-encompassing power of the religious institution in the village life. Although the quest focuses on Father George, it seems that Yaméogo does not specifically indict the Catholic

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Church; instead, he unmasks all manner of crimes committed under the guise of religion, whatever it may be. In the second half of the film which takes place in Ouagadougou, the episode showing a Muslim family man who acts as a Pharisee echoes Father George’s paternity that is too shameful to disclose. Guilty of an adulterous relationship with an under-age woman, then guilty of her death, the Muslim patriarch soon holds forth dressed in a vermillion boubou (robe), a colour that symbolizes his crimes. Later on, he is praying in his compound, with complete impunity, surrounded by his wives and children. This sanctimonious man is seen again donning the same red boubou and drinking beer with the chief of police and other people who helped him hush up his scandals. The quest for origins reveals a wide range of cultural features. On the light-hearted side, a sergeant is labelled a foreigner because he comes from Bobo-Dioulasso, 200 km away from the village where he now resides. On a more sombre note, while Wendemi needs to know his roots in order to get married and to engage in adult life, his search for the past leads him to discover the hardships of those bereft of a future through the TV program ‘The great endemics of the decade’, which he glimpses through a window from the street. Yaméogo could be criticized for exploiting this media coverage of poverty and malnutrition without really engaging in this new theme, even though he juxtaposes the programme on poverty with a shot of a family eating their dinner like gluttons. The boy’s psychological development could justify such images but there is no follow-up. Would these black-and-white images aim to represent Africa as TV audiences are made to imagine it through the screen, as seen in Moi et mon blanc? Should such images serve as counterpoint to a critique of film representations of ‘less-fortunate-than-we-are’ Africa, which is a foreign approach to the protagonists’ experience in this story? Whatever the film-maker’s intentions may have been, they would gain in being made more explicit. Even though Wendemi deals with themes that were commonly broached in films from Mali or Burkina Faso in the preceding decade, such as Yeelen by Souleymane Cissé (1987), Yaaba/ Grandmother (1989) by Idrissa Ouédraogo, Wend Kuuni/God’s Gift by Gaston Kaboré (1982), Yaméogo managed to give a sharp edge to this story of an orphan in search of his origins. His quest narrative is led from the standpoint of religion without being delivered as a thesis. At the end of the film, the Koudougou villagers join in Wendemi’s quest for the truth when they march in a united front towards Father George’s church. The silent ending stands as an accusation and favours an unambiguous albeit restrained tone. This review was adapted from French by Blandine Stefanson.

Marie-Magdeleine Chirol

148 Reviews

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Aristotle’s Plot Le Complot d’Aristote Countries of Origin:

Cameroon France Language:

English Studios:

JBA Production Framework International British Film Institute Director:

Jean-Pierre Bekolo Producer: 

Jacques Bidou Screenwriter:

Jean-Pierre Bekolo Cinematographer:

Régis Blondeau Art Director:

Carine Tregold Music:

Jean-Claude Petit Editor:

Aurélie Ricard Duration:

67 minutes Genres:

Fiction Satire Cast:

Albee Lesotho Ken Gampu Seputla Sebogohi Michael Heard Anthony Levendale Marco Machona Year:

1996

Synopsis Cinéaste, also known as Essomba Tourneur (ET) (Albee Lesotho), has come back from Europe to build a true African Cinema. The other man is Cinéma (Seputla Sebogohi), self-proclaimed because he has watched 10,000 films, most of them American action films, and considers himself an expert. He and his gang watch movies all day long at the Cinema L’Africaine, acting like thugs, and swearing like tough guys. Cinéaste realizes he will get nowhere with them occupying the theatre, so he forges some documents and gets a policeman (Ken Gampu), who has been put on assignment to find out why a person who is dying in one film can reappear alive in another film, to evict them from the theatre by force. Cinéma and his gang return with guns, killing the projectionist and the one lone audience member, an African American returning to his heritage (Michael Heard). The gang runs off to the countryside to build an open-air cinema called ‘New Africa’. Cinéaste wants revenge and styles himself like an action star. A fight ensues, and everyone is killed. Yet, the narrator does not like this, so he re-starts the story. Cinéma and his gang fight Cinéaste in kung-fu style until the policeman arrives to arrest them and lets them off, as long they sign his report that people are not dying. Another fight happens, where everyone dies, but again, they come back to life.

Critique In 1996, after Jean-Pierre Bekolo’s Quartier Mozart was awarded the Prix Afrique en Création at the 1992 Cannes Film Festival, the British Film Institute offered him a budget to make a film that would be a contemplation on the cinematic history of his country. Yet, instead of making a documentary like Martin Scorcese or Stephen Frears, Bekolo turned out a postmodern cinematic allegory, a metadiscourse on the meaning of film in Africa today. It challenged globalization, Americanism, Hollywood and popular culture, yet embraced it without being consumed by it. Most critics align Bekolo less with an African film-maker like Ousmane Sembène than with directors who are closer to the European tradition of Jean-Luc Godard. Like Sembène, however, Bekolo is constantly thinking about his identity as an African. He operates in satire. He does not simply critique American popular culture, but he acknowledges the influence it holds over his country. Yet, instead of abandoning Hollywood’s techniques, Bekolo embraces them in order to critique commercial film and popular culture. Characters swear like gangsters and talk about films as if they are real life. They have names like Bruce Lee or Schwarzenegger (played by Anthony Levendale and Marco Machona). When they raid the theatre, Bekolo employs empty synth music like in a 1990s action film and the tight suspenseful close-up. The subplot of the policeman, a government fool, plays out like a film noir. Yet, this is also Bekolo’s struggle, a search for his own identity amidst conflicting impulses, desires and traditions. As a filmmaker in his position, he grapples with the conflicting desires and

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traditions of African cinema. He seems to criticize people who take film too seriously and are unable to enjoy it for the entertainment that it can be. He even turns the camera on himself, since Cinéaste, a film-maker who has returned from his schooling in Europe, resembles Bekolo. Other characters in the film call the character Silly Ass, and there is a degree of truth to it, but it is with this film that Bekolo’s confident mix of aesthetic populism, combined with his auteur staging, critiques Hollywood and at the same time subverts the opposition between tradition and modernity. In the end, while he admires the ‘traditional’ African film, he does not seem to feel it speaks for him, nor do the Hollywood action films that his young, contemporary, urban African characters consume. He is not interested in following the rules set by Aristotle in telling stories, with its linear conventions, causal linkages, mimetic realism and rising conflict but resists allowing himself to become trapped in the plots created and enforced by other filmmakers and systems. For him, we are not to observe reality, but to experience people’s interaction with the medium, as they are engaged and held captive by its power. By positioning himself between the audience and the screen, Bekolo keeps the spectator aware that she is watching a fiction and wondering in the end what it all means.

David Gane

150 Reviews

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Comedy 151

SOCIAL ISSUES

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Dôlé, Money/Dôlé, l'argent (Imunga Ivanga, Gabon/ France, 2001)

Social Realism or Social Issues? Such was my dilemma for the title of this chapter. Social realism, as a critical approach evokes the study of the class struggle in the nineteenthcentury European novel, with either the portrayal of aspirational commoners striving for elevation through social connections rather than education or work (Rastignac’s motto ‘A nous deux, Paris’ in Balzac) or the representation of the growing proletariat during industrialization (Dickens, Zola, Gorky, etc.). In the context of contemporary cinema, the concept of social realism is still in use, for example in the volume Britain of the Directory of World Cinema series, to show the need for inclusion of various categories of people who feel constrained to the margins of society – young working-class men in the 1960s, followed by ‘women, homosexuals and ethnic groups’ in the later decades (Leggot 2012: 167). Whether the expression applies to ambitious heroes of the European nineteenth-century novel or to rising groups represented by militants in contemporary cinema, ‘all struggling to find their place in a rigidly demarcated society’ (167), the need for inclusion is motivated by the belief that there does exist such a structured and enviable society. Can ‘social realism’ then apply to postcolonial Africa? It would be difficult to project the same desire for inclusion onto postcolonial nations that are still in the process of shaking off the colonial and neo-colonial exploitative systems. The unfinished transformation from colony to independent country heightens the usual longing for a comfortable place in a functional society. According to the many memorable films reviewed in this chapter, the onus is on African people to imagine a new order rather than to fit in an existing but unjust one. The phrase ‘social issues’ may sound like a clinical statement about the need to identify fundamental flaws in African countries and urgently find solutions – such as laws that are unlikely to be enforced – but as a title for this chapter, it is probably more suitable than ‘social realism’. As Donna-Lynne McGregor demonstrates below in her review of Sembène’s Faat Kiné (Senegal, 2001), individual dramas that often derive from economic hardship or stultifying customs are much larger than the characters themselves. The postcolonial narrative of the films presented in this chapter is less about succeeding in a consolidated society than about effecting change in order to create a new one, a huge task that the first ‘independent’ generation was unable to complete.

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Paradoxically, our selection of reviews for this chapter does not include any documentaries, yet all movies reviewed below were selected for their attempt to minimize the sort of social problems that one would expect to find tackled in documentaries, for example, migration, AIDS, women’s education and role in society as well as incentive for economic development. As Sheila Petty explains in her introduction to Chapter 2, documentaries that are competing at film festivals and eventually distributed often are highly personal and cinematically sophisticated, sometimes poetic and emotional, and have little in common with the short and practical documentaries that African governments sponsor specifically for hygiene observance or agricultural development. Souleymane Cissé and Cheick Oumar Sissoko claim they cannot count the number of documentaries they had to make for their government in Mali, for a living (Bamako, January 2007, personal communications). Considering the emotional impact African dramas have had on various audiences, for example, films about rape of women (Cissé’s Den Muso/ The Girl [1975]) or about female circumcision, such as Sissoko’s Finzan (Mali, 1990) and more recently Sembène’s Moolaadé (Senegal, 2004), African governments should perhaps encourage fiction rather than documentary if they wish to promote changes in concepts of femininity and attitudes to girls’ education and many other social issues. There are, however, at least two pitfalls in the ‘social issues’ genre for filmmakers. First, as MA Tazi (in Dwyer 2004a: 60) remarked, a socio-realist theme runs the risk of becoming outdated before the film is finished. This view may be optimistic. Social problems do not vanish that easily, in particular in Africa, although male apathy caused by unemployment, as displayed in Abderrahmane Sissako’s La Vie sur terre/Life on Earth (Mauritania/Mali, 1999), is considered a thing of the past in Mali, where the government has since then leased land to new farmers with a view to encouraging food self-sufficiency. Second, the social issues genre may be undermined by a somewhat moralistic tone. This tendency is perceivable in some of Sembène’s films, in particular Niaye (1964), in which the narrator’s voice-over that speaks on behalf of various villagers (in French) sounds stilted and unconvincing. Sembène is nevertheless revered for his socially committed films. Reviews of three of his dramas (two of which qualify as comedy-dramas) open this chapter as they have opened the way for many African film-makers. Sembène gives insights into the change needed for men and women’s relationships in Faat Kiné, for economic and political autonomy in Guelwaar (1992) and finally for the eradication of traditional female initiation (excision) in Moolaadé, his farewell masterpiece completed three years before his death in 2007. Artistic sublimation helps overcome the danger of dated information or didacticism, and the reviews below abound in film analysis of various artistic means used to advocate social change. Artistic film-style is particularly developed in the use of male chanting and a vivid colour scheme in Tableau-Ferraille (Moussa Sene Absa, Senegal, 1997), a film that bravely questions dubious practices in business, politics and even family life in Senegal, corruption being rarely broached in African cinema. Dôlé, l’argent/Dôlé, Money (Imunga Ivanga, Gabon, 2001) could have been placed in the chapter on children, but it raises the puzzle of the popularity of the national lottery theme in African films, as though governments were exposed for spreading delusion and hope in miraculous solutions among their citizens. In Dôlé, just as in Wariko/The First Prize (Fadika Kramo Lancine, Ivory Coast, 1993) and Le Franc/The Franc (Mambéty, Senegal, 1994), the only avenue on offer for escaping poverty is a windfall, a lottery prize – nothing that engages individuals to improve their lot. Dôlé’s subtlety is nevertheless relevant to the discussion of change because, although the children are not accorded any guidance in the narrative, the film

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points to the young characters’ ability to fend for themselves and take charge, thus suggesting the way out of social stagnation to adults on the screen and to their audiences. Sembène’s dramas about social change foreground the two strong threads of this chapter’s reviews, namely a redefinition of woman’s social identity and the irresistible pull of migration. In the bracket of film reviews dealing with female identity, the oldest film, Les Yeux bleus de Yonta/The Blue Eyes of Yonta (Gomes, Guinea–Bissau, 1991), may be the most radical one because of the blurring of gender barriers and a strong desire for change, perhaps due to the fact that all characters are survivors of war. Two films broach the more specific issue of a young woman raped by a supposedly trustworthy member of her family or society. The rapist is judged by society in Delwende, lève-toi et marche/Delwende, Stand up and Walk (Yaméogo, Burkina Faso, 2005), but the charge against the perpetrator remains rhetorical in Pourquoi?/Why? (Amar, Senegal, 2003). Does this short provide a fitting closure to the other four female emancipation narratives? The spectators will have to debate whether impunity for the abuser favours or aggravates the status and future life of the female victim. Indeed, let’s consider the case of another victim of fate: the young mother called Yesterday, in Darrell Roodt’s eponymous film (2004). After contracting AIDS from her husband, despised by everyone around, she soldiers on, caring for her sick husband and young daughter, projecting more bravery than distress. Besides the ephemeral solution of the lottery ticket mentioned earlier, another source of both utopia for the population and thematic inspiration for African film-makers, is the lure of migration. This topic points to problems that African migrants encounter outside Africa and as such could provide fodder for postcolonial recrimination. Jean-Marie Teno’s fiction, Clando (Cameroon, 1996) and Alain Gomis’s L’Afrance (Senegal, 2001), however, philosophically extend their critique of political incompetence and repression to the countries of origin as much as to the unwelcoming ones. Bouchareb’s Little Senegal (produced by France but set in the United States, 2001) and Matabane’s Conversations on a Sunday Afternoon (South Africa, 2005), which both uncover racism though they are not set in Europe, also undo the delusion of emigration. It is a brave and perhaps ironic move on the part of several directors who are based in Europe to suggest that life in exile is not the ideal solution for Africans to escape hardship. Far from incurring the stigma of sociological categorization, the social issues films reviewed in this chapter exude vibrancy, confidence and optimism because of the call for and trust in the characters’ empowerment after times of distress. In fact, several films in the selection below (among others Moolaadé, Tableau Ferraille, Yesterday, Little Senegal) have reached world audiences through film festivals, television channels and DVD distribution, which proves that artistry enables African directors to transcend the local social problems of their respective countries.

Blandine Stefanson

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Faat Kiné Country of Origin:

Senegal Languages:

French Wolof Studio:

Filmi Domireew Director:

Ousmane Sembène Producer:

Wongue Mbengue Screenwriter:

Ousmane Sembène Cinematographer:

Dominique Gentil Art Director:

Synopsis Faat Kiné (Venus Seye) is an unmarried woman with a daughter, Aby and son, Djip (Mariame Balde and Ndiagne Dia). A successful and sometimes ruthless businesswoman, Kiné owns a petrol station and has achieved wealth and comfort for herself and her family. When Aby and Djip successfully pass their baccalaureates, they declare their desire to go abroad to continue their studies. Proud of their achievements, Faat Kiné decides to arrange a celebration for them. The event, however, reopens old wounds for Kiné as the children’s absentee fathers reappear in her life, desiring to reconnect with the children. Aby’s father, Gaye, visits the petrol station to pass on his congratulations, causing Kiné to relive how Gaye, as one of her high school teachers, seduced her and abandoned her after she became pregnant. She encounters Djip’s father, Boubacar, on the street. Now a broken man, Kiné recalls how he swindled her after gaining her trust. Both these incidents have shaped the cynicism she feels towards men and society but have also contributed to her fierce sense of independence. Her faith is restored in the end by Djip, who demonstrates how her struggles have succeeded in making him a leader of the next generation.

Moustapha Ndiaye Editor:

Kahena Attia Riveil Music:

Yandé Codou Sène Duration:

121 minutes Genres:

Comedy-drama Cast:

Venus Seye Mariame Balde Ndiagne Dia Mame Ndumba Diop Awa Sene Sarr Tabara Ndiaye Year:

2001

156 Reviews

Critique With artistic roots set firmly at the beginning of indigenous subSaharan African film-making in the 1960s, and extending into the twenty-first century, Sembène’s filmic vision has been crucial to the development of an innovative style of African cinematic grammar and narrative structure. Moreover, as an activist and ardent supporter of the right of Africans to shape their own destinies, Sembène’s works continued to transform over time in response to shifting sociopolitical landscapes and thus remain instrumental in changing the way global audiences view African cultures and peoples. Significantly, when discussions of women’s issues in sub-Saharan African cinema occur, Sembène’s works are often counted as significant contributions to the debate, alongside the works of key women African film-makers. This is due in part to the fact that, from his earliest films, Sembène envisioned a prominent role for women in Africa at a time when women’s voices were eclipsed by cultural and colonial oppression. From this perspective, he stands shoulder to shoulder with such women pioneers in sub-Saharan African filmmaking as Safi Faye and Sarah Maldoror, sharing many of the same concerns and a drive to foreground African women as active agents in the development of their cultures and nations. Faat Kiné is an interesting film because it simultaneously preserves and extends aesthetic and ideological roots first established by Sembène in his earlier works, creating a bridge between African realist and postcolonial cinematic traditions. For example, the combination of medium shots and emotive camera angles is reminiscent of the early aesthetics found in La Noire de.../Black Girl (1966). In Faat

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Faat Kiné

Kiné, although Sembène provides the spectator with ideological distance from the characters, he also encourages a limited suture with their emotions. By using this type of blended approach, Sembène moves beyond a purely didactic cinematic language to a more emotional framework which still encourages an active audience (distance) but also invites them to consider the emotional cost (emotive angles) of narrative exchanges between characters. Sembène thus joins other film-makers such as Moussa Sene Absa, Maria João Ganga, Imunga Ivanga, Jean-Pierre Bekolo and others in claiming new modes of self-expression that both reflect and challenge new postcolonial imperatives. Faat Kiné is notable in terms of women’s representation because Kiné represents a mode of resistance from the perspective of a woman operating outside African cultural norms. As a construct, Kiné is the ultimate postcolonial materialist: the owner of a petrol station, an unorthodox occupation for an African woman, Kiné is able to provide a comfortable life for her mother and children. Symbolic of globalized influences operating in Senegal, there is ambivalence attached to Kiné as a character: if the spectator is to admire Kiné’s success as an African woman left to fend for herself and her children, s/he is also meant to wonder what price Kiné has paid for her progress. For example, Kiné’s petrol station subtly references globalized business interests, and Kiné, as an

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African subject, is profoundly connected to transnational flows of economics. She is thus far from independent as she is only a middleman subject to be controlled by a business hierarchy that lies rooted beyond her nation and her control. Kiné’s past is shaped by three betrayals executed by the men in her life. First, her daughter Aby is the product of an affair between Kiné and Gaye, her high school teacher, who failed to take responsibility for the child. Second, Kiné’s father, instead of sheltering her and the child, brutalizes her and casts her out. Third, Boubacar, the father of her son, Djip, meets Kiné after she has success in business, and then swindles her out of money, leaving her alone and pregnant. The cynicism generated by these betrayals implies that although Kiné has prospered materially, she has done so at the cost of compassion and forgiveness. It is thus possible to see Kiné as a quintessential Senegalese subject and the actions of the men, including abandonment, brutality and corruption, as the failure of Senegal’s leadership to carry out the promise of independence. This is addressed at the end of the film when her son, Djip, challenges Gaye and Boubacar over their abandonment of Kiné. Told to kneel and ask for forgiveness for his rudeness, Djip refuses and instead indicts the hypocrisy of Gaye and Boubacar by telling them they are ‘the images of our independence. Talk the talk, and walk the walk! Our founding fathers proved […] incapable of giving birth to a new Africa’. The statement clearly lays the blame of the failure of liberation to redress basic inequities on the failure of the past generation to create effective change. Moreover, the scene implies that if Kiné is an imperfect heroine, she is only what she has had to become in order to negotiate a society of hypocritical and corrupt men, just as her struggles have made her son into the leader of the next generation. Viewed from this perspective, Kiné’s excesses exemplify the transitional period Africa is going through and Sembène leaves open the possibility that the Africa envisioned at liberation may yet emerge in the future.

Donna-Lynne McGregor

Guelwaar Country of Origin:

Senegal Languages:

Wolof French Studio:

Filmi Domireew Channel IV France 3 Cinéma

158 Reviews

Synopsis Pierre Henri Thioune – aka ‘Guelwaar’ (the nobleman in Wolof) – a Catholic in the predominantly Senegalese Muslim society – has died recently. When his relatives go to the mortuary to retrieve the body for burial, there is a mix-up and they are given the body of another deceased, a Muslim. Conversely, the Muslim family mistakenly gets Guelwaar’s body and swiftly buries it following Muslim burial rites in the Muslim cemetery without verifying the identity of the deceased. Guelwaar’s family decides to exhume the body and transfer it to the Christian cemetery and thus give their departed loved one a proper burial, along the tenets of Catholic burial rites.

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Director:

Ousmane Sembène Producers:

Jacques Perrin Screenwriter:

Ousmane Sembène Cinematographer:

Dominique Gentil

Underneath this apparent simple plot embedded in a religious clash, Sembène treats deeper issues, in particular the impoverishment of an African country due to the legacy of richer northern nations’ foreign aid. This aid destroys the economy of the country by creating dependency and loss of self-respect and it encourages corruption among the elites. Guelwaar also reveals itself as a tool for social commentary which gives the viewer a deeper insight into some of the sociological layers and religious beliefs that underlie Senegalese contemporary society.

Guelwaar

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Music:

Baba Maal Editor:

Marie-Aimée Debril Duration:

115 minutes Genres:

Comedy Drama Cast:

Thierno Ndiaye Doss Abou Camara Marie Augustine Diatta Mame Ndoumbé Diop Omar Seck Ndiawar Diop Moustapha Diop Myriam Niang Joseph Sané Samba Wane Year:

1992

160 Reviews

Critique Guelwaar won the President of the Italian Senate’s Gold Medal at the 49th Venice International Film Festival. It is one of Ousmane Sembène’s most ideologically oriented films. The director uses the film as a platform to comment on current Senegalese, African and world events, including globalization. Through the character of Nogoye Marie Thioune (Mame Ndoumbé Diop), the director makes use of judicious cinematographic editing techniques such as flashbacks. Guelwaar’s majestic wife, through many sequences of recollections and souvenirs, turns into a modern storyteller who recounts her husband’s life. Thus, Sembène blends words and images and simultaneously alternates past and present, life and death, passivity and reactivity. All in all, in Guelwaar, we have the usual committed Sembène who believes in social action in order to effect change (Pfaff 1984: 50). According to Guelwaar (Thierno Ndiaye Doss), change will only occur the day his people cease extending their hands as beggars so that they may regain dignity and self-respect. Sembène dissects North–South relations, in addition to questioning International World Order. The latter is dominated by the rich countries of the North who use institutional tools in order to maintain their domination over the countries of the South. The question of identity is pointedly addressed through the character of Barthélémy (Ndiawar Diop), Guelwaar’s son who resides in France and has become a French citizen. Better yet, Barthélémy, who refuses to use the national languages and speaks only French, is the prototype of the alienated African. Thus, Barthélémy’s clashes with Gora the gendarme (Omar Seck) are legendary as the latter violently accuses the migrant of having lost his African personality and ethnic culture. However, the problem is more complex than that for Sembène, who, like many African writers, intellectuals and artists, faces the dilemma of the language question: French or Wolof (Tine 1985: 46). It might be more accurate to state ‘French and Wolof’ for the language of the former colonial master is now an integral part of the cultural and linguistic landscape in many parts of the African continent. In so called francophone Africa, French has been thoroughly deterritorialized, in addition to being Africanized, so that it has acquired a distinct flavour, markedly different from the one spoken back in France, its original home. However, the French spoken in Africa is understood by all. It is important to briefly dwell on the character of Imam Biram (Abou Camara) as he serves as a buffer between the two conflicting sides. He succeeds in exhuming Guelwaar’s body and returns it to his relatives. Most importantly, he asks the question: what is happening to us? Self-questioning is the first step toward selfawareness. Through the Muslim–Catholic conflict, the message that Sembène wants to put across is that this conflict is a faux-débat, an illusion, a decoy created by the elite in order to pit the members of the poor lower classes against each other so much so that they cannot pay attention to the corrupt practices of that elite. The central character of the film, Pierre Henri Thioune Guelwaar, is a symbol of resistance, a concept that is dear to Sembène. In

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effect, Thioune’s death is mysterious and is perhaps, the result of his refusal and rejection of the charity aid coming from abroad and being distributed to the community. Even after his death, Guelwaar is still a trouble-maker, a fact that emphasizes other values dear to Sembène, namely honesty, integrity and a good name for posterity. In that sense, a person who lacks these values experiences a double death – physical and spiritual. Guelwaar (Thioune) may be physically dead but he is still alive in the people’s minds and hearts. In Guelwaar, the mood is heavy, which is understandable because of the sadness caused by the death of Guelwaar. However, Sembène inserts shreds of humour in order to lighten the mood, in particular at the expense of French obsessed Barthélémy. Guelwaar is presented as the ideal type of the New African, the one who is righteous, ethical, honest, hard-working, proud, who stands up for justice and fairness. However, Sembène inserts in the character a human dimension, i.e. the fallible one, otherwise Guelwaar would be perfect. Guelwaar has flaws: he bullied his wife and was unfaithful to her. In addition, he was ready to side with his daughter Sophie (Marie Augustine Diatta) who chose to become a prostitute, a solution that is more acceptable to him (and to Sembène) than foreign handouts. The film Guelwaar is a political critique of the unjust social and economic order which prevails in the postcolonial world and the wider world. It ends, however, with the paraphrasing of Shakespeare’s play All’s Well that Ends Well. The body of the dead Guelwaar has been returned to his rightful relatives and properly re-buried thanks to the Imam, the gendarme, the Priest and Gor Mag, the Catholic elder. Peace now prevails. Finally, Barthélémy has changed and has even promised Gora the gendarme that he will try to be more proud of his African identity and be more aware of his native cultural environment.

Samba Diop

Moolaadé Countries of Origin:

Senegal Burkina Faso France Languages:

Bambara Diola (Jula) Fulani French Studio:

Filmi Domireew

Synopsis In a present-day village in an unnamed African state, the arrival of a travelling pedlar known as ‘Mercenaire’ (Dominique T Zeida) coincides with the escape from the village of six young girls fleeing a female genital mutilation ceremony. Four of the group seek sanctuary at the home of Colle Ardo (Fatoumata Coulibaly), second wife of Ciré Bathily (Rasmané Ouédraogo). Colle opposes the practice, having refused to have her daughter Amsatou cut, and places the string representing moolaadé (place of sanctuary or protection) across her threshold. This move gains her the support of Ciré’s first wife Hadjatou (Maïmouna Hélène Diarra) and a number of other women in the village. The village elders decree that the women’s radios are to be confiscated and later burned. Colle Ardo is pressured by her husband to remove the moolaadé but refuses to do so. Social Issues 161

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Moolaadé

Centre Cinématographique Marocain Les Films Terre Africaine Director:

Ousmane Sembène Producer:

Bertrand Michel Kaboré Ousmane Sembène Thierry Lenouvel Screenwriter:

Ousmane Sembène

162 Reviews

Ibrahima, Amsatou’s fiancé and son of the village chief, returns from France, prompting the chief’s refusal to sanction his son’s wedding to an uncut woman. The bodies of the two missing girls are found at the bottom of the village well. Ciré publically whips Colle Ardo to force her to end the moolaadé but again she refuses after Mercenaire’s intervention. Under cover of this commotion, one of the girls sheltered at Colle Ardo’s house is enticed away by her mother and given to the red-cloaked excisors, the Salindana. After the incision ceremony she bleeds to death. Mercenaire flees the village but is pursued by angry villagers. As the women gather to grieve, the sight of the burning radios lifts them to confront their opponents, both male and female. They compel the Salindana to throw away their knives and end the cutting of girls.

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Cinematographer:

Dominique Gentil Art Director:

Joseph Kpolby Music:

Boncana Maïga Editor:

Abdellatif Raiss Duration:

124 minutes Genre:

Drama Cast:

Fatoumata Coulibaly Maïmouna Hélène Diarra Salimata Traoré Dominique T Zeida Rasmané Ouédraogo Moussa Théophile Sowié Year:

2004

Critique In many ways, Moolaadé synthesizes several of the key themes explored in Sembène’s work. The radicalization of the village women, the main strand within the film’s narrative, had been addressed previously in Emitaï (1971) and Faat Kiné (2001). In Moolaadé the postcolonial African experience is represented as an accretion of competing influences rather than a linear progression. The resultant society is shown as complex and multifaceted in its make-up, tribal tradition having been re-shaped by Islam, which in turn has been transformed by colonial and postcolonial influences. The contemporary African experience becomes the site of conflict between cultures, technologies and attitudes. The main narrative theme within Moolaadé is the rebellion of one woman, Colle Ardo, against the conventions of her society and the tensions this sets up within the social groupings of the village (her family, the village elders, the women themselves). Thus the role of women in a fundamentally patriarchal society is brought centre stage by Sembène. In Moolaadé Colle Ardo’s resistance derives more from past experience than any sudden epiphany. Her daughter Amsatou (Salimata Traoré) is ostracized for being uncut but is to become the touchstone for future change as the narrative ends. Amsatou links the village to the outside world, the past to the present: her history contextualizes the moolaadé and provides motivation for her mother’s passionate espousal of it. Sembène is too aware to make the film a simplistic call to arms for ‘all women’ but is quick to show that institutions, their agents and intractable attitudes are far more of a problem than simply gender relations within a patriarchal society. The gender politics of the film are also strident and vigorous. Following a ‘God’s eye view’ of the village, the camera focuses on the lives of the women, signposting that their travails will be the film’s main theme. They supplicate in front of significant male family members and in front of the village elders. Physical space is used and perceived in gender-specific terms. The well is a prime meeting place for women – it is part of their social space. When the runaway girls are found to have thrown themselves into the well, we see it being filled in by the men: this space is masculinized as a punishment for transgression. The return from France of Ibrahima (Moussa Théophile Sowié), the prodigal son of the village leader, initially provides a cause for superficial unity and celebration within the village. This facade rapidly crumbles as Ibrahima comes face-to-face with the forces of intransigence in his desire to marry the uncut Amsatou. Ibrahima’s television set is a symbol of modernity and new ways, signalling his desire that the village should end its isolation from the outside world. His ignorance of tradition (he knows nothing of the tribal leader’s grave and what it signifies) positions him on the periphery of the ruling male society but also on the edge of the female one, making him an ambiguous figure within the narrative. The notion of conflict between embedded, traditional attitudes and the new, the different and the Other is also deftly handled within the narrative. The film opens with the arrival of Mercenaire,

Social Issues 163

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an outsider whose rabble-rousing history sets him at odds with the village elders. He is used by the village as a focal point for gossip, his presence a catalyst through which barriers of class, language and gender are negated. His intervention in Colle Ardo’s beating leads to his destruction: he has transgressed too far; his usefulness to the village is now outweighed by his nuisance value. Sembène shows his audience that individual defiance is not sufficient: only mass action will make a real difference. The role of religion and its imposition on pre-existing tribal traditions is a key source of dramatic tension. The mosque is the main physical structure that dominates village life, an edifice towering above the other buildings. Whereas the women use their radios as a source of communal entertainment, the men only use them to listen to Koranic readings: religion is depicted as joyless, suffocating and the preserve of men. The radios provide an ironic third structure after they are confiscated and set ablaze, severing links to and communication with the outside world. The smoke obscures our vision at the same time as a strangled scream seems to leap from the soundtrack, though whether this is from the women or the radios is unclear. The motif of the vanquishing flame runs throughout the film, from the early reference to ‘the fire Colle has started’ to the nightmare visions of masked figures to the torches of Mercenaire’s pursuers. The very space of the village itself seems to collapse inwards at the film’s end. In a quick succession of brief shots the camera follows a village elder carrying a confiscated radio past Mercenaire’s stall, then the mosque, the anthill and onto the pyre of radios. As the men assemble to watch the radios burn – and further assert their authority – the centre of the village becomes a stage for the confrontation with the women. The space becomes a sight of feminine resistance, in a reversal of the men usurping the women’s space of the well. Moolaadé’s final images are of smoke rising up to obscure the mosque, the ancient ostrich egg on top of the mosque juxtaposed with the television and its promise of superficial modernity and an end to isolation. At the close of a narrative steeped in the idea of the necessary pain of change, we are reminded of Gramsci’s assertion (1971: 275–76) that ‘the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear’.

Jonathan Mitchell

164 Reviews

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Tableau Ferraille Countries of Origin:

Senegal France Languages:

Wolof French, with English subtitles Studio:

ADR Productions La Sept Cinéma MSA Productions Kus Productions Canal Productions Director:

Moussa Sene Absa Producers:

Jacques Debs Alain Rozanès Pascal Verroust Screenwriter:

Synopsis Daam (Ismaël Lô) is recently back in his native Tableau Ferraille, on the outskirts of Dakar. A young professional, he nurtures lofty ideals of service to his community. He stands for election at the legislative assembly and wins. His friends, neighbours and relatives revel at his success but already the joy felt by all crackles with conflicting undertones. For the people of Tableau Ferraille, the event is momentous. A son of theirs has acceded to the avenues of power. Daam, on the other hand, keeps repeating that he is only one MP, subject to rules and regulations, and therefore yielding very little power. In the meantime, Daam meets Gagnesiri (Ndèye Fatou Ndaw). It is love at first sight and the couple quickly marry. A few months later, Tableau Ferraille is abuzz with rumours: Gagnesiri cannot bear a child. Other women see themselves as potential second wives and genitors for Daam. Gagnesiri agrees that Daam should remarry in order to have children, as long as this will allow them to stay together and be happy. A first child is born of this arrangement, then a second, but increasingly the second wife (Kiné, played by Ndèye Binta Diop) demands the luxurious life of a government minister’s spouse. As Daam is reluctant to fill his pockets like all his colleagues, Kiné steals the confidential files of a competitive bid and sells them to the least able competitor. The deed becomes public. Daam is sacked from the government and starts a dramatic descent into hell.

Moussa Sene Absa Tableau Ferraille

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Cinematographer:

Bertrand Chatry Art Director:

Fatou Kandé Music:

Moussa Sene Absa Ismaël Lô Madu Diabaté Editor:

Pascale Chavance Duration:

93 minutes Genres:

Comedy-drama Cast:

Moussa Sene Absa Ismaël Lô Ndèye Fatou Ndaw Ndèye Binta Diop Thierno Ndiaye Doss Amadou Diop Ahmed Attia Year:

1997

166 Reviews

Critique Tableau Ferraille, like Mambéty’s Colobane or Sembène’s Medina is an allegorical place. The expression refers to the name of a bus stop adopted as the name of a community of fishermen, of mostly unemployed men and women, of adolescent males and females forced to sell their bodies to survive. As in Mambéty’s Hyènes/ Hyenas (1992) or Sembène’s Mandabi (1968), there are no schools, no hospitals, no art or community centres. Women, whose burden it is to take care of the children, regroup in solidarity associations. They each contribute regularly to a fund which helps defray the costs in case of death or birth or even a wedding in the family. What sets Tableau Ferraille apart from the films we have mentioned earlier is that Moussa Sene Absa features a representative of local power in the character of Daam. And in so doing, he scathingly unveils the workings of political power at the local level. Not only are corruption and coercion rampant but also seem to be the only means to preserve power and influence. Power, in this context, is the ability to flaunt and ignore the very foundations of modern societies: laws and regulations. As Daam is impervious to such reality, his downfall becomes inevitable. Once elected, this MP sets out to work. Unlike the people around him, he rejects the concept of politics as a ‘get rich quick’ scheme. When he wants to apply rules and regulations about granting contracts, the local businessmen, led by ‘President’ (Thierno Ndiaye Doss), bribe not only the commission that attributes the contract, but also his own wife. At home, Kiné (the second wife) complains that it is ‘foolish’ not to stash his own pockets like all of his colleagues; that outside the home, his friends look up to him for positions and benefits for which they have no qualifications. At the same time, the factory he has helped set up sacks workers who dare organize a trade union. In the end, he is resented as an enemy from within because of his insistence on following rules and regulations in a context in which survival is an everyday emergency. Overnight, he loses ‘wives, villas, cars and money’ (femmes, villas, voitures, argent) to borrow Moustapha Alassane’s film title of 1972. At the close of the film, he is sleeping on the benches of the Dakar cemetery, perhaps his penultimate abode. Thus, Tableau Ferraille is an indictment not so much of the workings of power in the postcolony but of the society itself. Tragedies, the film suggests, will strike ‘men of the people’ as long as rules of devolution of power have not been clearly defined and adhered to. Tableau Ferraille, like Hyenas’s Colobane, is a pretence of democracy. Immediate need tramples every single procedure. Yet, damning as it is, this critique is set in the most vivid colours accompanied by the most exquisite sounds. Tableau Ferraille is a beautiful and melodious film. It features the art of a maturing filmmaker who, early in his career (Ça Twiste à Popenguine/ Rocking Popenguine [1994]), wrapped his scenarios in urban musical cultures. Here, he sets out what will become his musical landmark: the use of the distinctive religious melodies of the Murid sects of the city of Touba. These songs worship not only saints such as Cheikh Ahmadou Bamba or Cheikh Ibra Fall, but also everyday life

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experiences of common men and women. As well, Tableau Ferraille ushers in a few visual items constitutive of the style of Moussa Sene Absa. Being an accomplished glass painter, it seems all his films are built around a colour. Yellow decks most of the images of his 2002 Madame Brouette; here, all the scenes of the film bathe in the colours orange and blue. The contrast provided by the black skin colour of the characters, the white paint of the buildings, the blue sea and sky create a warm to vivid atmosphere which, combined with the familiar Murid melodies and the swift narrative style, help bring the viewers into the action.

Sada Niang

Dôlé, Money Dôlé, l’argent Countries of Origin:

Gabon France Languages:

French, with English subtitles Studio:

Direct & Différé (Paris) Ce.Na.Ci Centre National du Cinéma (Libreville) Director:

Imunga Ivanga Producer: 

Jean-Jacques Hubert Charles Mensah Screenwriter:

Synopsis Mougler (David Nguema Nkoghe) is a teenager living in poverty in Libreville, Gabon. Exposed to media images that reflect wealth and power, Mougler and his gang of friends – Baby Lee, Joker and Akson (Emile Mepango Matala, Roland Nkeyi and Evrard Ella Okoue) – desire nothing more than to escape their harsh environment through success in French hip hop. Mougler, however, must care for Maradou, his seriously ill mother, without any support from his absentee father. Mougler and his friends embark on a series of petty crimes in order to make money. They steal tires from a car, shoplift from a store and steal car batteries from a garage station, slowly transforming from petty juvenile thieves to fullyfledged criminals. Mougler’s daydreams are fuelled by the Dôlé, the state run lottery which promises the good life based on a single winning ticket. When Maradou is hospitalized, and the doctor informs Mougler that he must pay for the life-saving drugs his mother requires, Mougler gives up buying tickets for a more direct approach. Realizing that the kiosk’s security guard leaves at a regular time to purchase his lunch, Mougler talks his friends into robbing the Dôlé kiosk with violent results.

Imunga Ivanga Cinematographer:

Dominique Fausset Art Director:

Didier Mboutsoux Music:

Emile Mepango François Ngwa Editors:

Patricia Ardouin-Repper Hermane Corrado Duration:

80 minutes

Critique Dôlé is a film that focuses on how poverty in postcolonial Africa drives potentially upstanding citizens into criminal activity for survival. Like other films dealing with the same topic (L’Extraordinaire destin de Madame Brouette/Madame Brouette [Moussa Sene Absa, 2002, Senegal/Canada], Faat Kiné [Ousmane Sembène, 2001, Senegal] and Na Cidade Vazla/The Hollow City [Maria João Ganga, 2004, Angola]), Dôlé explores the urban environment of Libreville as a site of cultural disjunction and globalization. An ex-slave trading centre on the Gabon estuary and an important transportation hub to this day, Libreville is intended to act as a metaphor and reflect the striated social conditions typical of postcolonial Africa. The film does not focus on corruption Social Issues 167

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Dôlé, Money

Genre:

Drama Cast:

David Nguema Nkoghe Emile Mepango Matala Roland Nkeyi Evrard Ella Okoue Anouchka Mabamba Mboumba Year:

2001

168 Reviews

or geopolitics in an overt fashion, something that Dôlè has been criticized for. Instead, it examines the breakdown of Gabonese society through the character of Mougler. Initially, it is possible to think of Mougler as just another disaffected juvenile delinquent who is into hip hop and petty theft. After getting his cut from the theft of tires from a car, however, Mougler is shown buying rice for his mother and paying off his mother’s debt at the store, two acts that demonstrate he is his family’s sole support. One of the fascinating elements of Dôlé is the way in which the film integrates Mougler’s African reality in a larger, globalized context. Like many post-1990 sub-Saharan African films, Dôlé negotiates spaces between the failure of independence to deliver on its promises and the need to situate Africa as a force in the process of globalization. More importantly, the hybrid nature of Mougler’s psychological space, with African realities on one side and dreams of westernized wealth and power on the other, becomes a metaphor for the globalization of African cultures. Thus, in Dôlé, the physical space of Libreville becomes synonymous with postcolonial critique and globalism. For example, in the opening scene, Mougler and his friends Baby Lee, Akson and Joker rehearse

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a French hip hop number on a rooftop overlooking Libreville. The editing of this sequence, which draws on music video aesthetics, creates, for a few seconds of screen time, an undifferentiated transnational space that could emanate from Africa or anywhere in the black diaspora. It is only when the film cuts to a long panoramic view of the rooftop and of Libreville’s cityscape that an African context simultaneously connects the cityscape to the transnational urban space created by the flow of hip hop cultures across America, France and Africa. Moreover, the roof is heavily tagged with graffiti, including depictions of the boys’ names, indicating that this is a space carved out from the metropolitan landscape for their own personal purposes. Taken as a whole, the sequence ideologically aligns the boys with the histories of poverty, disjunction and alienation that are so often expressed in hip hop cultures regardless of nation. Discourse centred on Mougler’s education also embodies a postcolonial critique: based on the French educational system, it seems completely removed from the practical travails of Mougler’s daily life. Even the architecture of the school with its battered colonial facade within a gated space seems distant from Mougler’s realities. In one ironic flourish, Mougler is suspended after fighting with another male student over Cauri (Anouchka Mboumba)’s affections. As he leaves, the teacher tells the rest of the class that they will now discuss the mating rituals of birds. The absurdity of such a pursuit in light of Mougler’s other, more pressing problems, illustrates how colonial legacies continue to conflict with African imperatives. Another interesting aspect of the film is the fact that Dôlé’s antagonist is not an individual or an institution. Instead, the protagonist is social and he is represented by the postcolonial forces at work in Libreville’s metropolitan context. An example of this is the role played by the Dôlé, the state lottery in the film’s narrative. It becomes ubiquitous to Mougler’s environment. It is present in the European section of Libreville where Mougler goes to look at material things he cannot afford to possess. It becomes a power in his neighbourhood where the local kiosk sells a winning ticket to a neighbourhood man, making him a celebrity overnight. It becomes the symbol of the desperation of Mougler and his friends as they buy tickets and dream of sudden release from poverty. As a result, the Dôlé becomes representative of a harsh postcolonial reality where the illusion of independence for all has become independence for only the chosen few.

Sheila Petty

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The Blue Eyes of Yonta Les Yeux bleus de Yonta Country of Origin:

Guinea–Bissau Language:

Criolo Studios:

Vermedia Arco-Íris Eurocreation Production Rádiotelevisão Portugesa Director:

Flora Gomes Producer:

Paulo de Sousa Screenwriters:

Flora Gomes Ina Césaire David Lang Manuel Rambout Barcelos Cinematographer:

Dominique Gentil Art Director:

Miguel Mendes Music:

Adriano G Ferreira-Atchutchi Editor:

Dominique Pâris Duration:

90 minutes Genres:

Fiction Drama Cast:

Bia Gomes Henrique Silva Maysa Marta Pedro Dias Antònio Simão Mendes Mohamed Lamine Seidi Year:

1991 170 Reviews

Synopsis Flora Gomes’s first fiction film Mortu Nega (1988) – the first fiction film made in Guinea–Bissau – depicts the birth of Guinea–Bissau as an independent nation after a long War of Liberation against Portuguese colonial forces. The heroine, Diminga, is a strong and determined woman searching for her husband, a guerrilla fighter during the twelve-year war. His second film, The Blue Eyes of Yonta (which will subsequently be referred to as Blue Eyes) was made in 1991, and its narrative can be considered a loose continuation of Mortu Nega. Ambrus (Henrique Silva), a carpenter, and his wife Belante (Bia Gomes, who played Diminga in Mortu Nega) live a comfortable and content life with their daughter Yonta (Maysa Marta), and young son Amilcar (Mohamed Lamine Seidi). Belante is a telephone operator whilst her daughter works as a sales assistant, thus not only making themselves financially independent, but also economically productive agents in the development of their society. While Yonta’s unrequited love for Vicente (Antònio Simão Mendes), and Zé (Pedro Dias)’s love for Yonta provide the main threads to the plot, Blue Eyes is an exploration of the day-to-day life of a close-knit family’s relationships with their friends, as well as their hopes and aspirations in contemporary society.

Critique Blue Eyes is a complex and rich assessment of post-independent Guinea–Bissau, its development and its people’s search for identity. Populism and nationalism initially created a sense of possibility, but these ideals are shown in the film to have been thwarted by the harsh postcolonial reality. Although Blue Eyes is primarily concerned with broken ideals for an equitable and prosperous society, this critique focuses on Gomes’s progressive conceptualization of gender and female identity, one which elides the traditional binary opposition between men and women, constructing women as independent and full members of society, occupying both the domestic and public spheres. Throughout Blue Eyes, those we see walking or running through the city’s streets are mostly women and children. The recurrent use of long shots creates a sense of their appropriation of the public space through distance being covered. The epitome of this appropriation is probably the scene where Belante’s friend Santa has rearranged her furniture in front of her house after her eviction from it, recreating a living-room in open space. In contrast, Ambrus does not engage with the world outside of the domestic sphere. He works from his compound, and at no point do we see him outside of it. When Belante suggests he accompany Yonta and their comrade-inarms and friend Vicente to a nightclub, he declines, stating that he has all he needs at home. Thus, Gomes presents the viewer with the unusual situation of a husband in the adopted reversed role of solely inhabiting the domestic sphere, albeit making a living within it. The questioning of gender roles is further explored in the character of Amilcar (the namesake of revolutionary leader Amilcar

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The Blue Eyes of Yonta

Cabral, of course), the streetwise and resourceful young son, when he resolves to cook for his family as a surprise. Though Belante is not pleased at the failed attempt, Ambrus is shown to be complicit with his son, defending his gesture. Again, the male assumes with ease a role traditionally fulfilled by a woman. Amilcar’s unselfconscious act can be construed as a replica of his parents’ own dynamics of their participation in family life. Both Amilcar and Yonta represent the generation born after independence, but Yonta does not share her brother’s keen sense of their country’s history. A spirited and fashionable young woman, she is both candid and confident. Yonta unashamedly embraces a materialistic life of consumerism, mistaking its nature and function for her personal choice made possible through the previous generation’s fight for freedom. Yonta’s character deeply disrupts the dynamics of the narrative and problematizes the future of Guinea– Bissau. It revisits the theme of the centrality of money, this time with a character uninterested in capitalism’s mechanisms because she is unaware of its adverse effects. This may be a subtle indicator from Gomes that the formation of (a middle) class oblivious of its historical past can cause further social dislocation. The elegy of the beauty of ‘blue’ eyes in the Swedish poem copied by Zé for Yonta, reminds us of the damaging abandonment of local notions of beauty for the consumption of inappropriate imported perceptions.

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Blue Eyes takes a feminist stance in its rejection of an essentialist approach to gender and in its examination of gender differentiation. Women, young and old, are depicted as self-assured and emancipated, and with the character of Belante, Gomes provides his female audience with a refreshing role model. Whereas the men’s experience of postcoloniality is negative or at best ambivalent, it is the women and children who take the development of society in their stride, acting as direct agents of change. And in Gomes’s words: This generation (the children) is the hope, it is the future. It will mature with our way of thinking, with our dynamic, but with one more important thing, their being aware of African realities and African culture. […] As long as we in Africa don’t understand that black is as beautiful as blue and the sun as beautiful as the snow, we will not move forward. (Ukadike 2002: 102) Despite the surrealistic and thus ambiguous conclusion to Blue Eyes, it is indeed the younger generation who first awakens after the wedding party of Yonta’s friend Elena, and who embraces the day and their future with aplomb and optimism.

Rosa Abidi

Yesterday Country of Origin:

South Africa Language:

isiZulu, with subtitles in English Studio:

Videovision Entertainment Director:

Darrell James Roodt Producers:

Anant Singh Helena Spring Screenwriter:

Darrell James Roodt Cinematographer:

Michael Brierley (Director of Photography) Music:

Madala Kunene

172 Reviews

Synopsis Yesterday is set in Roolhoek, a small rural village in contemporary KwaZulu-Natal. The film follows Yesterday (Leleti Khumalo), a young mother who learns that she is infected with HIV as she struggles to make ends meet and care for her 7-year-old daughter, Beauty. Yesterday was named by her father who said, ‘Things were better yesterday than they are today.’ This reveals a great deal about life in post-apartheid South Africa, where nearly 20 per cent of the adult population is HIV positive and the legacy of apartheid has resulted in a high level of poverty and continued racial inequality. Yesterday’s husband, John (Kenneth Kambule), works far from home as a migrant labourer on the mines in Johannesburg. Her village lacks modern amenities such as electricity, and the closest medical clinic is hours away by foot. Due to inadequate and overburdened healthcare facilities, Yesterday makes several trips to the clinic before she is seen by a doctor (Camilla Walker) and diagnosed. She never had the opportunity to attend school and she is unable to read or write. After learning of her diagnosis, Yesterday is first rebuked by her husband who infected her, and later by most of the women in her village. Nevertheless, with indelible strength she remains committed to seeing her daughter Beauty (Lihle Mvelase) begin school.

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Editor:

Avril Beukes Duration:

96 minutes Genre:

Drama Cast:

Leleti Khumalo Lihle Mvelase Kenneth Kambule Harriet Lehabe Camilla Walker Year:

2004

Critique Darrell James Roodt is one of South Africa’s most prolific filmmakers. He is best known for his anti-apartheid themed films Place of Weeping (1986), Sarafina! (1992) and Cry, the Beloved Country (1995) made in collaboration with Anant Singh, the nation’s leading producer. He has also directed several B-movies in Hollywood, including Dangerous Ground (1997) and Dracula 3000 (2004). Winnie, his highly anticipated film about the life of Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, received a lukewarm reception at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2011 and was released commercially in Canada a year later. Released in 2004, Yesterday is widely considered Roodt’s best film to date. Made in isiZulu and earning an Oscar nomination for best foreign language film, Yesterday is one of several postapartheid films to take up the subject of the AIDS pandemic and its aftermath. The film marks Roodt’s self-proclaimed move from producing films with a ‘political conscience’ to producing films with a ‘social conscience’ and it succeeds in raising several important issues facing the nation. Without being didactic, Yesterday comments on the legacy of apartheid in rural South Africa and the stigmatization of people with AIDS. More than anything though, Yesterday is a film about hope. Despite her difficult predicament, Yesterday is not just a victim of her social circumstances. She is portrayed with dignity and demonstrates agency as she refuses to submit to her illness until she ensures a better future for Beauty by enrolling her in school. Yesterday is beautifully filmed and emotionally stirring, but the extensive use of picturesque landscapes and stereotyping of key characters recall many troubling representations of Africa in Hollywood cinema. The camera frequently lingers over panoramas of vast and empty countryside evoking images of a timeless and untouched Africa that were used to justify the colonization of the continent. With the exception of a teacher who recently moved to the village and befriends her, Yesterday is alone in her community and, in many ways, removed from the national discussion on HIV/ AIDS. When John returns home from the mines dying of AIDS, Yesterday is shunned by her fellow villagers and has no family to turn to for support. Seeking treatment for her illness, Yesterday visits a black Sangoma (traditional healer) who is depicted as a stereotypical caricature. The Sangoma is exotic and ineffective. In contrast, the white doctor who treats Yesterday at the clinic speaks fluent isiZulu and is portrayed as sympathetic, kind and knowledgeable. Additionally, Yesterday has been accused of failing to provide the proper social context. No mention is made of expensive anti-retroviral medication that for quite some time was out of reach for all but the wealthiest South Africans. The film also omits the national debate surrounding the causes of HIV/AIDS sparked by then President Thabo Mbeki’s controversial remarks at the 13th Annual AIDS Conference in 2000. Mbeki adopted a ‘denialist’ position questioning the causal link between HIV and AIDS. Likely motivated by a variety of factors, including the

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government’s inability to address the magnitude of the AIDS crisis, tension surrounding intellectual property rights for anti-retroviral medications held by multinational pharmaceutical corporations, and the influence of poverty on the scale of the epidemic, Mbeki took the view that poverty, not HIV, caused AIDS (Mbali 2004). With scientific evidence proving otherwise and thousands dying without access to proper treatment, a nationwide civil society movement led by the Treatment Action Campaign emerged. Through litigation and civil disobedience the government was ultimately compelled to make AIDS treatment more accessible and in 2002 Mbeki withdrew from the public debate on the causes of HIV/AIDS. Celebrated as an inspirational story of national importance, Yesterday earned a significant amount of media attention within South Africa and abroad. In an unprecedented move, the Nelson Mandela Foundation offered both an endorsement and financial support for the film. Nevertheless, filmed on a budget of $500,000, Yesterday was released with only modest success, earning $215,000. Like many other South African films, it was unable to compete with the Hollywood movies that control local box offices. Due to the legacy of racial and economic inequality, South Africa has a relatively small cinema-going audience with only 10 per cent of the population regularly attending the movies. The government, faced with many pressing issues and limited resources, has not adequately invested in developing the film sector. Local exhibitors prefer to screen Hollywood movies because they require less investment and are less of a risk than local productions. Consequently, South African films tend to be underfunded and insufficiently promoted. Moreover, the high cost of tickets and the location of theatres in formerly ‘whites-only’ areas prohibit the majority of South Africans from accessing their local cinema. Yesterday has since been shown on local television, used as a resource in HIV/AIDS education programmes across the nation, and has been distributed internationally.

Cara Moyer-Duncan

Under the Moonlight Sous la clarté de la lune Countries of Origin:

Burkina Faso France Languages:

Moore (Moré) French

174 Reviews

Synopsis Under the Moonlight interrogates African women’s personal and cultural histories and identities by foregrounding the experiences of mixed-race women and their families, thus exploring the history of interracial relationships in Africa and its diaspora. Its central story begins before the narrative starts, about ten years earlier in a small village in Burkina Faso. Patrick (Sylvain Lecann), a young white Frenchman steals his mixed-race daughter moments after her young Burkinabé mother has given birth. As the film opens we see the child, who has been raised in France, return to her mother’s village with her father for what is supposed to be a brief encounter with her other home and family. Her mother Kaya (Silvie Homawoo)

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Studios:

Les Films de la plaine NDK productions Director:

Apolline Traoré Producer:

Idrissa Ouédraogo

has been mute since the incident. The mixed-race daughter Martine (Tania Azar) hates the village and its inhabitants, thinking they are all inferior. She believes her mother to be dead. Her father Patrick treats the villagers as his servants. The villagers have been waiting two years for an engineer and Patrick is in town to fix their water pump, as well as to discuss the past with Kaya. While the locals may reject this white man because of the brutal history he left behind, they need his expertise and money.

Screenwriter:

Apolline Traoré Cinematographer:

Daniel Barrau Editor:

Lucie Thierry Duration:

90 minutes Genre:

Drama Cast:

Sylvain Lecann Silvie Homawoo Tania Azar Abdoulaye Koné Rasmané Ouédraogo Year:

2004

Critique Through the mixed-race figure, Under the Moonlight reveals the illusion of ‘race’, a cultural construction which has defined and categorized people in order to justify political and economic hierarchies and is as such an imposed idea, without scientific basis (Zack 1993). In this film, the European finds a new African space based on communal egalitarianism, as the villagers experience a moral awakening, prompted by Kaya, the mute heroine in the film. The film re-imagines feminism in a non-western context, and its female director uses this political approach to question not only women’s rights but also the rights of men in a hierarchical and inequitable society. The corruption in Under the Moonlight shows a society rotten at the top. Patrick pays the village chief to steal his newborn daughter, and the chief is depicted as a drunkard and vain fool, who profits from European pay-offs. This theme and character recalls another key film in the West African canon, Sembène’s 1974 film Xala (Senegal), which illuminates 1970s neo-colonialism in Africa. Kaya’s muteness can be read to represent the international voicelessness of Africa. She is a woman who, as a signifier of the continent’s slave history, has seen her child stolen and taken to Europe, and has been silenced as a result. Martine’s representation as a passive and disposable woman can also be read as symptomatic of the social exclusion of mixed-race people. Her rejection of blackness is a stereotypical ‘tragic mulatta’ response to her positioning, given that she has attained a white French identity which is privileged over that of her African mother. Her eventual coming-to-terms with occupying an interstitial space can be read as the development of an in-between mixed-race identity. Following the change in Martine’s attitude, the viewer likewise discovers that the village, which is first presented as technologically primitive and corrupt, is a space of humanity and good practice. Agency and spectatorial empathy shift to Kollo (Rasmané Ouédraogo), a blind old seer, moral guide and healer. In Under the Moonlight, a film which, like most West African cinema, was made with French funding, the subaltern refuses to be silenced by the French or by local patriarchy. Kaya speaks out against male corruption and domination through her actions of love towards her daughter. She speaks out through Habib, the local man who loves her, and Kollo, the blind man who recognizes the injustice that was done to her. Finally she overcomes her muteness and speaks through her own voice, teaching Patrick, and by

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extension the spectator, that his perceptions of her, the village, their daughter and their future, were wrong. The film’s dramatic turning point occurs when Kaya seizes her one chance to know her daughter by kidnapping her, thus reversing the colonial act while mimicking it. As the men search for her, Martine sings an African adaptation of James Brown’s song ‘This is a Man’s World’, drawing attention to her position as the oppressed and the way that violence produces violence. As mother and daughter flee Patrick and the search party, the film visually eradicates the division between ‘us’ and ‘them’ which Martine learnt in France. Before Martine dies – unbeknownst to her mother, she has lived with a terminal illness since birth – she realizes her ‘cultural bilingualism’ and allows those around her to realize theirs, thus bringing peace to her parents and by extension, healing the ‘conflicting psychic and cultural realms’, as Shohat and Stam put it (1994: 183), of the mixed space that is Africa. Under the moon’s light, Patrick admits to the other men in the search party that he should never have denied Kaya’s rights or needs. Under the Moonlight ends with tradition, as dictated by Kollo. He tells Patrick that he must walk the long journey back to Kaya’s home carrying both her and Martine’s corpse, and then see if Kaya, and the community (as representative of Martine, Kaya’s family and others hurt by Patrick), will accept his apologies for being so selfish and cruel over the last ten years. This walk is scored by a song about wickedness. The child is given a traditional African funeral, being buried by her mother, while her father returns to France, this time treating the locals with due respect as he says goodbye. Under the Moonlight is a film dedicated to mothers, and indeed Kaya’s first spoken line is a cry, ‘Mère!’ (Mother), when her daughter dies. It gives its central female character the space to express herself while refusing to demonize her clearly misguided male counterpoint. Disrupting Patrick’s initially objectifying and negating gaze, the film privileges Kaya’s voice (and her silence), giving the spectator an insight into her lived realities as she nurtures her daughter and establishes non-verbal methods of communication (neither speaks the other’s language). Kaya doesn’t teach her daughter her language – perhaps because as feminists have suggested, she regards language as a male construct (Moi 1987) – and she doesn’t learn French – perhaps because she regards it as a symbol of forced ‘[neo-]colonial bilingualism’ (Shohat and Stam 1994: 193), which silences the African voice. The film’s docu-drama style and feminist focus combine to visually express the political necessity of making audible the unheard, emancipating the oppressed and understanding the past, in order to achieve reconciliation.

Zélie Asava

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Delwende, Stand up and Walk Delwende, lève-toi et marche Countries of Origin:

Burkina Faso France Switzerland Languages:

Moore French Director:

Saint Pierre Yaméogo Producers:

Dunia Productions (France) Les Films de l’Espoir (Burkina Faso) Thelma Film AG (Suisse) Screenwriter:

Saint Pierre Yaméogo Cinematographer:

Jürg Hassler Art Director:

Joseph Kpobly Music:

Wasis Diop Editor:

Jean-Christophe Ané Duration:

90 minutes Genre:

Drama Cast:

Blandine Yaméogo Claire Ilboudo Célestin Zongo Thomas Ngourma Daniel Kaboré Jules Taonssa Abdoulaye Komboudri Year:

2005

Synopsis Thanking God for not inflicting too much suffering from the lack of rain, the village chief extends an invitation to all in order to secure ‘peace, fecundity, prosperity and a long life’. The festivities, however, will not spare the community from either collective tragedy (infants’ deaths) or individual drama (Pougbila’s rape). Under the pretext of protecting Pougbila (Claire Ilboudo) against the mortal fate that is the lot of many youths, Diahrra (Célestin Zongo) gives his daughter in marriage to a suitor from a neighbouring village. Charged with witchcraft and the children’s deaths, Pougbila’s mother, who suspects her husband of having raped her daughter, is expelled from the village. The village fool, Elie (Thomas Ngourma), is the only one who hears on the radio the real cause for the children’s deaths: an epidemic of meningitis that has spread to the remotest areas of the country. Upon hearing that her mother, Napoko (Blandine Yaméogo) had to flee the village because she was accused of witchcraft, Pougbila goes on a quest to find her. After witnessing scenes of ostracism suffered by such alleged witches and their offspring, Pougbila finds her mother at the Delwende (‘Stand up and walk’) Centre. Back in the village, the girl uncovers the role her father played in his wife’s banishment. Indeed, the father had asked the boy who helped him carry the siongho to direct it at his wife, this artefact being a heavy mace that was supposed to point to any person guilty of the children’s deaths. Pougbila’s father will have to face the council of elders.

Critique Delwende, directed by Pierre Yaméogo, is a follow-up of a documentary shown on France 2 as part of the programme Envoyé Spécial, which focuses on ‘soul eaters’ (Les Mangeuses d’âmes), women who are banished from villages on account of witchcraft. Dealing with women’s issues, this sixth feature film by Pierre Yaméogo belongs both to the auteur approach and the oral tradition. Inspired by a real news item (a man accuses his wife of being a witch in order to avoid being accused of raping his daughter), Yaméogo draws on African orality, which may be defined by the use of proverbs, the emblematic figure of the fool and the quest motif, with a view to bringing universal appeal to his local fiction. As usually happens in quest narratives, Pougbila meets good and bad people as she searches for her mother. An old woman advises her to look around Ouagadougou for shelters for women charged with witchcraft. Pougbila, on the other hand, meets an evil man (‘moussoumourgou’) who hopes to shake off the curse of his wife’s death during childbirth by raping and killing girls. Pougbila escapes such a fate. Cotton spinning, which is traditionally a female occupation, gains the metaphoric dimension of the female condition. Visible on the

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DVD cover and throughout the movie, the spinning motif serves as the thread that connects women to a traditional concept they can hardly escape, including the charge of witchcraft whenever villagers are confronted with phenomena beyond their grasp, in this case, a meningitis epidemic. Delwende’s subtitle (‘Stand up and walk’) carries also a message of struggle and hope for any woman who wishes to rise above her traditional situation, that of a woman who spins cotton while sitting on the ground. Pougbila embraces this rebellion when she beseeches her mother to leave the Delwende Centre where many alleged witches have found refuge: ‘Mother, stand up! Let’s go home and proclaim the truth! We cannot live in such shame. The world changes and tradition must change too.’ In spite of her rebellion against the superstition and ostracism doled out to women, in the end, although she had promised to unmask the perpetrator, Pougbila reveals neither to her mother nor to the villagers the identity of her rapist. By making the girl withhold this truth, Yaméogo offers a refined closure in which the unsaid may prove more significant than further accusations. Indeed, in a patriarchal society, human justice towards Diahrra, Pougbila’s father, might have dealt less harshly with the rape of a girl than with the flouting of ancestral rites, such as the mishandling of the siongho. Judgment is left to the viewers. Paradoxically, Delwende draws on customs and traditions that are still in use today in order to better question them. This applies in particular to women. The family head, Diahrra, who holds the right of life and death over his daughter, negotiates her wedding for a few banknotes needed to buy cola nuts, a symbolic gift that is expected at such events. As for the mother, she ends up banished by her own parents because she refuses to drink the beverage of truth that is as toxic as it is foul (‘Notes de production’, Delwende). Some themes in Delwende are reminiscent of other West African productions: the young spouse’s refusal to accept an old husband in Gaston Kaboré’s Wend Kuuni/God’s Gift (1982), the old woman’s ostracism in Idrissa Ouédraogo’s Yaaba/Grandmother (1989), the liberating role of women in Adama Drabo’s Taafe Fanga/ Pouvoir de pagne/Skirt-Power (1997). While these films spring to mind, Delwende stands out by developing fully the theme of the alleged witches and by relating it to other patriarchal threats on women, e.g. forced marriage, death in childbirth, rape or attempted rape in the city and in the villages, insecurity and risk of being murdered as well as limitations in decision making. The drawback to this thematic wealth could be the systematic approach of such scenarios. Yet, the movie is finely crafted. Delwende is indeed characterized by a complex plot with secondary narratives, among others, Diahrra’s spiritual search, and parallel patterns such as the reverse caring role between mother and daughter. The style is poetic and sincere. The cinematography is mastered throughout, for example, shots are quick-paced as they echo the speech of the village chief or the camera moves quickly among the dancers to stress their movements. The editing of the

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opening scene of Delwende sets a brisk and compelling pace right from the beginning of the film. This review was translated from French by Blandine Stefanson.

Marie-Magdeleine Chirol

Why? Pourquoi? Country of Origin:

Senegal Language:

French Studios:

Guis Guis Communications Vivement Lundi RFO Director:

Sokhna Amar Screenwriter:

Sokhna Amar Cinematographer:

Amadou Tidiane Niagane Editors:

Pascal Auclert Corinne Gigon Duration:

8 minutes Genre:

Synopsis It is summer or rather hivernage in Senegal (the wet season). The long holidays are about to start. Students who had migrated to the city to pursue their education are boarding buses for the long trip to remote villages. In the big city, parents who have migrated send their children back to the rural homeland, whereas civil servants originally from Dakar and serving in the hinterland do the reverse. The narrator of Pourquoi? may have been one of these children. She travels from her parents’ house to the house of an aunt living in a different city. A cousin comes to visit. He is the same age, and kind to her. He invites her to a party the following weekend. When they get to the party, he suddenly asks her to accompany him back to her aunt’s house. Unsuspecting, she agrees. It is 2 a.m. and not a soul is awake in the house. They enter a room. He locks the door, keeps the keys and calmly proceeds to rape her in the most brutal manner. Once his deed is done he orders her to put her dress back on. She can hardly stand on her two feet. He props her up, and forces her to put her dress on. As he sees her violently sobbing, he utters the following threat to her: ‘If ever, if ever, you tell anybody what took place here, I will spread the word that you were consenting and in fact asked for it.’ They part. Ten years later, the nameless victim relives the ordeal, but this time on-screen, in a medium that is accessible to millions of people around the world, in languages that are metaphorical and shared worldwide, in tones that are pathetic and charged with emotions. The film ends with the uttering of a torturing question that has plagued the narrator all these years: Why?

Fiction Cast:

Abdoulaye Fall Yacine Diouf Niassa Ndione Year:

2005

Critique Pourquoi? is Sokhna Amar’s first film. It was produced as a graduating film from a seminar on documentary film-making held in 2003 at the former slave port of Gorée in Senegal. The film later went on to win various awards around the world: Best Documentary at the 2005 FESPACO, the award for Cinema Giventu at the Locarno Film Festival and the Audience Selection Award at the Ciné Sud (2006). It was shown on the RFO network, and on the French international channel TV5. The Senegalese television network never did show it. Such success is indeed unheard of for a first African film, let alone from a film-maker who previously had received no training in film-making. And this success rests mainly on the cinematography of this short film. Its first venue notwithstanding, Pourquoi? is an allegorical, fictional film which articulates domination, control,

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rejuvenation and finally liberation of the female body. The whole film is composed of a single take and a voice-over reading a letter recounting the rape incident to a girlfriend of the narrator. The aggressor is refigured as a lone fisherman painfully pushing a large fishing boat away from the sandy beach, over the wave tops, onto the deep waters of the Atlantic Ocean and the struggling vessel refigures the struggle of the rape victim. The wailing wind suggests her subsequent cries as a vain defence mechanism, and the smooth paddling of the fisherman as he moves away from shore suggests the defeat of the victim as retold by the voice-over (Sokhna Amar). As the man disappears and becomes no more than a dot in the vast horizon, the voice-over gains strength. It crackles with emotion and defiantly transforms the silence forced upon her into an opportunity to speak up, reclaim her body, re-conquer her words and her place in society. Amar’s Pourquoi? is a lesson in expressive simplicity. It uses everyday experiences in the lives of most coastal populations in Senegal and indeed Africa to denounce violence against women by men. The wide expanse of the sea which fills the screen fixates the viewers’ attention on the boat bobbing up and down in the troubled waters, at the same time as the voice-over boldly unravels the meaning of each image on the screen. At the end of this short film, the untangling of the images reaches a crucial point as the following quote appears on-screen: ‘woman is like the sea, and it is up to man to know how to navigate her so as to reach his final destination.’ The text is attributed to a Senegalese proverb and reminiscent of many other such pieces of wisdom collected by Mineke Schipper on her website ‘Never Marry a Woman with Big Feet’. But above all, the taboo this film unveils and its simple stark expressiveness are all symptomatic of the new directions and new artistic citizenship in African cinema. African women such as Jihan Tahri (Egypt, France), Fanta Nacro (Burkina Faso, France) and Osvalde Lewat (Cameroon, France) who have taken up documentary film-making, no longer enter into compromises with the nation, its traditions and its treatment of females. They throw off the shackles which have bound them, thus fashioning female subjectivities that are at once decisive, free from the male symbolism of the early 1960s and ready to forge their own future.

Sada Niang

Clando Countries of Origin:

Cameroon France Germany Languages:

French German

180 Reviews

Synopsis A chaotic capital city in a poor country in the tropics. Roads are unpaved; bikes and cars circulate without any discernible rule in the smoke filled streets. The police supplement their meagre salaries by bribing drivers and pedestrians. The blazing sun burns everything in the garbage-filled streets. The scenario features a computer engineer jailed for helping patriot students print a flyer denouncing the abuses of the local government. Anatole Sobgui is denounced by his office colleagues, punched and slapped,

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Studio:

Les Films du Raphia Le Messager Films ZDF-Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen Director:

Jean-Marie Teno Producers:

Dagmar Benke Jean-Marie Teno Screenwriter:

Jean-Marie Teno Cinematographer:

Nurit Aviv Music:

Ben Belinga Guy Lobe Editor:

Aurélie Ricard Duration:

95 minutes Genre:

Drama Cast:

Paulin Fodouop Henriette Fenda Joseph Momo Caroline Redl Guillaume Nana Bodule Moukilo Raphael de Chedjou Year:

1996

forcefully shoved into his own car which he uses as a clandestine taxi, and driven to the police headquarters, thrown into a basement and tortured into political confessions. The goons ‘handling’ him constantly hit the soles of his feet, thus damaging nerves that in turn make him impotent. Anatole is abruptly freed with as little formality as he had been thrown in jail. His sex life is destroyed, his job taken away, his possessions stolen. He decides to go into exile in Germany and spends a few years in Köln before returning to Cameroon.

Critique Coming from a film-maker known for his uncompromising documentaries, Clando levels a heavy punch at the viewer. Its slow pace quickly moves into hard-hitting scenes of violence. It upsets well-protected comfort zones and fosters questioning of benevolent blindness in the face of oppression and cowardice. The film argues that under the present stewardship of ‘democratically’ elected African leaders, African countries have become contaminated, and for countless candidates for exile, there is only one airport and very few elected for travel. Inside the African postcolony, Teno argues, denial of freedom is the most common shared condition. Whether behind four walls or out in the open, people in Clando’s African city are ruled by fear, threatened with torture and made aware of their vulnerable bodies. In addition, the citizens are weary of everpresent small afflictions which can turn deadly at any moment. In prison, the food brought by his wife, Madeleine (Henriette Fenda), is the only meal served to Anatole (Paulin Fodouop) and his three cellmates. Anatole has to find a doctor to look after his feet. After a doctor friend visits him, the guards triple the cost of prescription drugs destined for prisoners. Their lives are paved with existential fears exacerbated by political arbitrariness. For example, Anatole, the occasional sympathizer to opponents of the local dictator is freed without advance notice. His wife is told that he was merely transferred to another prison. But, as it turns out, the police had simply driven him to a street junction and menacingly ordered him to wait for their return. Intellectually broken and terrified, he obeys with these words: ‘Yes Boss, I will be here waiting for you.’ And there, at that four-way stop under the blazing sun, he would have waited for the rest of his life, had not a colleague of his come along and told him that he had been freed from prison. In fact, Clando describes a police state; ‘a republic’ where all the regulating institutions have been supplanted by baton-yielding, uniformed police officers or inefficient record-keeping jail guards. A recurrent nightmare shows a bus driven by a madman. The film prods viewers to ponder the painful question of finality: what is one to do in this situation? How to behave? What, if any, are the alternatives at one’s disposal? Anatole opts for exile, but blearily so: his wife suggests that he should have his impotence cured in Germany. He loudly muses that he was going to search for Rigobert Chamba (Joseph Momo), an exiled heir to the chiefdom of a village, whereas he distractedly declares to the German Border

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guard that he is a businessman in search of cars. In fact, once in Köln, Anatole discovers that the West in general has become a holding tank for many defeated/disillusioned political opponents and poverty-weary Africans. He sadly observes their exotic lives full of constant discrimination and recrimination, with monthly parties of loud ‘ndombolo’, ‘coupé-décalé’, ‘mbalax’, zouk and hot African food. In order to revitalize themselves, they regroup in tribal associations in which action is constantly deferred by speechifying and empty officiating. All are ravaged by loneliness. When Anatole finally finds Rigobert, the latter is vegetating on a single bed in a dungeon-looking room. Together they re-walk the streets of Köln, redefining its warmly lit streets and apartment windows as places of exclusion and misery. Both decide to return home. Yet herein lies the enigma of the film. Cameroon can hardly be defined as home for any of them. It is a space just as threatening for their body and soul as Köln. The film ends on a shot of Anatole in bed with his wife, still haunted by his impotence, and as alienated as he had found Rigobert in Köln. Militancy no longer holds any appeal to him. The future looks bleak. Another type of existential vacuity, perhaps permanent exile looms large: the life of a ‘clando’ – clandestine.

Sada Niang

L’Afrance Countries of Origin:

France Senegal Languages:

French Studio:

CNC Mille et Une Productions Director:

Alain Gomis Producers:

Anne Cécile-Berthomeau Eric Idriss Kanango Edouard Mauriat Screenwriters:

Xavier Christiaens Alain Gomis Pierre Schöller Nathalie Stragier Marc Wels

182 Reviews

Synopsis El Hadj (Djolof Mbengue) is a postgraduate student living in Paris. Once he has finished his studies he plans to return to Senegal and become a teacher. This is motivated by his political desire to rebuild the country’s infrastructure and his personal desire to go home. At the wedding of a Senegalese friend and a white woman, he argues with others that unless they go back, there will be no future for Africa. But upon starting his own love affair with Delphine (a white French woman, played by Myriam Bechet), he enters into an existential crisis questioning not only his own positionality but that of Senegal and indeed Africa. He is tired of being a foreigner in France and tired of the stereotypical labelling he experiences: ‘I’m sick of being a Black. I’m Senegalese.’ But as a man who has spent six years of his twenties in France, what will he be in Senegal but an outsider? El Hadj is faced with marriage on his return home, and a sister who wants to follow in his footsteps. He evades both issues by staying in France. He spends his days navigating Senegalese life via the tapes he is sent from home, conducting research into the origins of union action in national liberation, and negotiating phone calls from his future wife, while also experiencing French life via soccer matches, parties and police abuse. Cultural conflicts lead him to a point of crisis whereupon he becomes violent and suicidal.

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Cinematographer:

Pierre Stoeber Music:

Patrice Gomis Editor:

Fabrice Rouaud Duration:

90 minutes Genre:

Drama Cast:

Djolof Mbengue Myriam Bechet Year:

2001

Critique The French Senegalese director Alain Gomis’s film L’Afrance is an expression of the psychopathology of racism, which shows that even 40 years after La Noire de…/Black Girl (Sembène, Senegal/ France, 1966), and the continent’s liberation, the colonized and colonial mindset remains dominant. The film’s title signifies the continued links between Africa and France in its hybrid semiotic construction, just as the film considers the hybridity of the people who exist between the two nations, raised as Senegalese within a French culture. It explores Senegalese political history, interracial love, identity and duty through the character of El Hadj, a man whose sense of self is slowly destroyed by the events of the film and his own antagonisms. He cannot cope with his imprisonment for late visa renewal, his secret passion for a white woman, his rejection by working-class Africans, his betrayal of his Senegalese fiancée, his lies to his parents and his internalization of race hate. His personal desires come into conflict with his nationalistic desires and pragmatic fear that while he must return in order to support his nation, if he does return he will be just as much a foreigner as in France. As the film ends, his father reminds him that he too was sent away (to Dakar) and thus they are both foreigners from their real home, the plains of rural Senegal. His father asks El Hadj if he thinks they have vanished, that is if the loss of culture brought about by slavery, colonialism, industrialization, the breakdown of community life, new religions and so on, has led to the end of traditional African culture. Neither has any response and so they look to the landscape and the ancient trees that shoot up from it, signs of a permanence perhaps eradicated by the trappings of modernization, or perhaps waiting to shape a new politico-cultural landscape. These trees can also be read as signifiers of the ancestors, who within traditional beliefs are thought to be always with us, supporting us in all we do. The last image is a medium-long shot of a man in the distance sitting by a tree. As the camera pulls back to an extreme-long shot he slowly fades into the background. His absent presence suggests that the past remains alive. As a film which focuses on thought rather than action, featuring many of El Hadj’s internal narratives, the film’s outstanding achievements are its subtle camerawork (e.g. in the emotional breakdown shower-scene the camera remains fixed, allowing spectators to feel the power of El Hadj’s raw emotion), powerful text and above all, mesmerizing performances. The actors enlighten and enrapture as they fill out what could be a rather depressing script with humour, hope and affection, reminding us that there still are some good things in life. Literary influences such as Cheikh Hamidou Kane’s L’Aventure Ambiguë/Ambiguous Adventure (1961), combine in L’Afrance with the influences of cinematic exilic colonial narratives such as Chronique d’un été/Chronicle of a Summer (Morin and Rouch, France, 1960), Xala (Sembène, Senegal, 1974), Black Micmac (Gilou, France, 1986) and Métisse/Café au Lait (Kassovitz, France, 1993). The figures of Sékou Touré (the first Guinean president after independence) and Patrice Lumumba (the first Congolese

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prime minister after independence), haunt El Hadj as he struggles to understand their sacrifices and their strengths and become like them, as he believes he should. His interest in union and national action reminds the spectator of the power of the collective and our power in changing our world. L’Afrance is thus a political film which presents us with a series of social and personal contradictions and challenges, suturing us into the position of protagonist and asking us to decide what must be done. L’Afrance disturbs the liberal ideology of colour-blindness common in American and French cinema. El Hadj’s comment on the position of contemporary racial politics reads like a Spike Lee comment on the evolution of black representations in cinema in Bamboozled (USA, 2000): ‘50 years ago people said niggers are savages who can only play drums. Now they say: “blacks are great, they’ve got rhythm!”.’. L’Afrance is one of few modern films that express the banalities of everyday racism, as well as the extremities of institutional discrimination and the racism which is directed at people designated black or African. Unflinchingly honest and provocative, it even challenges its narrator, who invokes both our sympathy (as abused) and our disgust (as abuser). L’Afrance thus presents a world utterly ambiguous, utterly confused and utterly up to us to fix.

Zélie Asava

Little Senegal Countries of Origin:

Senegal France Germany Algeria Languages:

English French Wolof Arabic Studios:

3B Productions France 2 Cinéma Taunus Films international Tassili Films Director:

Rachid Bouchareb Producers:

Rachid Bouchareb Jean Bréhat Screenwriters:

184 Reviews

Synopsis Alioune Djiré (Sotigui Kouyaté) is a widower who works as custodian of the slave house at Gorée Island in Senegal. Each day he receives groups of African Americans who come to visit the possible last stop their ancestors made on the African continent before being hoarded up on merchant ships, across the open seas and sold in various parts of the Americas. Chains and bolts are brandished, damp cavernous dungeons quickly eyed. In a voice full of indignation and recrimination, Djiré shows the door of no return and later states to two lingering female tourists: ‘This is where your history starts.’ In fact, Djiré’s melodramatic officiating is but the stepping stone of a more personal project. An ancestor of his, sold and deported to the United States, had been appearing in his sleep. Once in the United States in search of the descendants of his ancestor, Djiré visits various institutes, libraries and old plantations. He finally finds one descendant in New York City – Ida (Sharon Hope) – a storekeeper, mother of a daughter and grandmother to another girl. The daughter has disappeared and the granddaughter is pregnant. The father lives in New Jersey with a woman the same age as his daughter. He does not want any contact with his own daughter. By the time he leaves New York to return to Senegal, Djiré has managed to ingratiate himself with the African American storekeeper he calls cousin and reconcile three generations of African American women. But the reunification of the family, as ordered by the soul of the ‘common ancestor’ is a challenge.

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Olivier Lorelle Rachid Bouchareb Cinematographers:

Youcef Sahraoui Benoit Chamaillard Music:

Safy Boutella Editors:

Sandrine Degeen Frédérique Delmeiren Duration:

98 minutes Genres:

Drama Cast:

Sotigui Kouyaté Sharon Hope Karim Traoré Roschdy Zem Adetoro Makindé Adja Diarra Malaaika Lacario Moctar Teyeb Year:

2001

Critique Little Senegal is a journey into the troubled waters of the relations between African Americans and new migrants from Africa in most major American cities. This journey partakes of identity formations and re-formations, tales of adaptations and rejection and official status negotiations among illegal immigrants. The film revolves around two central spaces, that of the history of slavery and that of present-day immigration. In the first days of his sojourn in the United States, Djiré’s main interlocutors are white, upper-middle-class men and women. Most of them work in libraries and institutes where archives of slavery are kept. Most are willing to give him access to the information he seeks in exchange for a fee. He is politely referred to as ‘sir’ and in one instance as ‘an African seeking information’. Djiré takes ample notes and discovers that the structure of knowledge is still effected along the lines of race. Twice, Djiré travels to old plantations in North Carolina. The houses that have supplanted the master’s quarters are massive, lavishly spread on well-manicured properties. Their white-painted, lofty verandas and green surroundings glisten in the southern sun. At the Robinson plantation, where Djiré’s alleged descendants are deemed to have worked as slaves, a comfortable looking heir welcomes and informs him that they have donated the records of the plantation to a library. In both plantations, Djiré visits old slave burial plots, scattered amid dense bushes and mounds of snow. Much like Kunta Kinte in Roots, the TV series on slavery based on Alex Haley’s novel (American Broadcasting Company [ABC], 1977), he decides that the description of slaves found in an archival registry corresponds to potential descendants of his ancestors and travels to New York to find a purported distant African American cousin. If anything, the trip to New York propels Djiré back into the present. He experiences a disconnection between the urgency of his ancestral mission and the actuality of recent African migration in the American metropolis. Rent, accommodation and food are eliminated from the challenges he faces, since a nephew of his welcomes him in a tiny apartment shared with a woman and a fellow North African alien. Nonetheless, Djiré discovers that a similar skin colour, a similar origin even, is not a wager for sympathies let alone family ties. Here, money or the lack thereof rules everything, even personal relationships. Recently arrived African migrants are only tolerated by their African American cousins. At Hassan’s garage for example, a fight breaks out between the mechanic and an African American customer. The latter intimates that Hassan (Karim Traoré) is nothing but a fruitpicking savage out of place in the middle of New York City. At dinner the news features the image of an African migrant mistaken for a serial killer and shot 40 times by members of the NYPD. As he locates his supposed cousin Ida, she eyes him up and down as though he were an intrepid nuisance, summarily dismisses him and at one point refers to him as a savage. Yet, remembering the imperious instructions of his ancestor, Djiré

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smiles and obliges. He eventually convinces her to hire him as a janitor. The relationship quickly turns personal as he discovers that the apparent indifference of Ida is but a thin veneer for social and economic uncertainties, absolute loneliness and the absence of any family. Djiré becomes her companion and helper. As conflicts flare between her and her pregnant granddaughter, Djiré mediates between the two. Finally he convinces the granddaughter to keep and care for her newborn daughter rather than give her up for adoption. As he reveals the object of his mission to New York, his African American companion casts a fascinated yet non-committal look at him. On his departure from New York City, he is missed as a companion, not as a relative. If settlement in a country not of one’s own usually endows one with the ability to cast a critical look on one’s origins, Djiré discovers that the migrants of the same sociological profile as his nephew cannot afford the leisure of looking back. In the rough and tumble neighbourhood of South Harlem, material exigencies thwart family ties. African men and women sleep together not because they love each other but in order to make ends meet. They get married not to consecrate the ties between families, but because they would not otherwise survive in the New York Megalopolis; they pay huge sums to willing American women in exchange for the green card. In a discussion about his private life Hassan states: ‘Here, things are different; life is expensive’ – an ironic remark on his part since his own life is of no value to his fellow African Americans. By contrast, Djiré’s respect for him may have been part of his mysterious mission in the United States.

Sada Niang

Conversations on a Sunday Afternoon Country of Origin:

South Africa Language:

English Director:

Khalo Matabane Producer:

Khalo Matabane

186 Reviews

Synopsis Set in contemporary South Africa, Conversations on a Sunday Afternoon follows Keniloe, a young writer desperate to understand the prevalence of violence and inequality. He spends his Sunday afternoons at a park in Hillbrow, an urban Johannesburg neighbourhood with a large immigrant population. The film opens with Keniloe, on one of these Sundays, reading Nuruddin Farah’s novel Links in the park when he first encounters Fatima, a Somali woman looking into the whereabouts of her mother, whom she has not seen since fleeing war-torn Mogadishu in 1993. A few Sundays later, Fatima tells Keniloe that she sought refuge in Johannesburg after an attack on her home in Somalia left her brother and father dead. Moved by her harrowing experience, Keniloe plans to write Fatima’s story with the hope that it will reveal something about the society that is rapidly changing around him.

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Screenwriter:

Critique

Khalo Matabane

Although he has no formal training, Khalo Matabane has emerged as one of South Africa’s most promising young black film-makers. Matabane began making experimental documentaries in the mid1990s. As the nation comes to terms with its troubled past and establishes a new identity, Matabane appears to be on a quest to find his place in post-apartheid South Africa. With his earliest films, Matabane takes on a wide range of topics closely connected to national identity. Twenty years after the Soweto Uprising, he reflects on the state of the nation in Two Decades Still (1996). At a time when AIDS is devastating the nation, he considers the difficulties of dating in Love in a Time of Sickness (2001). Matabane travels by minibus from Limpopo to Cape Town in search of the ‘new’ South Africa in Story of a Beautiful Country (2004), the film that put him on the map as an up-and-coming director. Released in 2005, Matabane’s Conversations on a Sunday Afternoon, is a timely reflection on the subject of immigration. Matabane’s film preceded the anti-immigrant violence that occurred throughout South Africa in May of 2008, and resulted in over sixty deaths and the internal displacement of thousands. However, it can be considered an intervention in the increasing prevalence of xenophobia as it encourages viewers to reexamine their treatment of immigrants. Matabane conceived of Conversations on a Sunday Afternoon as the first instalment in a trilogy of films on immigration, violence and religion, topics that have global significance but are set locally in South Africa (Edmunds 2006). State of Violence (2010), the second instalment in the series, connects the political violence of the apartheid era to the violence plaguing contemporary South Africa. Matabane likens his films to guerrilla warfare and the links to Third Cinema, in which film becomes a weapon in the struggle against oppression, are obvious (McCluskey 2009). Conversations on a Sunday Afternoon was filmed on a miniscule budget of $20,000 during a period of just nineteen days. Rebelling against convention, Matabane creatively blends fiction and reality, resulting in a narrative film with a documentary aesthetic. He achieved this by casting several non-professional actors, encouraging improvisation, as well as by using ambient sound and a handheld camera. The film begins with a fictional premise as Keniloe meets Fatima and decides to document her experiences. However, when Fatima stops frequenting the park, the film transitions into documentary as Keniloe searches the streets of Hillbrow for her. Matabane captures Keniloe’s interactions with real people (not actors) from Africa, Asia, Europe and the Middle East. There is a wide range of stories: two Kenyan women who fled their homeland to avoid female circumcision; a former child soldier who left conflict-ridden Uganda; an Afghan man who escaped the American bombing of his country; a South Korean woman who was imprisoned for protesting against the government; and, a black Briton raised in Trinidad searching for an existential exile as ‘a matter of ideological solidarity’. Whether escaping war or wanting to be a part of the new South Africa, these

Cinematographer:

Matthys Mocke Art Director:

Amanda Wyngaardt Music:

Carlo Mombelli Editor:

Audrey Maurion Duration:

79 minutes Genre:

Drama Cast:

Tony Kgoroge Fatima Hersi Tumisho Masha Year:

2005

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immigrants have all left their respective homelands in search of a better life. Matabane also takes viewers to the Lindela Deportation Centre where Keniloe meets immigrants from Malawi, Mozambique, Zimbabwe and elsewhere. Most came to South Africa for economic opportunity, but some are escaping political instability and war. While Keniloe does not find Fatima on the streets of Hillbrow or at the detention centre, the various encounters he has with the foreigners he meets raises a number of pressing questions. Namely, how should immigrants, even those living in South Africa illegally, be treated? And, as the economic powerhouse in the region, what is South Africa’s responsibility to the plight of its neighbours? Matabane incorporates an extract from Farah’s Links as an epigraph to frame the film, ‘A Somali proverb has it that the shoes of a dead man are more useful than he is.’ That Matabane makes repeated references to Links is both symbolically and thematically important. For different reasons, the protagonists of both this novel and Matabane’s film feel displaced in the city they call home. During a period when foreigners face resentment, Matabane, who is troubled by intolerance, reminds viewers of the conditions that have prompted large numbers of immigrants to flock to South Africa. Conversations on a Sunday Afternoon was made without a script, and as a result, at times, it is a bit slow and wandering. Nevertheless, Matabane succeeds in creating characters with sensitivity and dignity, as well as encouraging thoughtful reflection. Although Keniloe does eventually find Fatima, she cannot offer him the kind of resolution he is looking for. Likewise, Matabane refuses to offer his audience a tidy conclusion, in the end raising more questions than he answers. Like so many independent films, Conversations on a Sunday Afternoon struggled to find an audience in South Africa, earning less than $2,000 at local box offices. Nevertheless, it was celebrated by local critics who described it as a timely and compelling statement on the issue of immigration confronting the nation. It was screened at numerous international film festivals and earned Matabane the Lionel Ngakane Award for the most promising South African film-maker at the Cape Town World Cinema Festival.

Cara Moyer-Duncan

188 Reviews

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Social Issues 189

Childhoo in african cinema

od an

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The Little Girl who Sold the Sun/La Petite vendeuse de soleil (Djibril Diop Mambéty, Senegal, 1998)

A striking characteristic of many films from across the African continent is their focus on childhood experience and the centrality of child protagonists. Most of these films are not produced specifically for young audiences, but are aimed at a broader public audience expressing a range of social, communal and spiritual concerns. A brief mention of even a small selection of characters and their stories gives a sense of the vast diversity of childhood experience on the African continent: 10-year-old Bila befriends an old woman accused of witchcraft in their village in Burkina Faso (Idrissa Ouédraogo’s Yaaba/Grandmother [1989]); Ezra, a 16-year-old who has fought in the civil war in Sierra Leone looks back over the previous ten years to his experience as a child soldier (Newton I Aduaka’s Ezra [2007]); 10-year-old Bandian leaves his village in Guinea for the city of Conakry and ultimately Paris to follow his dream of becoming a star soccer player (Cheik Doukouré’s Le Ballon d’or/The Golden Ball [1994]); Tamari and Itai, teenage sister and brother in Zimbabwe try to care for their younger siblings when their parents both die with little help from their community (Tsitsi Dangarembga’s Everyone’s Child [1996]); 12-year-old Noura’s experience of the worlds of men and women in Tunisia is challenged through his maturing and awakening sexual awareness (Férid Boughedir’s Halfaouine [1990]); Sili Laam, a young Senegalese girl on crutches overcomes numerous obstacles to become the first girl to sell the daily newspaper on the streets of Dakar (Djibril Diop Mambéty’s La Petite vendeuse de soleil/The Little Girl Who Sold the Sun); Madiba, a young teen finds a video camera that he disguises in a decorated wooden box to film life around Khayelitsha and Cape Town, and develops a friendship with Estelle, a white girl from the suburbs (Ntshaveni wa Luruli’s The Wooden Camera [2003]); and brothers Tahir and Amine search for their father who has abandoned their family in Chad, getting themselves into trouble before being sent by their mother to a strict Koranic school (Mahamat-Saleh Haroun’s Abouna [2002]). Thematically, these and other childhood films highlight a range of issues including significantly varied experiences of birth and death, gender relations, community politics, urban and rural life, war, belief systems, family relationships, sexual awakening, illness, education and aspiration. Of course we should be careful of simply reducing these films to a list of themes and issues, for each also offers particular emotional, sensory and aesthetic experiences for the viewer. Cinematically, films focusing on childhood reveal a striking range of styles and approaches, including the use of first-person narration (the voice of the child) and cinematography which allows the audience to view the world as if through the eyes of the child. In their book Childhood Studies (2000), sociologists Jean Mills and Richard Mills argue that a key premise to investigating childhood is that childhood is socially constructed: ‘it does not

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exist in pristine form, like some pearl merely waiting to be discovered. It is, rather, dependent on recall, interpretation, intuition, empathy and recreation’ (Mills and Mills 2000: 2). This suggests that in analysing cinematic representations of children, the ways in which we understand these images and narratives, and the meanings which we draw from or indeed ascribe to them may be multifarious, ambiguous and even contradictory.

Childhood perspectives Arguably, the primary significance of childhood, as a focus for film-makers and for the analysis and appreciation of these films, is the point of view that they offer. Very often, child characters are able to adopt positions that open perspectives on society that adult characters would be unable to, positions that are transgressive in terms of social norms. A good example can be seen in Halfaouine (Férid Boughedir, 1990). The film opens with the sound of a small child crying. He is a small boy unhappy to be having his hair washed by his mother. They are in the communal baths in the Islamic old quarter of Tunis. The bathhouse is filled with women, some scantily clad, some naked, and the atmosphere is steamy. The main character of the film, an older boy called Noura, not quite a man yet, but soon to become aware of his own sexuality, is also being washed by his mother as he observes the people in the bathhouse. As viewers we become party to Noura’s initially innocent voyeurism. The public baths are used by men and women at different times of the day and men and women dress and present themselves differently in public: in accordance with Islam, the architecture of individual living quarters within the city strictly delineates the space into male and female areas. Significantly, as a child, Noura is able to transgress such spaces, to move freely between them, and it is through his eyes that we get a representation of life in this community. There are different ways that films privilege childhood perspectives – sometimes, it is simply through focusing the narrative on the experience of the main character, but often, it is as though the audience is looking through the eyes of the child. In The Wooden Camera, for example, 10-year-old Madiba films scenes of township life through a camera, and part of what we see in the film are the images from his film. This creates the illusion that we are seeing what the character is seeing and what he finds fascinating or worth documenting. A further way of highlighting childhood perspective is through the use of first-person narration an example of which can be seen in Cheik Doucouré’s The Golden Ball. In this film, the young boy, Bandian, is able to occupy a transgressive position because of his childhood status, and because he is the teller of this story: the narrative voice we hear is his. Like many oral narratives, the film itself starts in firstperson (voice-over) narration by Bandian who tells us: My name is Bandian. I was born on the night of a full moon. Sara the magician told my father I was chosen by the gods. My father said Sara was an old fool. All I know is that I’m going to be a great footballer. Whilst the transgressive positioning of children is often cultural, familial and political, it is also presented in films in very physical, tangible ways too – the geographic spaces children occupy are integral to the ways that meanings about/ of childhood are communicated.

192 Africa

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The spaces and places of childhood In surveying a range of childhood films, what is striking is that the spaces that children are placed in – the places where these narratives are played out – are often marginal spaces, peripheries or ‘in between’ spaces. For example, the opening of Malunde (Stefanie Sycholt, 2001) presents us with life under the bridges of Johannesburg as it introduces us to the street children who are part of the main focus of the film. Most of the film after the opening scenes can be seen as a ‘road movie’ taking place in the vast distances between Johannesburg and Cape Town, with numerous shots of the long roads, open desert landscape and small villages. These spaces and places are not ‘home’ for either 11-year-old Wonderboy or for his travelling companion, the white ex-soldier Kobus, and so they are spaces in which both characters can begin to reconceptualize themselves. This is seen most symbolically perhaps in Wonderboy’s purchase of a school uniform for himself as he casts himself into the role of Kobus’s business partner. Wonderboy’s statement that ‘I must wear a uniform when I get to my Mama’ whom he is hoping to meet in Cape Town, suggests that Wonderboy’s recasting of himself in this way, is both practical and aspirational. Similarly, in Abouna, brothers Tahir and Amine walk to the border to look for their father, searching intently in the ‘in between’ space for him. When they are later sent to a Koranic school by their mother, there is a strong sense of a physical and emotional displacement further emphasized by the forests and fields that the boys negotiate when they attempt to run away, and later again when Tahir runs away with the girl he has met. Another aspect of space to consider is the way that for children, the city is often a place of paradox: whilst often a place of hardship, the city also comes to represent for them a place of aspiration or liberation. For Sili Lam, in The Little Girl Who Sold the Sun, the city is not only a physical area that she needs to negotiate as a disabled young girl, it also represents a claiming of space for her. For it is here that she confidently asserts her right to sell the daily newspaper among the highly competitive group of male newspaper sellers. In a different way, for Noura in Halfaouine, the architecture of the city becomes a way of transcending social norms. It is significant that the subtitle of the film is ‘The Rooftop Hopper’, suggesting that this part of the city is not just a playground for Noura, as he literally flits and runs across the flat rooftops and down the alleyways, but that, as a child, he has easy access to both public and private spaces. He can participate in the worlds of both men and women, as well as observe them. The cinematic exploration of space and place, beyond its function as mise-enscène, is integral to a sense of what we might call ‘transformational identities’ in these child protagonists. The rapidly changing sense of self and place for the characters themselves and for the viewer raises a key question: when does childhood start and end?

The beginnings and ends of childhood The question of when childhood begins might seem straightforward (i.e. at birth), but given the diverse belief systems to be found in Africa, many of which include the idea of a ‘pre-life’ before a person comes to earth, I would argue that this may not be as straightforward as it seems. We get a hint of this, for example, in Bandian’s opening narration to The Golden Ball, quoted above. In a different way, Gaston Kaboré’s appropriately named Zan Boko (1988), meaning the place where

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the placenta is buried, alludes to the rituals of helping along the birth of a child and then welcoming him or her into the community The ‘end of childhood’ is perhaps even more fuzzy – other than in the case of death, such as so poignantly presented, for example, in Abouna when the younger brother Amine dies from asthma. Does childhood end when a person reaches a particular age; is it biologically through the onset of puberty; might it be formally through cultural conventions signifying a boy becoming a man or a girl a woman; and what of cases in which children are forced to take on full adult responsibilities at a very young age? For example, for Chanda in Life, Above All (Oliver Schmitz, 2010) who not only has to look after her siblings when her mother becomes ill and moves away, but has to deal with the prejudices of her community, it might be argued that she has been prematurely forced into adult life, and yet it is the fact of her youth, and the knowledge that there are many children on the African continent in similar situations, that makes her story so profound. Similarly, it might be argued that a film like Ezra, highlighting the plight of children abducted to fight as soldiers, points to the profound and moving contradiction of characters that are both stripped of their childhoods, yet are clearly in many other senses, still children. The question about the end of childhood is important not because of any necessity to find a ‘cut off point’ after which the film is no longer a film about childhood, but because it highlights the multiplicity and contradictions of childhood experience on the continent.

Michael Carklin

194 Africa

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Life, Above All Countries of Origin:

South Africa Germany Language:

sePedi (Northern Sotho), with English subtitles Studio:

Dreamer Joint Venture Director:

Oliver Schmitz Producer: 

Oliver Stoltz Screenwriter:

Dennis Foon Cinematographer:

Bernhard Jasper

Synopsis Adapted from the 2004 novel Chanda’s Secrets, by Allan Stratton, Life, Above All brings us the story of 12-year-old Chanda (Khomotso Manyaka), whose life changes very quickly when her mother falls ill. In trying to support her mother and look after her younger siblings, Chanda is forced to confront and challenge the values of those around her. Set in Elandsdoorn, a small town in South Africa, Chanda’s strength shines through as she takes a stand against those who see her mother’s illness as a punishment bringing ill omen to the community. In doing so, Chanda is forced to grapple with the complexities of life in her encounters with a variety of characters, including her best friend Esther (Keaobaka Makanyane), who has been forced into prostitution, her drunken stepfather Jonah (Aubrey Poolo) and Mrs Tafa (Harriet Manamela), the superstitious but supportive neighbour who convinces Chanda’s mother to leave the town to seek refuge elsewhere. Whilst the film is framed by death – Chanda’s baby sister Sarah’s at the start of the film, and her mother, Lillian’s, at the end – it is ultimately a life-affirming film in which Chanda’s courage and strength help to shift the taboos and fears of her community.

Set Designer:

Christiane Roth

Critique

Music:

Life, Above All confronts one of the key challenges that has faced Southern Africa in recent decades: the AIDS pandemic. Arguably, however, the power of the film lies in the fact that AIDS is not overtly focused on. In a community in which fear and superstition about AIDS prevails, it is the unspoken, the innuendo and insinuation that predominate. The director, Oliver Schmitz, perhaps best known for his 1987 film, Mapantsula, was drawn to Allan Stratton’s novel, Chanda’s Secrets, on which this film is based, because, he suggests, ‘it went beyond the narrowly conceived topic of AIDS in Africa’. He states: ‘What really inspired me in reading the book were the values it represents, and the young girl’s commitment to helping outsiders and to fighting for her family and for justice’ (http://peccaweb.co.uk/lifeaboveall/ wordpress/background/) Accessed 28 April 2014. It should be noted however, that there are two key changes from the novel – Schmitz sets the film very specifically in the small town of Elandsdoorn which gives the film cultural and linguistic specificity. This is clearly evident in the way that cinematography is used very evocatively to capture the physical environment and in the use of sePedi as the language of the film. Significantly, he also changes the age of Chanda from sixteen in the novel to twelve in the film, bringing it closer to the reality of life for many children of that age in towns and villages like Elandsdoorn. The haunting opening of the film, in which we hear a voice singing the hymn ‘The gates are opening’, is suggestive of life having gone slightly off-kilter: a low angle shot up through the branches of trees, life outside a darkened room framed by the window, a close-up of feet; colours are muted, the movement outside is rather slow. It is

Ali N Askin Editor:

Dirk Grau Duration:

106 minutes Genre:

Drama Cast:

Khomotso Manyaka Lerato Mvelase Harriet Manamela Keaobaka Makanyane Aubrey Poolo Mapaseka Mathebe Thato Kgaladi Kgomotso Ditshweni Year:

2010

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in this slightly strange context that we first meet Chanda talking to an undertaker, choosing a coffin and making funeral arrangements for her baby sister who has died. It is clear that Chanda has had to take on such responsibilities and is holding things together. This becomes a key thematic concern within the film, throwing into stark relief the responsibilities placed onto a young person like Chanda. Stylistically, the use of colouring, framing and pace as used in this opening is carried through the film, highlighting the ways that characters both perceive the outside world and their own emotional states. Chanda’s story is interwoven with a rich variety of characters who bring to the film the complexity of Chanda’s situation. Arguably, one of the key strengths of Life, Above All is the nonstereotypical character development. A good example of this is her stepfather, Jonah, who has turned to alcohol, and might very easily be portrayed simply as ‘the town drunk’. We can nonetheless clearly see his distress at Sarah’s death, his own confused views about Lillian (Lerato Mvelase ) being to blame for the death, the destructive impact of his own superstitions and the likelihood that he has AIDS himself. The relationship between Chanda and her best friend, Esther, is a poignant one, highlighting Chanda’s own independence of thought. We are witness to Esther’s own survival, as an orphan, but also to her vulnerability. Chanda tries to discourage her from prostitution when she sees her offering herself to truck drivers, and, after Esther is raped by a group of men in a car, telling her that they’ll infect her with AIDS, it is Chanda who brings her to stay in her mother’s house, much to the horror of Mrs Tafa and members of the community. Esther’s own predicament not only highlights the complex situation young people like her find themselves in, but also suggests the imperative that motivates young people like Chanda and Esther to take an independent stand against the received views and judgementalism of the community. Mrs Tafa is herself another interesting example of characterization within the film, and it is her own transformation which forms part of the climax of the film. Mrs Tafa is supportive, but is also interfering, fearful of people having the wrong impression, and, at times, manipulative. Chanda’s relationship with Mrs Tafa is an explosive one, and when Mrs Tafa convinces Lillian to leave Elandsdoorn, Chanda stands up to her angrily both in word and action, travelling to get her mother and bring her back home. In an earlier encounter, Mrs Tafa tells Chanda that her own son died in a robbery, and now Sarah has died of the flu; she mentions it, she says, so that ‘there is no misunderstanding’. The weight of this statement becomes clear with hindsight, when, towards the ends of the film, inspired by Chanda’s own courage and moral stand, Mrs Tafa comes to Chanda’s support in standing up to the community, and admits to Chanda that her son had not died in a robbery, but, the implication is, from AIDS: ‘He was so afraid people wouldn’t love him anymore. I dishonoured his death with a lie.’ Life, Above All is a moving, visually stimulating film in which the actors offer nuanced performances. Particular mention must be

196 Reviews

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made of the two young first-time actors from Elandsdoorn who play their roles passionately and thoughtfully: Khomotso Manyaka as Chanda and Keaobaka Makanyane as Esther. Life, Above All won six awards at the 5th South African Film and Television Awards, including Best Feature Film, the Prix François Challais at the Cannes Film Festival and the Special Jury Prize at the Dubai International Film Festival.

Michael Carklin

Everyone’s Child Country of Origin:

Zimbabwe Language:

English Studio:

Media for Development Trust Director:

Tsitsi Dangarembga

Synopsis Highlighting the plight of AIDS orphans in Zimbabwe, Tsitsi Dangarembga’s film focuses on the story of Tamari and Itai (both played by Nomsa Mlambo), who have to take care of their younger siblings and keep their household running when both their parents die. Their uncle Ozias (Walter Muparutsa), who should now care for them as head of the family, deserts them, and they get no help from their village community. Itai goes to Harare to try and find work, but soon discovers that this is impossible. He falls in with a group of street youths, and is eventually arrested for stealing. Meanwhile, Tamari faces obstacles and abuse in her struggle to survive – the shopkeeper will only give her credit if she sleeps with him; the

Everyone’s Child

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Producers:

Jonny Persey John Riber Ben Zulu Story:

Shimmer Chinodya  Screenwriters:

John Riber Andrew Whaley Tsitsi Dangarembga Cinematographers:

Bernhard Jasper Patrick Lindsell Art Director:

David Guwaza Music Director:

Keith Farquharson Editor:

Louise Riber Duration:

85 minutes Genre:

Drama Cast:

Nomsa Mlambo Casey Mugabe Walter Muparutsa Nkululeko Phiri Year:

1996

198 Reviews

other women shun her and call her a prostitute; the teacher will not accept the younger children into school. A turning point comes with the death of the youngest child, Nhamo (Casey Mugabe), in a house fire. The uncle realizes that he has done wrong by the children, and the community comes together to help rebuild the house. As the house is completed and the community eat together the rain falls.

Critique Based on a story by Shimmer Chinodya, Everyone’s Child is a film that has a clear sense of urgency, highlighting the idea that the raising of children is the responsibility of an entire community. In many ways this film can be seen as an indictment of the lack of care within society. Everyone’s Child is imbued with a deep feeling of desperation, and the ongoing and deepening struggles of teenagers Tamari and Itai cannot but evoke empathy in most viewers. This is a film in which young people have to grow up quickly, to assume adult responsibilities with little guidance or support, and have to become wise to the world as they experience abuse and exploitation. The character Tamari goes through a painful and lonely transition into the world of adult responsibility. The community and family structures that should be in place to support her fail as she struggles to get her sister into school, to earn a living and to provide food. Whilst she lives in a seemingly close-knit rural community, she is shunned by many of the adults because of the stigma of AIDS. From the start of the film the imagery subverts expectations of childhood responsibility with Tamari looking after her dying mother – care-giving responsibilities are reversed. The rite of passage that Tamari goes through from childhood to womanhood is not primarily a physical one, nor one of social recognition, rather it is one based in the forced assumption of responsibility. Everyone’s Child makes effective use of visual imagery to highlight the emotional isolation experienced by the characters. For example, in a striking scene, Tamari goes to the school to try and get her younger sister enrolled. Even though barely a child herself, struggling to raise her siblings and keep their home functioning, she is told that her sister cannot come to school because she cannot pay the fees. What is particularly impactful about the scene is the way it is communicated visually. We see the schoolchildren all leaving the school at the end of the day, chatting and laughing, dressed in their uniforms, walking toward the camera, whilst through them, her back to us, dressed in plain clothes, Tamari walks silently towards the school building. This becomes a poignant symbol for Tamari’s isolation and becomes part of her rite of passage from childhood to adulthood. It is the visual ‘subtext’ that speaks most strongly and critically. The theme of abuse and exploitation is prominent in the film. Dangarembga is able to evoke a strong sense of dramatic tension in the relationship between Tamari and the shopkeeper, for example. From his initial advances, such as touching Tamari’s hand when she

Directory of World Cinema

goes to buy food in the shop, to his blackmailing her to sleep with him if she is to survive, we get a profound sense of her vulnerability. This is compounded by her experience of being called a prostitute by other women in the village, despite their unwillingness to help her survive. The dramatic tension is also played out through the juxtaposition with her relationship with Thabiso (Nkululeko Phiri), the young musician who is in love with her. It is Thabiso’s love song to Tamari that eventually gives her the strength to stand up to the shopkeeper. Similarly, Itai’s experiences chart a journey that opens his eyes to the difficulties of the world. He goes to the city of Harare with every good intention, trying to do right for the family, but very quickly finds himself facing moral dilemmas. Itai tries hard to find work so that he can send money back to Tamari, but is unsuccessful and, as in the village, finds people unsympathetic. In the city he is just one of many homeless street youths, and although he gets into trouble, and ends up being caught for stealing, we are constantly aware of his own inner turmoil and frustration. Arguably one of the strengths of this film is that Itai and Tamari are not two-dimensional characters, or simply stereotypical ‘victims’; rather we have a real sense of their struggles and tensions being enacted at numerous levels, including physically, psychologically, emotionally and morally. Clear moral questions are posed in the film through the character of Uncle Ozias. It is their uncle, their father’s brother, who should have taken responsibility for them in terms of lineage. Not only does he abandon them but he also steals two of their bulls, and their plough, which he says is to pay their father’s debts. However, the Uncle also gradually goes through a transformation in the film coming to renewed insights. It takes the death of the youngest of the children, Nhamo, for him to reconsider his responsibilities. The scene of Nhamo’s funeral is a moving one, symbolized most poignantly by the toy wire helicopter which is brought out of the burnt out shell of the house and laid in his grave. The Uncle’s speech at the graveside gives voice to the key underlying theme of the film, and to the film’s title: It has taken the death of Nhamo to make me realize that these are my children. He was also Everyone’s child. We were all his father, his mother. But we stood by. We allowed death when we could have supported life. This film from Zimbabwe’s Media for Development Trust is a provocative one in that it demands the taking of responsibility, but it is also ends on a note of hope, the idea that change is possible.

Michael Carklin

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Malunde Countries of Origin:

South Africa Germany Language:

English Studios:

Traumwerk Filmproduktion (Munich) DO Productions (Johannesburg) Bayerischer Rundfunk Director:

Stefanie Sycholt Producers: 

Jürgen Biefang Marlow de Mardt Dieter Horres Brigid Olen

Synopsis A stirring film about shifting identities and changing relationships, Malunde recounts the story of 11-year-old street child, Wonderboy (Kagiso Mtetwa), and middle-aged white ex-soldier, Kobus (Ian Roberts), who embark on a journey together from Johannesburg to Cape Town. Wonderboy lives on the streets of Johannesburg, sleeping under cardboard boxes, begging for money, and protecting himself from the older boys. Kobus is unemployed, suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, and struggling to come to terms with changes in South Africa. Their lives are thrown together when Wonderboy jumps into Kobus’s van one day to avoid being shot at by drug dealers. Kobus is on his way to Cape Town trying to sell furniture wax, while Wonderboy dreams of getting to Cape Town to find his mother. Wonderboy and Kobus strike a business deal, and, as power relations shift, Wonderboy takes charge and they manage to start selling all their stock. Kobus helps Wonderboy find out about his mother, and in a moving scene towards the end of the film, we discover that she died in prison where she was held as a political prisoner, but Wonderboy gets to meet his grandparents (Mary Twala and Winston Ntshona) for the first time and so begins a new life.

Screenwriter:

Critique

Stefanie Sycholt

Malunde is about a literal journey – a road movie through the 1,400 km between Johannesburg and Cape Town – but it is also about metaphorical personal journeys which both Wonderboy and Kobus go on as they reconsider their knowledge and assumptions about each other and about South Africa more broadly. ‘Malunde’ is a colloquial Zulu term referring to the children of the streets, used by the children themselves in Johannesburg, and in this film changing childhood identities are exposed through the changing landscapes and communities through which Wonderboy and Kobus travel. The relationship between Wonderboy and Kobus is an unusual one, an 11-year old street child and an unemployed middle-aged white man who used to be a soldier in the apartheid security forces. But it is through their journey, in the open spaces between cities, that they can begin to come to terms with each other’s experiences, challenge each other and build a tentative, but mutually supportive, friendship. The opening shots of the film are the blurred images of street lights, traffic lights and street signs of Johannesburg as seen through the window of a moving car at night. This is an appropriate metaphor for the film as a whole, for it is not about a particular setting, as much as about shifting contexts. Physical space as something that is ‘moved through’ arguably suggests the possibility of transcending fixed circumstances, of personal movement, even for a street child like Wonderboy. That said, it is the streets of Johannesburg that highlight the vulnerable status Wonderboy holds within the urban society – the first shots of Wonderboy sleeping rough, witnessing a drug deal and washing his clothes in a nearby street-tap with his friends, suggest a childhood experience not characterized by innocence or security. The portrayal of Wonderboy is not a stereotypical one,

Cinematographer:

Jürgen Jürges Set Designer:

Fred du Preez Costume Designer:

Ruy Filipe Music:

Annette Focks Editor:

Ulrika Tortora Duration:

119 minutes Genre:

Drama Cast:

Kagiso Mtetwa Ian Roberts Mary Twala Winston Ntshona Musa Kaiser Wilmien Roussouw Grethe Fox Dolly Rathebe

200 Reviews

Directory of World Cinema

Year:

2001

and the complexity of his character becomes evident as the story of the search for his mother unfolds. Wonderboy carries a photo of his mother, and a letter from her, with him at all times. A number of times, Wonderboy ‘makes up’ the letter from his mother, pretending to read it, giving us insight into his desire to find her and live with her again. Where for Wonderboy the letter and photo are a stark symbol of a different future, a small tangible token of a different life, the audience becomes aware that it is also a symbol of family breakup and of a childhood life away from any parental nurturing. Kobus’s decision to help Wonderboy find out what happened to his mother is also a turning point in their relationship, giving him insight into the effect of apartheid on children and forcing him to reflect on his own relationship with his estranged daughter. At the start of the film, Kobus is psychologically at a low point, trying to come to terms with the fact that where he was once a hero, serving his country, he has now been told it was all a mistake and that he is, in his words, ‘the scum of the earth’. At one point Kobus draws his gun at the home of his brother and sister-in-law with whom he is staying. Kobus’s niece is woken up by the sound of shooting outside when one of Kobus’s friends shoots a cactus. Kobus, in a moment of disorientation, draws his own gun and holds it to his friend’s head, seemingly ready to shoot and much shouting ensues, as the niece stands in her nightdress and watches, her sleep interrupted. The sense of childhood disorientation suggests that whilst clearly better off than Wonderboy, even for Kobus’s niece, there is a tangible sense of vulnerability and danger for the child. Whilst on their travels, it is Wonderboy’s assertion of his own identity that paradoxically helps Kobus regain his own sense of self. After Kobus has tried unsuccessfully to sell his stock of ‘Rainbow Wax’, Wonderboy takes command and declares confidently to Kobus that, ‘Today we’re getting rid of all that wax’. Wonderboy’s statement signals a distinct reversal of authority. He decides where they should go to sell the polish, and takes an initially nervous Kobus into the heart of a nearby township. In the township church where a group of women are singing, and later having tea at the home of one of the women, Kobus clearly feels out of place. Wonderboy has to keep silently prompting him to do the right thing – it is a cultural context that Wonderboy understands well, and they manage to sell a large number of tins of wax. However, our image of the child here is not simply one of the ‘street-savvy street child’ or the local child explaining customs to a foreigner; rather it is one of a child who is able to take charge, to recognize opportunities, for his own benefit as well as Kobus’s, and to work imaginatively towards fulfilling his goal of getting to Cape Town. Malunde is a film that sensitively probes shifting psychological landscapes in post-apartheid South Africa in the ambiguous landscapes that the characters journey through. Its richness lies in the intertwining of childhood and adult experience that suggests the possibility for mutual change and the potential for renewed childhood identities in the flux of a changing nation.

Michael Carklin

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The Wooden Camera Countries of Origin:

South Africa France UK Language:

English Studios:

Odelion Richard Green & Associates Tall Stories Director:

Ntshaveni wa Luruli Producers: 

Olivier Delahaye Richard Green Ben Woolford Screenwriter:

Peter Speyer Yves Buclet Cinematographer:

Gordon Spooner Production Designer:

Jean-Vincent Puzos Art Director:

Heather Cameron Costume Designer:

Leigh Bishop Sound Designer:

Hervé Buirette Editor:

Kako Kelber Duration:

105 minutes Genre:

Drama Cast:

Junior Singo Innocent Msimango Dana de Agrella Fats Bookholane Jean-Pierre Cassell Andre Jacobs 202 Reviews

Synopsis When Madiba (Junior Singo) and Sipho (Innocent Msimango) find a dead body at the side of a railway line, it is the start of different paths their lives will take. Sipho takes a gun from the man’s belongings, while Madiba, with some encouragement, takes a video camera. Disguising his camera in a decorated wooden box, Madiba shoots scenes of township and city life, experimenting with different shapes and camera angles. One day while in the Cape Town city centre, he films a young white girl, Estelle (Dana de Agrella), through the window of a bookshop. She notices him and drops a book for him as she’s being driven away in her mother’s car. Thus begins a friendship between the two as they encounter aspects of each other’s lives, and reconsider the values and experiences of their parents. Sipho meanwhile enters a life of gangsterism. Emboldened by the power of the gun, he threatens those around him, plays Russian roulette, and becomes involved in a life of theft while Madiba aspires to be a film-maker.

Critique The Wooden Camera uses childhood perspective to present a touching and thought-provoking story of changing relationships between the young protagonists of the film. Referring to the ‘wooden camera’ (a real camera concealed in a box), the film is set firmly in post-apartheid South Africa, a society which nonetheless continues to grapple with the legacies of racism and inequality. Much of the film is seen through the eyes of Madiba, as we view the footage that he captures on his video camera, and the story itself is narrated by Madiba’s younger sister, Louise. In this sense, character perspective is important because director Ntashaveni wa Luruli offers us a view of South Africa through the experiences of young people who would have been born after the formal system of apartheid came to an end. At one level, the film can be read simply as a story of a growing friendship between two children, Madiba and Estelle, who, because they are children, are in some ways able to subvert race and class expectations of the past, or to rebel against the attitudes of their parents. However, at another level, the film can be read as a metaphor for post-apartheid South Africa as a country faced with choices: like Madiba and Sipho who come across the dead body at the railway line, choosing the gun or the video camera leads to very different lives, different ways of imagining the future, different senses of identity and ultimately, different endings. A striking aspect of the film is the imagery we see as if filmed through Madiba’s camera. The style and aesthetic of Madiba’s shots of life in Khayelitsha and Cape Town city centre is different to the rest of the film, often black and white with a handheld quality, focusing on patterns and shapes. At points Madiba works like a documentary film-maker as his sister provides voice-over, at others he is deliberately experimental – he experiments filming a candle through different bowls and dishes to see what the effect is. Then

Directory of World Cinema

Year:

2003

he experiments filming the township through a glass filter. In some ways the film becomes an exploration of beauty, of finding beauty in the everyday. For Madiba, encouraged by community worker and music teacher, Mr Shawn (Jean-Pierre Cassell), being a film-maker is also aspirational. Inasmuch as this is a film about children, it is also a film about conflict with parents. On the one hand, we see the kind of general rebellion that older children might enact in forging independent identities, but on the other, it is also rebellion that is specifically situated in the South African context. For Estelle growing up in a well-off white family, this rebellion finds expression in the way she decorates her room (which her father describes as being ‘like a squatter camp’), the books she has, the way she dresses and does her hair and her friendships with both Madiba and Sipho. Even her music is a sense of rebellion as she tells Mr Shawn she wants to play jazz on her cello rather than Bach. Crucially, it is Estelle’s rebellion that leads to her father (Andre Jacobs) having to reveal the secret that he has been hiding, namely that he is mixed race. Madiba also very deliberately chooses a path different to his father’s. He observes in his father (Fats Bookholane) a broken man who has turned to alcohol to sustain him, and experiences his wrath. Madiba captures his behaviour on the camera which perhaps allows him to see his father at a slight distance. When his father says to him, ‘My son is in love with a white girl; Son, you have arrived,’ and toasts him sarcastically, Madiba is clearly hurt. But there is a sense of past wounds being opened, and of the deep wounds of apartheid which have impacted fundamentally on his father. The character of Sipho perhaps represents another aspect of childhood in this context. He is the gun-toting gang leader whose sense of personal power comes from the threat of violence. However, he is also a vulnerable person, and we see his desire for friendship and to be accepted coming through too. A number of times Sipho holds the gun to his own head and pulls the trigger, to shock other people and assert his prowess. Sniffing glue, striking up a friendship with Estelle and getting further into crime, show Sipho to be a troubled and deserted character. The turning point for Madiba comes when his camera is stolen by another boy, and Sipho chases after him, wrestles him to the ground, and shoots and kills him. Sipho is shocked by this himself, and there is a sense of having passed a point of no return. It is the image of Sipho lying in a hospital bed with an oxygen mask on, handcuffed to the bed, and then seeing him die, that lead Madiba and Estelle to strike out on their own in a new world. Paying tribute to Sipho, they watch shots that Madiba filmed of him as they both remember him. After filming goodbye messages to their parents, Madiba and Estelle leave Cape Town together on a train. The final image is one of the beginning of a journey, it is one of breaking free with no real destination in sight, but that step into the unknown is arguably one of facing a new world bravely.

Michael Carklin

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Abouna, Our Father Abouna, notre père Countries of Origin:

Chad France Netherlands Languages:

French Arabic Studios:

Duo Films Goi-Goi Productions Tele-Chad Commission Européenne Director:

Mahamat-Saleh Haroun Producers: 

Guillame de Seille Kalala Hissein Djibrine Abderrahmane Sissako Screenwriter:

Mahamat-Saleh Haroun Cinematographer:

Abraham Haile Biru Production Designer:

Laurent Cavero Costume Designer:

Hassanie Lazingar Music:

Ali Farka Touré Editor:

Sarah Taouss-Matton Duration:

84 minutes Genre:

Drama Cast:

Ahidjo Mahamat Moussa Hamza Moctar Aguid Mounira Khalil Zara Haroun

204 Reviews

Synopsis Set in N’Djamena, the capital of Chad, Abouna follows the story of two brothers, 15-year-old Tahir (Ahidjo Mahamat Moussa) and 8-year-old Amine (Hamza Moctar Aguid), who go in search of their father (Koulsy Lamko). Waking up one morning to discover their father has gone, the boys search the city but are unable to find him. Tahir and Amine go to watch a film at the local cinema and think that they see their father on-screen as one of the actors. Later they skip school and go back to steal the film reels to check, but the police are called and their mother (Zara Haroun) decides to take them away from the city to a rural Koranic school where she says they’ll be well educated. It is an unhappy experience for them, and they try to run away but are caught and punished. One of the other children hides Amine’s asthma inhaler, and after an attack one night, Amine dies. A distraught Tahir escapes back to the city, followed by a deaf and mute girl (Mounira Khalil) he has met at the school. Together, they find his mother in hospital having suffered a breakdown.

Critique A moving and ultimately hopeful film, Abouna focuses on the issue of fathers who disappear from their families, and the lives of those who are left behind. It is the story that unfolds in the wake of such a disappearance that is presented through a rich use of colour, imaginative cinematography and engaging characterization. The opening long shot of the film – a man walking across a desert, who eventually approaches the camera, turns and stares directly into it, before walking off into the distance to the haunting strains of Ali Farka Touré’s music – sets the tone both thematically and aesthetically. The man, presumably the father of the title, has not just gone missing it seems, but has made a decision to leave. It is the representation of the boys as children that makes their stories so engaging, from their waiting around with the other children for their father to come referee their football match to their joking and teasing: ‘Why do roosters crow?’ asks Amine when they are both going to sleep; ‘Cos they don’t want us to hear them farting’ comes the punchline as both boys giggle uncontrollably in the dark. It is a touching and telling scene when, after the boys’ mother tells them that their father is ‘irresponsible’, Amine finds a dictionary definition of the word and, misunderstanding, comes to the conclusion that his mother meant that his father was not responsible for leaving. At a different level Abouna is also a film about film. When Tahir and Amine decide to go to the cinema to take their minds off the search for their father, there is a stirring moment when they see the character of a father on-screen who they are sure is their father. The father turns and seemingly looks directly at them from the screen saying ‘Hello children’. It is a strangely ambiguous moment as, for a few seconds, Tahir and Amine believe he is talking to them, until the on-screen children who he is actually addressing come into shot, and the illusion is broken for the boys. There is an affecting

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Koulsy Lamko Diego Moustapha Ngarade Year:

2002

blurring of the characters’ reality and the cinematic reality of the film they are watching. This is further emphasized when the boys decide to skip school the next day and go to the cinema to check the film reels for images of their father, eventually taking the reels home with them. The image of the cinema itself is significant as Haroun has often commented (e.g. The Guardian, 15 November 2002) on the fact that there are no cinemas in Chad other than one at the French Cultural Institute. It is interesting to note the film posters that attract Tahir and Amine: there is a poster for Yaaba/Grandmother, Idrissa Ouédraogo’s 1989 film about a 10-year-old boy who befriends an elderly woman isolated by her village and accused of witchcraft; Charlie Chaplin’s The Kid, the 1921 silent film which brings comedy and drama together as Chaplin takes responsibility for raising an abandoned child; and Jim Jarmusch’s Stanger than Paradise (1984), perhaps an influence on Haroun for its moments of absurdism and strong independent ethic. Whilst the reason for this choice of films is never made evident, it is clearly intentioned to be an eclectic selection that arguably says something about the films Haroun would like people to have the opportunity to experience. The stealing of the film reels results in Tahir and Amine being sent to a Koranic school away from the city. It is a harsh existence for them, and visually there is a strong sense of being isolated in an arid area. It is also whilst they are there, however, that their uncle Adoum (Diego Moustapha Ngarade) comes to see them and brings a poster from their father – a picture of the sea. He tells them that their father is in Tangiers. They put the poster up on their wall and imagine themselves swimming in the sea. It becomes a powerful symbol of hope and aspiration. Such aspiration is brought to a harsh end with Amine’s death, however. The way his death is represented again highlights a symbolic use of framing, and Abraham Haile Biru’s very touching, sensitive cinematography. Having asked Tahir to read his bedtime book to him again to take his mind off his breathing difficulties, Amine says that although he always falls asleep before the end, tonight he will listen to the end. To the sound of Tahir’s reading, we see the window to the room from the outside. Gradually the camera draws back, we hear the sound of wailing, and in an understated way, we become aware that Amine has died. Whilst for Amine, life has been cut short, Tahir’s childhood journey starts to come to an end not only through coming to terms with the death of his close brother, but also in discovering love and in taking on the responsibility of caring for his deeply depressed, unresponsive mother. The film ends with a series of tableaux during which Tahir’s singing and care gradually start bringing her back to health. Abouna has won numerous awards including the International Federation of Film Critics Award (2003), the FESPACO Award for Best Cinematography (2003) and the UNICEF Award for Childhood (2003).

Michael Carklin

Childhood in African Cinema 205

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The Golden Ball Le Ballon d’or Countries of Origin:

Guinea France Language:

French Studios:

Chrysalide Films Le Studio Canal+ France 2 Cinéma Bako Productions Director:

Cheik Doukouré Producer: 

Monique Annaud Line Producer:

Jean-Yves Asselin Executive Producer:

Roger Baltzer Screenwriters:

Cheik Doukouré Martin Brossollet David Carayan Cinematographer:

Alain Choquart Production Designer:

Yan Arlaud Costume Design:

Marilyn Fitoussi Music:

Loy Ehrlich Jean-Marcel Milan Editor:

Michèle Robert-Lauliac Duration:

90 minutes Genres:

Drama Comedy Cast:

Aboubacar Sidiki Soumah

206 Reviews

Synopsis The Golden Ball is a joyous film that follows the journey of 10-yearold Bandian (Aboubacar Sidiki Soumah), who aspires to be a football star, from his village in Guinea to the city of Kissidougo, the capital Conakry, and finally Saint-Étienne in France. Inspired by the Cameroonian football legend, Roger Milla, strengthened by the incantations of Sara the village traditional healer (Lamfia Kouyaté), and supported by Madame Aspirin (Agnès Soral), the Médecins Sans Frontières doctor who gets him his first proper football, Bandian battles against the odds to realize his dream of being a footballer. Bandian is supported and encouraged by Bouba (Aboubacar Koïta), who he describes as ‘a really streetwise dwarf’, and who he meets in Conakry when working at an abattoir to earn money. When playing football one day, Bandian is spotted by businessman, Bechir Bithar (Habib Hamoud), who gets him into Guinea’s top football school led by the great footballer, Karim (Salif Keita) – it is the start of a new future.

Critique Football is presented in a number of films from Africa not simply as a pastime in both rural and urban contexts, but as a symbol of aspiration, as a stimulus for community cohesion, and as a representation of local and national identities. Like later films such as Themba, A Boy Called Hope (Stefanie Sycholt, 2010) and Africa United (Deborah Gardner-Paterson, 2010), The Golden Ball has football at the centre of its narrative, highlighting the widespread popularity of the game on the continent, and offering the viewer a particular perspective on childhood experience. The Golden Ball is partly presented by Bandian through voiceover, using first-person narration. Taking on the role of storyteller as well as protagonist, Bandian offers the audience the story from his own perspective. The audience is first introduced to village life. Members of the community are gathered around a radio listening to the commentary of a football match being played in the city, and the children play at being football stars themselves. Bandian collects and swaps football cards with friends, and collects wood to sell at the market to save money for a football. But while Bandian dreams of being a professional football player, he also faces various personal challenges – his mother is ill and he clearly worries about her, and he is ill-treated by his father’s second wife. Bandian feels a sense of responsibility for his mother and seeks the help of ‘Madame Aspirin’ (Isabelle), the local MSF doctor, but his father will only allow his mother to be treated by the traditional healer, Sara. The juxtaposition and confluence of contrasting world views, traditions and influences is so much part of life across Africa, and arguably finds focus in the experiences of children like Bandian who try to make sense of and negotiate this eclecticism. Bandian’s experience highlights a number of these contrasts, such as the poor conditions of Fodé’s house in the city which he shares with other boys compared with the Novotel hotel where he is to meet

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Aboubacar Koïta Agnès Soral Mariam Kaba Salif Keita Habib Hamoud Amara Camara Lamfia Kouyaté Year:

1994

Madame Aspirin for his lift back home; the abundance of food at the abattoir where he gets a job which contrasts so markedly with his village experience, including ‘so much meat … you could fill thousands of stomachs with all that, but I’ve lost my appetite’ (Bandian voice-over, translated); and the way Bandian is perceived as a ‘country boy’ contrasted with the survival skills he displays in the streets. However, as with a number of francophone African films, it is not just the postcolonial African city that is seen as a place of modernity, but Paris itself becomes a focus of aspiration. One of the iconic images of The Golden Ball, and of the African city itself, is the football stadium. As in the West, the stadium encompasses connotations of skill, celebrity, passion and spectacle. The African stadiums in this film, however, draw people like a magnet to view the players from any possible vantage point either from within the stadium or outside it; the players run around on a dusty pitch, and the pre-match entertainment consists of a programme of African drumming, dance and music. In the middle of the film, we watch a scene in which Bandian and Bouba go to watch a football match in Conakry. At the stadium Bandian and Bouba climb up a very tall metal pylon, together with hundreds of others, to get a view of the match inside. Towering way above the roof of the stands, Bandian provides commentary of the match. At a certain point in the match, the ball is kicked up onto the roof of the stadium, and Bandian jumps down from the seemingly impossible height of the pylon onto the roof, and starts kicking the ball, keeping it in the air, showing off his skills, to the delight of the crowds below and around. After some time, a long shot shows the police running across the roof to stop this spectacle, and as the film cuts to the next scene, we see Bandian and Bouba sitting in an overcrowded prison cell, where, as the only child in a cell full of adults, he is teased by a transvestite who keeps calling him ‘cutey’. It is in this city context that Bandian can show off his skill, but also has his eyes opened to many new experiences and people. The Golden Ball also touches on the ethics of football and children. Bechir and Karim present opposing perspectives when it comes to Bandian accepting a contract with a football club in France. For Bechir, the ill-tempered and impatient businessman, Bandian represents a ‘gold mine’ and a sound business deal. Karim, on the other hand, argues that Bandian shouldn’t just be judged by his money-making potential and that talent such as his should be nurtured for African football and not exported to Europe. Whilst Bandian does ultimately accept the contract in France, encouraged by his father and sister who perhaps see the unique opportunity he is being given as a route out of poverty, it is nonetheless significant that the film raises this debate. The Golden Ball is ultimately a heart-warming film that presents a childhood tale of ambition and determination, ending on a note of achievement and optimism.

Michael Carklin

Childhood in African Cinema 207

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Halfaouine, Boy of the Terraces Halfahouine, l’enfant des terrasses Countries of Origin:

Tunisia France Italy Language:

Arabic Studios:

Cinétéléfilms France Média Les Films du Scarabée Director:

Férid Boughedir Producers: 

Ahmed Baha Attia Sylvain Bursztejn Hassen Daldoul Eliane Stutterheim Screenwriters:

Férid Boughedir Nouri Bouzid Taoufik Jebali Maryse León García Cinematographer:

Georges Barsky Production Designer:

Taieb Jalloulie Costume Designer:

Naama Jazi Music:

Anouar Brahem Editors:

Marie-Christine Rougerie Moufida Tlatli Duration:

98 minutes Genre:

Drama Cast:

Selim Boughedir 208 Reviews

Synopsis Férid Boughedir’s coming-of-age film follows the experiences of 12-year-old Noura (Selim Boughedir) from the bathhouses to the streets and living quarters of Halfaouine, a district of central Tunis, as he faces the question of what it means to become a man. As his family prepares for, and celebrates, his younger brother’s circumcision, Noura struggles to come to terms with his own changing identity. Spurred on by two older boys, Noura becomes aware of the women’s naked bodies he observes at the public baths with his mother La Jamila (Rabia Ben Abdalla). His confusion is compounded by the embarrassment he feels from the sexual innuendo of the women’s joking, and by the different men he sees around him, including his strict but hypocritical father Si Azzouz (Mustapha Adouani), and the playwright and shoemaker, Salih (Mohammed Driss), who offers him an alternative view on relationships. A turning point comes when Noura is caught at home showing Leila (Carolyn Chelby), the girl who works for his family, how to undress for the baths. She is forced to leave, but not before he has had a chance to see her naked under the bed covers. The film ends as Noura, elated from his experience with Leila, climbs up to the rooftops.

Critique Halfaouine is a moving film that through gentle humour, rich symbolism and a perceptive narrative offers insight into the experiences of a boy entering the transitional stages from childhood to manhood. Set against a backdrop of political unrest in Tunisia, this film offers viewers a sensitive perspective on the confusion and excitement of a transforming childhood. It might be argued that we encounter Noura in various liminal spaces – ‘in between’ spaces or spaces of transition. In a physical sense, as a child Noura is in the privileged position of being able to experience both women’s and men’s domains within the city and household. Further, in a more symbolic sense, we might understand this liminal space as referring to Noura’s own ambiguous position of being part-child, part-emerging adult. Noura’s transformation takes place within an overtly gendered social set-up, and is thus one in which the move from boyhood to manhood is also a very distinct shift from women’s space to that of men. Noura’s ability, as a child, to move between these different spaces gives the viewer a perspective that in many ways would be impossible through an adult character. In this sense, through Noura’s point of view (often the point of view of the camera, too), the viewer is offered a privileged perspective. In an interview conducted by Laura Mulvey and Christine James, Boughedir comments on the importance of the child’s gaze, the look of curiosity and investigation: I wanted to show the ability of the child to see magic and poetry in life, whereas adults only see the banal. For example, the hands of the women as they are preparing food for the

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Carolyn Chelby Hélène Catzaras Mohammed Driss Rabia Ben Abdalla Mustapha Adouani Year:

1990

feast is magical and I filmed it like a spectator, like the boy gazing fixedly. The camera was the boy’s eyes. A child has the time to look at things like this. The camera can look like a child with curiosity and in so doing, open up the experience to us as adults. (A summary of this interview is available in Ashbury, Helsby and O’Brien 1998) This notion of the camera adopting the child’s point of view is fundamental to the way meaning is constructed in the film, but we should nonetheless remember that this point of view is directed by an adult film-maker who is using a combination of imagination and memory to construct such a perspective. Through the child character of Noura, the film-maker is able to adopt a transgressive position. In the public baths we are witness to the gradual shift in Noura’s gaze, from the detached observation of the women’s bodies around him to a more intensive and interested staring. Noura is ultimately caught spying on one of the women washing and is thrown out of the baths. The body becomes a clear point of focus, and Noura has crossed a social boundary. In Halfaouine, we see various other examples of Noura observing the women from a boy’s, and increasingly a man’s, perspective, including watching the women trying on clothing, and listening to their discussions about intimate subjects that he increasingly finds embarrassing. Part of Noura’s liminal experience is also expressed through the dreams and nightmares he experiences through the film. Fuelled by his mother’s stories of Aisha and the Ogre, Noura has frightening dreams, in which the town butcher becomes the ogre, and Leila becomes a bleeding Aisha. Stylistically, this move from realism into a dreamlike world offers a striking metaphor for his fears and insecurities. Similarly when he hides away during his brother’s circumcision, apparently feeling the pain too, we have a sense of his own frightening rite of passage. Noura’s fear can be partly ascribed to his uncertainty about manhood. Clearly, it is not only Noura’s growing awareness of women that drives his changing perceptions; it is also the different kinds of male role models that he encounters. The male characters highlight for Noura different kinds of masculinity, and it becomes clear that it is not self-evident to Noura what ‘being a man’ actually is. Noura’s relationship with his father is a strained one. He hears his father complaining about having to have his wife’s relative, Latifa (Hélène Catzaras), staying at their home because she is a divorcee and is flirtatious, yet Noura sees him in his shop stroking the arm of a woman customer as he’s trying to sell her some fabric. Noura also finds his father’s erotic magazines hidden in his office. There is a disjunction for Noura between his father’s unemotional strictness and the behaviour which he observes. In sharp contrast to Noura’s father is the shoemaker, Salih, who writes songs and plays and enjoys drinking alcohol. He comes across as a romantic, and is witty. However, it is Salih who is arrested and taken away for expressing a political view by drunkenly changing graffiti on a wall one night, perhaps a symbol for the precarious position of the artist in that society. Childhood in African Cinema 209

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Ultimately the film is one of rich symbolism and sympathetic characterization that ends with a feeling of liberation. Noura’s playful defiance of his father’s instructions, suggests a renewed sense of self and a growing assertion of independence as he negotiates his way through his final years of childhood.

Michael Carklin

Ali Zaoua Countries of Origin:

Morocco France Language:

Arabic Studios:

Playtime – TF1 International Ali N’Productions Alexis Films – Ace Editing Director:

Nabil Ayouch Producers:

Nabil Ayouch Martine Lambrechts Screenwriters:

Nabil Ayouch Nathalie Saugeon Cinematographer:

Vincent Mathias Art Director:

Said Rais Music:

Krishna Levy Editor:

Jean-Robert Thomann Duration:

95 minutes Genres:

Drama Modern children’s tale Cast:

Mounïm Kbab Mustapha Hansali Hicham Moussoune

210 Reviews

Synopsis Fifteen-year-old Ali (Abdelhak Zhayra) longs to become a sailor and embark on a trip to find an island he has dreamt of, the island with the two setting suns. He and three friends have recently broken away from Dib’s gang. They have moved to an outdoor patch by the port where Ali has befriended a compassionate fisherman who has taken him on as a cabin-boy. When Dib (Saïd Taghmaoui) and his minions try to persuade him to join their ranks again, the defiant Ali stubbornly refuses. During the showdown, one of Dib’s boys heaves a stone at Ali. The blow to the head kills him instantly. His three young friends Kwita, Omar and Boubker take his corpse back to their living area and hide it in a cellar so as to conceal it from the night watchmen. Kwita (Mounïm Kbab) is determined to bury his friend by any means necessary. With the help of Omar (Mustapha Hansali) and Boubker (Hicham Moussoune), Kwita endeavours to gather all that is required so that the burial may be worthy of Ali, the ‘prince of the streets’.

Critique Ali Zaoua, Nabil Ayouch’s second feature film made in 2000, deservedly won numerous international awards on its release, including the Grand Prix Etalon de Yennenga at the 2001 FESPACO. In his first short film Les Pierres bleues/The Blue Stones (1992), Ayouch had explored childhood and coming of age in a rural setting, revisited here in a harsh urban environment. Ali Zaoua portrays the rough life of street children fending for themselves in Casablanca, spending their time between glue-sniffing, petty jobs or theft. After the completion of the script, Ayouch searched for many months for street children to play his fictional characters, as he wished for the children to draw from their own real-life experiences. Yet, despite an unforgiving and brutal context, Ayouch’s film is an uplifting children’s tale in which realism merges effortlessly with the imaginary. Within the first minutes of the film, we learn that Ali is determined to become a sailor and reach his Eldorado – the island with the two setting suns. Although the film title bears Ali’s name implying his lead, it is Kwita who is the main protagonist of the story. His trajectory is characteristic of the myth of the journey of the hero: a tragic event leads to a task that the hero must accomplish. He is aided by friends or strangers and must overcome adversaries. He

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Ali Zaoua

Abdelhak Zhayra Saïd Taghmaoui Amal Ayouch Mohamed Majd Year:

2000

obtains an object of great importance which moves him forward on his quest, triumphing over further obstacles. He is ultimately successful in what he set out to achieve, maturing in the process. The conventional ending is a wedding and/or accession to a throne. In Ayouch’s tale, Ali’s sudden death results in Kwita’s decision: Ali’s life may have been undignified, but his funeral will be dignified. On the path to accomplishing this, Kwita is helped by sullen Omar and soft-hearted Boubker, as well as by fisherman Hamid (Mohamed Majd). Dib, the deaf and speech-impaired youth who has rallied a large band of street children under his command, remains the boys’ foe. Dib and his acolytes continue to exert pressure on the boys to join them, even after Ali’s unexpected demise. On learning that Dib has obtained Ali’s compass, Kwita resolves to and succeeds in recovering Ali’s most precious possession. With Hamid’s help, a coffin is built and beautifully painted and Ali is dressed as the sailor he yearned to become. As the boat sails so that the cabin-boy’s body may rest at sea, the self-effacing and unassertive Kwita glares fiercely at Dib and his posse with a newfound sternness and confidence. It is his turn to be defiant, claiming to the boys gazing back in awe that he now has a girlfriend, before joining Hamid at the helm of the boat with Ali’s compass. Kwita has accomplished his mission, developing tenacity and a sense of purpose, the respect of his peers, the friendship of the fisherman whilst falling in love with a girl. The closing sequence of the film is a magical animation of Ali’s imaginary island. As the camera zooms out of the cellar and back to the patch at the port, the tale is re-contextualized, with the last shot being of a setting sun and a full moon over the sea, two large discs shining brightly on the horizon, coming full circle to the island with the two setting ‘suns’. Despite using Ali’s fictitious island as both the framework and the thread with which the whole plot is woven, Ayouch embeds the boys’ innocent dreams and aspirations into their social reality of extreme hardship. The violence they endure,

Childhood in African Cinema 211

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verbal, emotional, physical and sexual, is either depicted or strongly intimated, leaving no room for ambiguity. Through both the narrative’s elements and the use of animated sequences, Ali Zaoua is an endearing and at times harrowing tale suffused with absorbing melancholy, sorrow as well as disarming candour. The choice of street children as actors incontestably adds another dimension both to the realism and intensity of the performances. Their background proves a bridge across the boundary between fact and fiction. It is therefore no wonder that screenings of the film in Morocco helped bring the issue of street children to the fore. Through the unfolding of their loyalties, sense of solidarity and of propriety, their pleasures and dreams, Ali Zaoua is a most cogent plea by Ayouch to address the issue of street children, their future and their dignity.

Rosa Abidi

The Little Girl Who Sold the Sun La Petite vendeuse de soleil Countries of Origin:

Senegal France Switzerland Languages:

Wolof French Arabic Studios:

Waka Films SA Cephéide Productions Maag Daan Director:

Djibril Diop Mambéty Producers:

Silvia Voser Djibril Diop Mambéty Screenwriter:

Djibril Diop Mambéty Cinematographer:

Jacques Besse 212 Reviews

Synopsis The Little Girl Who Sold the Sun (which will subsequently be referred to as Little Girl) is Mambéty’s second short film in his trilogy exploring the subject of money and its perverse effects on society, referred to as ‘Tales of Little [and sometimes Ordinary] People’ (Histoires de petites gens). Le Franc (1994) is the first instalment of this trilogy. Little Girl was being edited at the time of Mambéty’s death in 1998 and the trilogy was thus left incomplete. (Mambéty had commenced a trilogy of feature films with ToukiBouki [1973] and Hyènes/Hyenas [1992], and this trilogy was also left incomplete.) Little Girl is the colourful story of Sili Laam, a paraplegic and impoverished child who begs for money until she is trampled by a gang of young newspaper sellers. This physical collision awakens her to her potential and its possible fulfilment: she, like the boys, can sell newspapers and earn a living. Sili embraces this consciousness and from then on builds her future through her own power of determination. Her aspiration is legitimate, yet she is bullied by the boys who see her entering ‘their’ market and territory as unwanted competition, to be kept out by any means necessary. Despite the completely unbalanced battleground and their common need for survival, the taunting of the boys is as relentless as it is unwarranted.

Critique ‘We are done for if we have traded our souls for money. That is why childhood is my last refuge’ (Ukadike 1998: 140). These grave words are those of Senegalese writer-director Djibril Diop Mambéty whose auteurist body of work, spanning three decades, is a critical reflection on Senegalese culture. Explored through the prism of childhood, Little Girl challenges issues of power relations

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Music:

Wasis Diop Dieynaba Laam Editor:

Sarah Taouss-Matton Duration:

45 minutes Genres:

Drama Children’s stories Fable Cast:

Lissa Baléra Taïrou M’Baye Oumou Samb Moussa Baldé Dieynaba Laam Martin N’Gom Year:

1998

through economic dependence, disability and gender, blending with subtlety fantastical and folktale elements with social realism, to create a moving and refreshingly optimistic story of courage and resilience. As a beggar, Sili (Lissa Baléra) was standing by the roadside, whereas as a newspaper seller she walks through the city’s streets. Long shots are used to emphasize her restriction of action and strikingly jerked movements, this ‘gesturality’ being an effect specifically sought by Mambéty. However, the impairment of Sili’s body is subordinated throughout to the power of her will and intellect. Hers is a constant journey forward. Her openness and receptivity to challenges are indicated by her confident ‘let’s go’, further corroborated by the push forward with her crutch, a recurrent leitmotiv. The spectator is also intermittently reminded of her unfailing determination through the use of sound and the pounding resonance of her crutches on the ground. The explicit parallel between the young boys’ demeaning behaviour and the practices of the World Bank and IMF is unambiguous, and is articulated through the diegetic announcement of the devaluation of the West African currency, the CFA Franc. Allegorically, the continent’s value is being diminished; literally, it is the importance of money which is itself being devalued. Whereas the former event appears to be negative, Mambéty posits the latter as positive inasmuch as relationships may therefore be based on other, more sustainable principles.

The Little Girl Who Sold the Sun

Mythic Visions 213

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Literally, Africa grows independent, but this comes at a price, as Sili experiences when, envious of her new independence, the boys finally succeed in impeding her by stealing one of her crutches. When a wealthy businessman offers to buy all her newspapers at a hundred times their value, Sili hesitates before taking the money, aware of the man’s offer of charity rather than equity. She is not perverted by her riches which she uses with benevolence – for herself (new clothes) as well as for others, to either improve their condition (distributing money to the needy, buying a parasol for her grandmother) or simply for shared enjoyment by dancing and drinking with friends. The dancing scene provides a joyful and somewhat surreal moment. At first, the spectator is unable to establish whether the music to the staged dance of Sili and her friends in the street is diegetic or not. As it abruptly stops, we establish that she had paid for a song and the money has just run out. Even the enjoyment of music and dance, traditional offerings in African societies, are now negotiated through money. The opening and closing scenes of Little Girl encourage active spectatorship. The opening scene shows a woman accused of theft and taken to a police station. The mise-en-scène is apparent, with passive onlookers lining up an arena where the woman is caught. Angrily, she undresses herself in public – a typical form of female resistance to power and oppression in certain African societies. Similarly, when Sili exhibits her 10,000 CFA francs note, a policeman accuses her of theft, and with her characteristic resolve she challenges him. Not only does she successfully argue her case, but she also draws a parallel to the condition of the imprisoned woman, and easily obtains her release. By eschewing realism and the bureaucracy such a decision involves, the spectator glimpses the realm of the fantastic. In the last scene, despite the loss of her familiar support (the crutch), Sili is not deterred, and as her friend carries her on his back, both confidently march into a bright light of aspiration. As the film draws to its conclusion, the voice-over announces ‘this tale is thrown to the sea’, followed by Sili stating that ‘the first to breathe it in will go to heaven’, reminding us again of our own gaze. Whereas Touki-Bouki and Hyenas, two of Mambéty’s earlier seminal films, express a pessimistic view of postcolonial Senegalese as well as African societies as a whole, Little Girl’s representation of children’s experiences is boldly and defiantly forward-looking. Africa may be disabled by historical socio-economic factors, but through gender equality and by adhering to traditional principles of sharing and solidarity, she may stand, fight and thrive. By persistently illuminating Sili’s face by sunshine, her smile and unfailing courage in turn illuminate the screen, the story itself and the way forward. The journey is a difficult one, riddled with obstacles by those whose interests are challenged, but it is an explicit hope, which Mambéty invitingly ‘throws to the sea’. His wish that his films are as much his as that of his audience becomes realized: the march’s direction is now in the spectator’s control, and as Sili and Babou leave the screen, we may breathe it in and continue on.

Rosa Abidi

214 Reviews

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Badou Boy Countries of Origin:

Senegal Languages:

Wolof French Production Company:

Maag Daan Director:

Djibril Diop Mambéty Producer:

Djibril Diop Mambéty Screenwriter:

Djibril Diop Mambéty Cinematographer:

Baidy Sow

Synopsis A male adolescent with no identified family is alleged to have run away from home. Badou Boy (Lamine Bâ) lives in a tenement yard amid other families and children but is eventually evicted because of rent arrears. His days are spent roaming around the city, in search of an opportunity to earn a few francs for his subsistence. But light-hearted fun is never far away from his preoccupations. He surreptitiously enjoys a game of soccer with children on the sandy lanes of his landlady’s district, haughtily scrutinizes the sky, cowboylike, associates with an impoverished kora player, joins a party of two enjoying the music of Booker T and the MGs, and delights at the sight of multicoloured balloons bobbing up and down in the wind. For the nation state, he is but a runaway teenager. A lone police officer (Al Demba Ciss), identified by his uniform and the aloof musing of an ‘inspector’, has been instructed to find and return him to his hypothetical mother. A series of chases across the city ensues, eventually leading to another chase between a friend of Badou Boy and the same police officer. Some sixty minutes later, the film ends as it had begun.

Music:

Lalo Dramé

Critique

Editor:

The second of Mambéty’s films, Badou Boy is an experimental narrative film whose action seems unscripted but occurs somewhat chronologically, quite unlike Touki-Bouki (1973). The film explores not so much the dramatic imports of the spaces and monuments in the postcolonial city, as various character types which we find in Mambéty’s later films: the youth and artists who roam the city in search of income-generating activities; the landlady who violently evicts her non-paying artist tenants; the children who suffuse the film with an air of innocence; the relentlessly chasing police officer who vows to squeeze the life out of the youth; and the absence and overall vanity of the political elite. More chronological than Contras’ City (1968), the film is nonetheless framed as a series of vignettes. Its action moves at the pace of its main teenage character. He runs most of the time, hops above puddles, smelly canals and scurries across sandy streets, lest his Bata shoes fill up with pebbles. His salvation is tied to these shifts and transformations. As he moves, the camera moves with him revealing his anxious face but also his ability to find or create moments of self regeneration in the spaces he temporarily finds refuge in. Badou Boy is as much a narrative as it is a description of living conditions of the impoverished youth in the new nation. It is an alternative Borom Sarret (Ousmane Sembène, 1962), devoid of Manichaeism, featuring homeless, orphan adolescents in the grips of a nation eager to assert its authority and define its subjects. Yet, the static structure of Badou Boy is but an illusion: the film performs a subversive anti-nationalist discourse, as radical as Sembène’s Mandabi (1968), but free from the ideological determinations of the latter. It exposes the inability, if not abdication of the new elites in the face of demands for better living spaces for

Andrée Blanchard Duration:

60 minutes Genre:

Fiction Cast:

Lamine Bâ Al Demba Ciss Christoph Colomb Aziz Diop Mambéty Year:

1970

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the general population, greater freedom for the youth and greater appreciation of its citizen artists. Badou Boy roams aimlessly in the postcolonial city, desperately seeking to safeguard his freedom, the integrity of his body and his sensitivity to beauty. The state has no concrete plan for his future. As an alleged runaway adolescent, the police are after him. In the shadow of official buildings, a horde of down-and-outs live unstable lives and the lone representative of the state is still chasing and threatening them daily. The voice-over pretending to have authority over them is still as aloof as ever while the thick walls of the jail are still ominously standing in the middle of a city of marginalized people. Finally, the home Badou is supposed to have run from remains unknown and unseen. Perhaps what is most surprising about this film is that the misery it describes never turns into calls for political commitments and the necessity for changing the social conditions in the postcolony. In fact, Mambéty’s engagement is different from Sembène’s. His artful aesthetics take precedence over new social arrangements and are framed by in-between-ness. The aesthetics is a result of, but in deep contrast to, both the colonial heritage and the ambient nationalist aesthetics of the 1960s. Such double positioning is effected through the figure of parody. The repetition of major aesthetic figures in western cinema cloaks the narrative and the characters of the film into icons of the western and gangster genres. But such repetition is laced with irony and ridicule. Similarly, the tension generated by poverty, inequity and social injustice is quickly diffused by the ‘no problem’ attitude of Badou Boy and his posse of friends.

Sada Niang

A Child’s Love Story Un Amour d’enfant Country of Origin:

Senegal Languages:

Wolof French, English subtitles Studio:

Centre cinématographique marocain Les Productions Lion Rouge Canal+ Horizons Canal France International Director:

Ben Diogaye Beye 216 Reviews

Synopsis Three boys, Omar, Leyti, Demba and two girls, Yacine and Ngone, live in the same middle-class neighbourhood of Dakar. They frequent the same school, and walk the same itinerary to and from home each school day. Their parents, members of the rising local middle-class, are well to do professionals who enjoy the comforts of city life but suffer the uncertainties of the labour market in the newly independent Senegal. Impervious to such upheavals, Omar and Yacine (Mafall Thioune and Anta Sylla) ‘fall in love’ with each other. Leyti (Habib Diarra), the second boy in the group, has been with his girlfriend, Ngone (Fatou Diouf), for some time now, whereas Demba (Sega Beye), the third boy in the group, is attracted to but yet undecided about the granddaughter of an elderly beggar (Mamadou Sane). Group study and common itineraries offer the first two couples ample opportunities to meet, whereas daily alms offerings allow Leyti and his love interest to exchange looks and even touch of hands. Tokens of ‘love’ are exchanged between all of them as they play ‘She Loves Me, She Loves Me Not’ with leaves from an Ice Petal plant. The boys settle their scores on the school playground, whereas the girls mostly criticize each other.

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Producers:

Ben Diogaye Beye Screenwriter:

Ben Diogaye Beye Cinematographers:

Maurice Giraud François Poirier Art Director:

François Poirier Music:

Wasis Diop Youssou Ndour The Super Etoile Editors:

Abdellatif Raiss Ludovic Escalier Duration:

93 minutes Genre:

Drama Cast:

Anta Sylla Mafall Thioune Sega Beye Habib Diarra Fatou Diouf Mamadou Sane Omar Seck Year:

2004

All share in the blissful experience of the world of school, budding sexuality, innocent beliefs about the other sex. Yet, amidst these adventures, ominous political and family events threaten their innocence and happiness.

Critique Born in 1947, Ben Diogaye Beye began his career as a radio announcer before moving to film-making. Today he is part of the second-generation African film-makers. With Djibril Diop Mambéty, Ibu Diouf the painter, Issa Samb, the iconoclast poet-actor-paintersculptor, Magaye Niang the musician-actor-model, and Mansour Diouf the actor, they formed a posse of artists roaming the city of Dakar, surrounded by friends like the stylist Oumou Sy, meeting regularly to exchange ideas about their next film, painting or musical tour. With the exception of Ibu Diouf, they all performed in each others’ films. Diogaye Beye was assistant producer in Mambéty’s Touki-Bouki (1974); Mambéty acted in Diogaye Beye’s first feature film, Les Princes noirs de Saint Germain (1975). To a large extent A Child’s Love Story features events and stories they all must have experienced as adolescents. It may, at best, be qualified as fictional biography featuring a group of boys and girls in order to offer the viewer a snapshot of adolescence in a postcolonial francophone African city. A Child’s Love Story is comprised of several story threads, each a mini narrative feeding into the greater narrative of a nurturing city in changing times. Together, the youths discover the sun, the moon, the beautiful colours of dusk on the Atlantic, the moonlit nights in the tropics and share common beliefs and myths about life, love, the universe and the outside world. Break-ups and reconciliations are frequent. The boys show off their masculinity by impersonating sports figures such as former basketball professional Michael Jordan, or by attempting to outsmart their girlfriends at school. Simultaneously, these children experience first-hand the devolution of power in the postcolony: they witness the repression of a labour demonstration with workers clamouring for back pay. At a more personal level, Grand Laye (Omar Seck), a friend who acts as the street parent and protector of Yacine and Omar, is repeatedly harassed by the police and thrown in jail, as the children watch dumbfounded. At home, different types of storms gather for both Omar and Yacine. The little girl rebels against her mother as her father is forced to move the family to St Louis, a city 300 miles north of Dakar, thus jeopardizing her relationship with Omar. A deadly atmosphere settles in Omar’s household as his father announces that he has been ‘given’ a second wife. Powerless and perhaps not fully comprehending the world of adults, Omar watches as his mother increasingly withdraws in a corner ravaged by anger and disillusion. As young adulthood ushers in, the group disintegrates leaving only fond memories to its members. The plot and setting of A Child’s Love Story go a long way in articulating some of the recurring aesthetic concerns of Ben Diogaye Beye: most of his films are set in the city and recount experiences of characters caught between their personal lives and

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the strife occurring in the city they live in. The spaces of predilection of his films are not dusty country paths and village settings but the paved roads, polluted boulevards, brick houses and sooty slums of the cities. Urban popular culture figures prominently in his films. The action of these usually gravitates around a patchwork of scenes that sustain a master narrative of life in the postcolonial city. The characters of his films are not militants given to tirades about the conditions of the nation state, but young- to middle-aged adults torn by sexual desire, the traditional requirement for emotional restraint and the brutal reactions of a nation state under pressure from different interest groups. A Child’s Love Story encapsulates all such features. It is as much a story of budding adolescent infatuations and conflicts as it is about the attachment to a city that has engendered ‘coming-of-age’ experiences in a group of adolescents.

Sada Niang

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Childhood in African Cinema 219

Literary Adaptation

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Genesis/La Genèse (Cheick Oumar Sissoko, Mali, 1999), Salif Keïta as Esau

Literary adaptation is more commonly associated with European cultures than with African cinema. Nations that take pride in their literary achievements transform their classics into feature films, TV movies or series to guaranteed audiences, in particular generations of students who are keener to see the film of the book than read past-centuries prose. Too many adaptations, however, may conceal the fear of representing contemporary reality and shyness from innovation, as it did in the era of the Soviet Union, when Russian cinema abundantly relied on Tolstoy, Turgenev and Chekhov (not so much on Dostoyevsky). Likewise, England benefited from the Shakespeare, Dickens and Austen industries as did France from its classics until the New Wave relinquished the burden of too much literary heritage. Adaptation in the African context is more obviously practised in countries where there was a high level of literacy, for example in Arabic in Egypt or where a considerable proportion of the population was made of European settlers, in which case the colonial education system gave priority to sources accessible in the language of the colonizing power. Countries such as South Africa and Mozambique developed national literatures that found their audiences locally, as did Algeria until the troubled Arabization of the school curriculum, which took some thirty years culminating in the 1991 law that institutionalized Arabic as the official language (Laremont 2000: 169–72). Nigeria and Ghana, where universities developed more rapidly than in other former colonies, also had a literary canon in English from which film-makers could draw stories. Since the independence era, in the absence of literary tradition and government subsidies for period epics, African film-makers have been spared the western world’s prerequisite of literary adaptation as a marker of national identity. They have more freedom to choose their topics even though they too look to their oral and written heritage for inspiration. Mbye Cham expanded on the notion of ‘thrice-told tales’, stories that found their way onto the screen in several stages, from oral to written to cinematic modes of expression, partly because early writers transcribed or transformed tales and epics into collections of stories and plays that were published in European languages (Cham 2005: 297–311). Cham’s review (2005: 302) of Dani Kouyaté’s Keita, Heritage of the Griot (1995) is a useful example of this type of genetic approach to African adaptation. Likewise, Charles Sugnet (2006) retraces sources of Senegalese literacy in Mambéty’s La Petite vendeuse de soleil/The Little Girl Who Sold the Sun (1998). This migration of creative imagination from oral tales to written stories and to the stage – sometimes intended for schoolchildren – has even produced a different notion of ownership of films. In Nigeria, for example, the scriptwriter is often seen as the author of a video-film and the director, a mere technician. Even though the director may be as well known as Tunde Kelani, the scriptwriter, Akinwumi Isola, will be considered as the owner of Sawaro Ide/Brass Bells (1999) and Agogo Eewo/Gong of Taboo (2002) two

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video-films about the ‘imperative of democracy’ which the scriptwriter adapted from his previous political plays (Adeoti 2009: 37, 41–42). As African literature became more confident, several original writers, namely Ousmane Sembène and Assia Djebar, became notorious for their determination to reach via the screen many more people than they could with their books, not only in their respective countries (Senegal and Algeria) but, also in the rest of the world (see Niang 1996; Murphy 2000). Sembène’s La Noire de…/Black Girl (1966) and Xala, l’impuissance temporaire/Xala (The Curse or Impotence) (1974), reviewed below, are landmarks of the genesis of film adaptation. More widely, African film-makers’ recourse to film adaptation was steeped in the ideology of liberation, with a strong desire to de-marginalize the populations and restore their sense of autonomy, a theme that found resonance with some of the first independent governments. Social frescoes of liberation with the final victory on the side of the freedom fighters found support in Egypt and Algeria. Naguib Mahfouz’s trilogy of emancipation in the first half of the twentieth century (Palace Walk, Palace of Desire and Sugar Street) was adapted into three films by Hassan El Imam from 1964 to 1972, hardly ten years after the third volume’s publication in 1972. The equivalent in Algeria would be Ahmed Rachedi’s L’Opium et le bâton/Al-afyun wal-asa/Opium and the Stick (1969), an adaptation of Mouloud Mammeri’s last volume of a historical trilogy completed in 1965 (reviewed in the next chapter on history). By contrast, due to lack of government support, Sembène, as a creative rival to President–poet Senghor, and Djebar, as a woman in a recently established Arab republic, were on their own and had to operate on a more individual scale of production. In Senegal, by developing the visual element in his films and focusing on the symbolic codes of his narrative, Sembène transferred onto the screen his ‘homeopathic opposition’ – his peculiar way to fashion his written-protest style by mimicking the structure and aesthetics of the dominant ideology (Stefanson 2009a). In Algeria, Assia Djebar presented women’s fight for their role in society in a more disconcerting manner: her cinema is more poetic and fragmented than the historical freedom-fighters dramas promoted by socialist governments, for example, Lakhdar-Hamina’s Le Vent des Aurès/The Wind from the Aures (1967), which is not, however, adapted from a literary text but inspired by newsreel footage, since the director was head of the Algerian Newsreel Office. Gomes’s Mortu Nega (1988) in Guinea–Bissau, which is reviewed in the chapter ‘Screening War, Surviving War’ and Maldoror’s Sambizanga (1972) in Angola are examples of adaptations of texts published in socialist countries. The opponents of film adaptation studies, such as Robert Bay (Naremore 2000), argue that endless aesthetic comparison between the book and the movie is inconclusive and usually ends up reasserting the literary source’s unattainable merit. The review format prevents such scrutiny and our reviewers do not advocate any hierarchy of merit; instead, they reflect on the relevance of the written word to the film narrative and on the filmmakers’ motivations for choosing such a concerted approach to film. Among issues commonly discussed in the field of adaptation, the topics of fidelity, re-contextualization, transformation and closure may foster the readers’ interest in this category of African films, even though adaptation is not a film genre, since it can yield a comedy, a drama, a musical or an epic and no film may be restrained to any one category.

Fidelity adaptations A good book crosses borders and engages people anywhere in the world. So should an adaptation, at least such were director Steve Jacobs and scriptwriter Anna-Maria Monticelli’s views when they opted for a ‘faithful’ adaptation of JM Coetzee’s Disgrace in 2008: ‘There is no point in redesigning the wheel; it already works, so what we wanted

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to do was make it work cinematically’ (Wotzke 2009). In such faithful adaptations, the time constraint accelerates the pace of events and each cornerstone of the story comes as a greater surprise. A spectacular gesture, for example, or a different context after an ellipsis might make more impact on the screen than on the page. When Professor Lurie, on his quest for forgiveness, falls on his knees and bends over to the ground in front of his victim’s family, the gesture that seems to come straight from a Dostoyevsky novel may escape the distracted reader but will strike most spectators as theatrical and insincere. Fidelity, however, is not redundancy. Coetzee’s book, with its representation of social interracial transformation in South Africa, resonated with an Australian team who hoped that Disgrace might help reassess the role and participation of Aboriginal people in contemporary Australia. In such felicitous intersection, adaptation gains universal appeal.

Re-contextualization and transformation A completely different context may revive the topicality of a literary classic. As Dudley Andrew explains about Renoir’s Les Bas-Fonds, a 1935 French film adaptation of Maxim Gorki’s 1902 play The Lower Depths, the content of a literary work may enthuse a filmmaker over thirty years after the original: the lessons of old throw light on the new historical challenge (Andrew 2000: 36). Gorky’s play about déclassé aristocrats mingling with the proletariat paved the way for the Bolshevik Revolution but would have been superseded in the supposedly classless Soviet Union. By contrast, Renoir’s adaptation genuinely anticipated the 1936 Front Populaire, the first socialist government in France. Our selection of adaptations gives examples of re-contextualization in time, space and cultures. In some cases, the original might be hard to spot and we can think of transformation rather than cinematic transposition. Cara Moyer-Duncan thus illustrates the readjustment of controversy from apartheid to democracy. She analyses the sad relevance of Ndebele’s novella Fools, which was published in 1966, to 1996 South Africa as portrayed in Suleman and Peterson’s 1997 film of the same name. She shows that the victims of racism had ‘internalized’ violence and needed to relate more civilly to other people, in particular women. This double victimization, as colonial and as woman, is also foregrounded in Samba Diop’s review of Sarah Maldoror’s Sambizanga (Angola), in which the main female character is more ‘politicized’ than in the original novella, which is not surprising for a film made by a woman from Guadeloupe who became one of the first female black film-makers in Africa. In other cases, the adaptation process involves the transformation of aesthetics. If the story of Joseph is fairly recognizable from its original in the Bible to Sissoko’s La Genèse/ Genesis (1999), as Diop explains, the added narrative forms of traditional theatre and epic make the stern original accessible to ordinary people in Mali and elsewhere. In Hyènes (1992), on the other hand, the complex structure of the film, as it is analysed by Stefan Sereda, could almost conceal the source of inspiration, all the more so because few people would think of an old disabled black woman as the incarnation of economic power. In the unexpected context of an impoverished African village rife with corruption, Mambéty’s imaginative use of symbols revives and extends the range of Dürrenmatt’s play and of the African film itself.

Closure The ending of an adaptation may modify or open up that of the original end in the book. J Coplen Rose’s informative reviews of the two best-promoted recent films from the continent prompted me to consider the variants in the closure of these films. Athol

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Fugard’s novel Tsotsi, a crime story that becomes more poetic and redeeming as the orphan’s life degenerates, is transformed into a focused gangster film that logically leads the outlaw to punishment, as the genre requires. In the case of Disgrace, the protagonist’s creative musical ambition is a slight pastime in the film compared with the digression in the book about the Byron opera project in which the professor attempts to forget the assault on his daughter and himself. Such cerebral digression might have lost the momentum that is needed in film composition and was left aside by the director. The book offers the melancholy view of a self-centred ageing man whereas, in the film, the majestic wide angle view of the two farms against the background of distant mountains provides food for interpretation: does this ending convey regret for or relief from the disappearance of apartheid? Other reviews point to secret affinities between world literary heritage and African film, sometimes with a daring twist brought to an iconic figure. In her reviews of two African adaptations of Carmen, Prosper Mérimée’s novella and Bizet’s opera, Yifen Beus shows how Carmen’s story – appropriated, reshaped and transformed once more by music – contributes to the perpetuation of an inspiring myth of freedom. In his review of Terra Sonãmbula/Sleepwalking Land (Teresa Prata, 2007), an example of magic realism from Mozambique, Jugu Abraham suggests that different layers of written sources, including a famous book and a diary found by chance, inspire and guide the young protagonist to embrace his ‘Moby Dick’ destiny, whether or not he is literate enough to have read the book of his dreams.

Conclusion: Joining forces Many African film-makers take on several positions in the making of a film: director, scriptwriter, producer and sometimes even composer, e.g. Moussa Sene Absa of Senegal in the making of Tableau Ferraille (1997). By resorting to an existing written source, they can entrust the task of transforming a book into a script to a professional scriptwriter or benefit from the experience of obliging authors or fellow film-makers. Le Silence de la forêt/The Silence of the Forest (2003) is the hard-earned success of a determined director, Didier Ouenangaré (b.1953–d.2006) from Congo-Brazzaville, who wanted to serve the cause of various forest people living in central Africa. Ouenangaré requested the help of Cameroonian writer/film-maker Bassek Ba Kobhio to adapt an overlooked novel published in France in 1984 by a writer from Central African Republic, Etienne Goyèmidé (b.1942–d.1997). A topic that seemed to belong in the ethnographic/historical documentary genre was deemed to have more impact by using the fictional mode of communication, thereby engaging the viewers emotionally as much as intellectually. The ending of the film is said to be more open than that of the book, and Jean Olivier Tchouaffé’s review prompts the viewers to question outsiders’ solutions to social injustice in Africa. Literary adaptation gives directors the opportunity to reach viewers beyond the limits of national cinemas and beyond the sociocultural and realistic range of topics favoured by African governments. Readers interested in literary adaptation in African cinema will like to read the full-length studies by Alexie Tcheuyap (2005) and Lindiwe Dovey (2009) as well as Koffi Anyinefa’s inventory (2005) of African adaptations made in the francophone zone.

Blandine Stefanson

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Black Girl La Noire de… Countries of Origin:

Senegal France Languages:

French Serer (in chants) Studio:

Filmi Domireev Director:

Ousmane Sembène Producers:

André Zwoboda Screenwriter:

Ousmane Sembène Cinematographer:

Christian Lacoste Editor:

André Gaudier Duration:

60 minutes (some versions: 65 minutes) Genres:

Literary adaptation Drama Cast:

Thérèse Mbissine Diop Robert Fontaine Anne-Marie Jelinek Momar Nar Sène Year:

1966

Synopsis Diouana, who has accepted to work as a nanny for a French expatriate family in Senegal, believes her dream of visiting France is about to come true. She disembarks from an ocean liner and is met by Monsieur, who drives her to his holiday apartment on the French Riviera. Soon after she settles in, however, Diouana realizes that the children are cared for elsewhere and that instead of being a nanny she is exploited as a maid, a cook and a launderer for the French couple, their relatives and friends. Diouana asserts herself by remaining elegant and competent, mentally judging her employers and retrieving a mask she once gave to Madame. She seeks refuge in the bathroom, the only place where she escapes the constant call of her name, followed by vexing remarks and orders. Illiterate, she depends on Monsieur to answer her mother’s only letter. In such isolation, how can she free herself from enslavement?

Critique From his training in the Soviet Union, Sembène never forgot one artistic principle professed by Russian film and literature critic Efim Semenovic Dobin, namely that metaphors have to be focused on the narrative: ‘Without narrative, poetic images make no sense, they become ghostlike’ (Vieyra 1972: 170, my translation). This principle of narrative unity is illustrated by the film’s audio-visual innovations compared with the short story of the same name, La Noire de… The 28-page story (inspired by a news item and published in the collection Voltaïque in 1962) puts more emphasis on the African section of the maid’s life than the film, has more characters, and lingers on rivalries among the servants. Diouana (Thérèse Mbissine Diop) suffers in silence from being called black by her masters’ guests. The movie, by contrast, isolates the maid and uses cinematic techniques to show her attempts to defy her masters and overcome alienation. The double meaning of the preposition de, which can refer to origin (from) or to ownership (belonging to), would justify a revised translation of the title: ‘Whose Black Girl?’ Upon arriving at her home in France, Diouana is seen in a high angle shot, her eyes looking up the apartment block – not the villa with a garden of the short story. Even before becoming the prisoner of a cramped flat, she looks crushed yet eager. This way of raising her eyes will be a recurrent expression of her resistance to harassment. Dialogue and indirect speech are minimal in the short story whereas Madame (Anne-Marie Jelinek)’s nagging in the movie exacerbates the maid’s rebelliousness. Diouana’s monologue in voice-over drives the film narrative from the beginning of her misadventure to her tragic end. Diouana’s vengeance is contained in her head. We are told she cannot speak French, yet her voice-over is in French. Unlike the spectators, her masters cannot hear this monologue and they are puzzled by her behaviour. In an interview 40 years after the film, Thérèse Mbissine Diop, apart from begrudging the dubbing of

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her monologue by Haitian Toto Bissainthe, explains that Robert Fontaine (playing Monsieur in the movie), who was her drama teacher, advised her to observe children for guidance in genuine acting (DVD M3M). Diouana’s distress is that of a child. She hides in obvious places and acts strangely yet her gestures show she knows she is the victim of miserly masters. Madame’s attacks against Diouana’s self-pride (‘Take your shoes off! […] Don’t forget you are the maid’) inspire the maid to tear up her mother’s letter rather than have it answered by her employer on her behalf. ‘She is mad,’ comments Madame, unaware that her maid sees through her exploitative tactics. Likewise, when Monsieur offers Diouana 20,000 francs CFA (French African Community currency) for several months’ wages, she drops the valueless money and throws herself on the floor, curling up in the foetus position. She eventually picks up the banknotes and returns them to her bewildered employers. In contrast with the colonial public servant’s collection of decorative artefacts, the mask, which has no part whatever in the short story, is the symbol of the strongest thematic revelation in this movie. Diouana buys this mask from her young brother with her first wages and gives it to her boss as a sign of gratitude for her employment. Once disillusioned, she takes her mask back and leaves it on top of her suitcase. In the last scene of the film, when Monsieur returns Diouana’s belongings to her mother in Senegal, the mourning woman too refuses to accept her daughter’s due wages from him. The mask, however, is repossessed by the young boy. Against the display of solidarity among Diouana’s people, led by the evening-class master and letter-writer (Sembène himself, with his legendary pipe), the boy, wearing the mask, tails Diouana’s boss as he flees from the scene. The colonizer’s defeat is made all the more dramatic by shots of the masked boy and the thumping percussion of a mourning chant in Serer, Diouana’s language. These female voices differ strongly from the two musical themes used hitherto in the movie – kora-playing for Diouana doing housework and dance hall piano for the French Riviera seen through the window panes. Another innovation of the film is Diouana’s relationship with an unnamed young intellectual (Momar Nar Sène), who, although politically mature – a photo of Congolese Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba hangs in his bedroom – is more conservative or more content with his life in Dakar than Diouana. The photo of the couple found in Diouana’s suitcase, comes as a surprise to her French masters, who thought they owned Diouana. This Senegalese young man may be a more positive character than Tive Corréa, the drunkard degenerated by his time in France in the short story, but he remains in the background behind Diouana who dominates the film as an emblematic though failed emancipated woman in Sembène’s imaginary. Sequences in colour – presumably scenes of happier days in Diouana’s native Casamance – were discarded because the only way Sembène could obtain a release visa in France was to keep his film under 60 minutes. Even truncated, Black Girl obtained the Jean Vigo Grand Prix in France, The Tanit d’Or in Carthage (Tunisia)

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and the 1966 Grand Prix at the World Festival of Black Arts in Dakar and it is reputed to be the first African feature film, at least in West Africa. Sadly, its concept of human rights against exploitation is as topical in many parts of the world today as it was in France in 1966.

Blandine Stefanson

Xala (The Curse or Impotence) Xala, l’impuissance temporaire Country of Origin:

Senegal Languages:

French Wolof, with English subtitles Studios:

Filmi Domireew Société Nationale Cinématographique Director:

Ousmane Sembène Producer:

Paulin Soumanou Vieyra Screenwriter:

Ousmane Sembène Cinematographers:

Georges Caristan Orlando L López Seydina D Saye Farba Seck Music:

Samba Diabara Samb Editor:

Florence Eymon Duration:

123 minutes Genres:

Drama Comedy

Synopsis At the dawn of Senegalese Independence, a group of ministers seize control of the Chamber of Commerce and oust its former French occupants, but immediately afterwards, these ministers accept bribes from European businessmen. During this first meeting, the president announces that one of their group, El Hadji Abdou Kader Beye (Thierno Leye), has invited them all to the wedding ceremony celebrating his marriage to a third wife, N’Goné (Dyella Touré). El Hadji enters this marriage against the wishes of his second wife, Oumi (Younousse Seye), and of Rama (Miriam Niang), his daughter from his first marriage to Adja Assatou (Seune Samb). When El Hadji is unable to consummate the marriage, he discovers he has been cursed with impotence. As El Hadji seeks to cure his xala, it comes to the attention of the other ministers that he has embezzled resources from the national food suppliers. Despite the corrupt practices that permeate the Chamber’s activities, the other ministers decide to eject El Hadji. Meanwhile, El Hadji’s bride’s mother calls off the unconsummated marriage and a group of beggars invades El Hadji’s house. The leader of the beggars (Douta Seck) tells El Hadji he arranged the xala as vengeance for his impoverishment at El Hadji’s hands. Why does El Hadji submit to the humiliation the beggars inflict on him?

Critique Xala is a highly significant and influential African social realist film by the ‘father of African cinema’, Ousmane Sembène. The film offers an indictment of neo-colonial corruption and the betrayal of African Independence by the bourgeoisie. A pioneer of African social realism, Sembène adapts his novel of the same name (published a year earlier only) to the screen through a series of contrasting motifs and perspectives. The film’s narrative, which explores the transition from European colonialism to postcolonial Africa, echoes Frantz Fanon’s observation in The Wretched of the Earth that the national bourgeoisie’s greed is responsible for African nations’ neo-colonial dependence on the West. To present this critique, Xala establishes a number of narrative dichotomies, contrasting tradition and modernity, African and European practices, Islam and traditional African spirituality, men and women, as well as rich and poor. Against this backdrop of conflict, El Hadji pursues social status as a man by hoarding excess

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Xala (The Curse or Impotence)

228 Reviews

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Cast:

Thierno Leye Miriam Niang Seune Samb Younousse Seye Douta Seck Dyella Touré Iliamane Sagna Makhourédia Gueye Dieynaba Niang Moustapha Touré Fatim Diagne Langouste Drobe Farba Sarr Abdoulaye Boye Papa Diop Martin Sow Mamadou Sarr Abdoulaye Seck Year:

1974

wealth for himself. El Hadji’s hypocrisy comes across when he insists his daughter Rama speak to him in French as opposed to Wolof, yet relies on tradition to support his decision to take a third wife despite his daughter’s disapproval. In fact, El Hadji fetishizes European practices and products as symbols of personal social mobility. This dynamic is most noticeable when El Hadji insists that all his water be imported from Europe, and has his driver wash his white car down with Evian water in the middle of a drought. El Hadji’s car is one of many symbols of social mobility in the film, but when the state repossesses it, soldiers have to push it away because none of them can drive, a comic scene which was not in the novel. Meanwhile, the gang of beggars who confront El Hadji are almost always seen on the move, despite their various physical disabilities. Throughout the film, Sembène satirizes the Senegalese bourgeoisie’s reliance on Europe for upward social mobility. The film’s ending is not entirely cynical regarding the neo-colonial failure of Senegalese Independence. El Hadji accuses the rest of the ministers of being just as corrupt as he in a Chamber meeting, but they are allowed to keep their positions. In fact, these African ministers laugh at the virility fetish given to El Hadji by a dibia, or traditional spiritualist, yet they display their own hypocrisy through their fetishization of whiteness and westernization when they replace El Hadji with a man in a white suit and cowboy hat. Yet Sembène suggests African social justice and equality can be pursued and attained through traditional methods rather than the bourgeoisie’s mimicry of western opulence. Xala does not offer a resolution to its own narrative contradictions, nor does it present a vision of bleak hopelessness for Senegal’s future as an independent state. Instead, the film is a cautionary pedagogy for the African middle classes – especially those in positions of institutional power – to abstain from corrupt behaviour, act in the best interests of the lower classes, and thereby avoid social unrest. As mentioned above, Xala remains prominent among the African social realism film genre, and central to the African film canon as a whole. The film features an emotive traditional soundtrack and subtly nuanced mise-en-scène, with humour and thematic complexity that reward repeat viewings. Xala is essential as an entry point to African film history.

Stefan Sereda

Disgrace Countries of Origin:

South Africa Australia Languages:

English Afrikaans

Synopsis Disgrace is a film about a South African English professor who has an inappropriate sexual relationship with one of his students, Melanie Isaacs (Antoinette Engel). As a result of the incident the professor, David Lurie (John Malkovich), is asked to apologize or withdraw from his university post. Lurie refuses to apologize and leaves Cape Town to live with his daughter. Lurie enjoys the relaxed pace on his daughter’s farm until he and his daughter are attacked.

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Zulu Xhosa Studio:

Fortissimo Films Director:

Steve Jacobs Producers:

Steve Jacobs Anna Maria Monticelli Emile Sherman Screenwriter:

Anna Maria Monticelli Cinematographer:

Steve Arnold Music:

Antony Partos Editor:

Alexandre de Franceschi  Duration:

119 minutes Genre:

Drama Cast:

John Malkovich Jessica Haines Antoinette Engel Eriq Ebouaney Natalie Becker Year:

2008

230 Reviews

The father is beaten and locked in the bathroom while three black men sexually assault his white daughter. Lurie’s inability to protect his daughter Lucy creates a rift between the two. Lucy (Jessica Haines) wants to continue with her life whereas her father believes she should escape from South Africa and post-apartheid violence. The tension comes to a climax when one of the rapists is identified as the brother-in-law of Lucy’s neighbour Petrus (Eriq Ebouaney). Lurie wants to call the police but his daughter stops him, because this would make matters worse between her and the neighbouring black community. Lurie returns to the city because he cannot understand his daughter’s inability to act against the perpetrators. The former professor soon longs to return to the farm to offer his support to his daughter. The movie concludes with father and daughter struggling to find a middle ground between his apartheidera way of dealing with problems, and Lucy’s concern with respect to her community in post-apartheid South Africa.

Critique Steve Jacobs’s Disgrace foregrounds many of the problems and struggles facing South Africans in rural regions of the country. Ranging from post-apartheid revenge violence to land reclamation, Jacobs’s film takes his audience on a cinematic excursion to a remote farm on the Eastern Cape. Based on JM Coetzee’s Booker Prize winning novel, the film Disgrace captures the tense mood of the novel of the same name and combines it with beautiful shots of rural South Africa and themes that are pertinent to South Africa’s post-apartheid struggles and changing social structures. Disgrace focuses on the different types of violence and theft that are occurring in contemporary South Africa. The film’s opening segment, set in Cape Town, leads the audience to question what we define as violence. The sexual relationship between David Lurie and his student Melanie Isaacs is one of unequal power and is exploitative in every way. Whether this sexual encounter constitutes a violent act is up for debate. For instance, Philip French (2009) defines the sexual encounter as ‘an affair with a coloured student’, whereas Peter Bradshaw (2009) sees it as a more transgressive act, pointing out that, ‘though consenting, [Isaacs] does indeed appear to be pressured by his advances in a highly unequal relationship’. As a result of this encounter, and because of his inability to see any wrong in his actions, Lurie is forced to leave the university. This leads Lurie to consider the attack against his daughter a violent act. The two events play off each other repeatedly in the film, challenging the audience to question what we define as violence, and how we should respond to different types of violent acts. The film provides views from victims, perpetrators, and third-party witnesses, creating a mosaic of responses to post-apartheid rapes and robberies in the country. Although much of this violence stems from racism and post-apartheid retribution, the destruction of a large number of stray dogs throughout both the book and film suggests that not all violence in South Africa is directly related to race. In addition to portrayals of racism and violence, the film also foregrounds differences between older ways of thinking in South

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Africa and newer ways of thinking in the post-apartheid Rainbow Nation. Lurie represents the older generation of white citizens who were raised during apartheid, believing in laws, racial segregation and violence to maintain order. Alternatively, Lucy believes in negotiation over violence to maintain control of her property in an increasingly unstable environment. Initially, Lurie cannot understand his daughter’s way of seeing things. However, the move to the country quickly becomes an awakening for Lurie as he discovers that he, a white South African academic, is no longer totally in control. The best example of this is Lurie’s inability to prevent the rape of his daughter, a crime he takes personally and tries to remedy at numerous points throughout the film. Life in the South African countryside forces Lurie to take directions and guidance from his daughter, something he is also ill-accustomed to. Numerous references to teaching and schooling suggest that Lurie is now the student, an out of touch old man being given an education in the new South Africa. Bradshaw (2009) describes Lurie’s downfall as ‘a story of almost transcendental humiliation – it could be called biblical, except that unlike Job, Lurie has no God to confront’, indicating the enormous suffering Lurie endures throughout. The setting in Disgrace also plays an important role in shaping the characters in the film. The landscape alternates between beautiful backdrop and insidious threat, depending on whose perspective the audience is given. Lurie continually describes Lucy as alone and isolated on her farm, constantly at risk of being robbed or raped. Alternatively, Lucy sees herself as part of a network of farmers, a community that is spread over a large geographical distance. The difference in the way the two characters relate to space further emphasizes how father and daughter differ – Lurie focusing on the farm’s shortcomings, Lucy on the positive aspects of the environment. Numerous wide shots of the horizon underscore the expansiveness of the surrounding landscape, suggesting we are viewing the terrain from Lurie’s perspective – feeling out of place and lost. Feelings of alienation occur throughout the film, but are not only limited to the landscape. As Philip French (2009) notes, emphasizing the many social and racial divisions that exist throughout the film, Disgrace is both a compelling human fable and a complex, ambiguous allegory of post-apartheid South Africa, raising issues about white guilt, black vengeance, the shift in political power and the problems occasioned by the country’s deeply divided past and problematically shared future. In terms of casting choices, John Malkovich plays a convincing South African professor, although as French (2009) points out his accent is noticeably different from the other South African accents in the film. Disgrace depicts the splendour of places like Cape Town and the nation’s rural settings, showing a South Africa that is both simple yet beautiful. Ryan Stewart (2009) comes to a similar conclusion by arguing that ‘director Steve Jacobs manages to locate the raw beauty of Cape Town here and there’ in the film. It is Literary Adaptation 231

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the captivating backdrop and a focus on gardening – or the taming and cultivating of the land – which offer the greatest hope for the future and redeems the frequently pessimistic view that Lurie holds for the future of South Africa.

J Coplen Rose

Tsotsi Countries of Origin:

South Africa UK Languages:

English Zulu Xhosa Afrikaans Studio:

Universal Studios Home Video Director:

Gavin Hood Producer:

Peter Fudakowski Screenwriters:

Athol Fugard Gavin Hood Cinematographer:

Lance Gewer Art Director:

Mark Walker Music:

Paul Hepker Mark Kilian Zola (Kwaito music) Editor:

Megan Gill Duration:

94 minutes Genre:

Drama Cast:

Presley Chweneyagae Terry Pheto Kenneth Nkosi

232 Reviews

Synopsis Tsotsi follows the difficult and dangerous experiences of a young street thug in Johannesburg, South Africa. The youth, having run away from home at a young age, engages a lifestyle of theft and murder to sustain himself. Named Tsotsi (‘young thug’) by his fellow gang members, he is willing to kill and rob anyone to make a living, even those struggling to survive around him. Tsotsi’s life changes one day when he shoots a woman while stealing a car containing her baby. Choosing not to abandon the child with the stolen car, Tsotsi carries it to his home in a nearby township. While learning to care for the infant Tsotsi discovers lost memories from his past that help him recall who he is and why he chose to run away from his parents. During this time his gang disbands because of his aloofness and he undergoes a drastic change in attitude, trying to make amends for his previously violent ways. Once it is discovered that the woman he shot during the carjacking is alive and desperately searching for her child, Tsotsi is forced to decide whether or not to keep the baby who has awakened his long-forgotten past.

Critique Gavin Hood’s film, based on Athol Fugard’s book by the same title (1980), does an excellent job recreating the feel and experiences of township life. The set design and locations capture the poverty, destitution, but most importantly, the hope that exists in the tinand-crate neighbourhoods that surround many of South Africa’s major cities. The locations look real and attention to detail – such as an abundance of stray dogs in the background of many shots – make it feel as though one were standing on a street in a South African township. The film balances the violent and murderous world that Tsotsi lives in with the hopeful and peaceful world of Miriam (Terry Pheto), a young township mother who helps Tsotsi (Presley Chweneyagae) keep the baby alive by feeding him. Contrasting the hope for South Africa’s future with the violence of township streets, the film highlights the danger posed by local thieves and killers by providing points of view from gangsters, innocent civilians and victims alike. The young protagonist deserves his nickname. The violent robbery and death of an innocent citizen in the film’s opening shows how merciless the young man and his fellow gangsters can be. In fact, this particular murder is perpetrated using a sharpened bicycle spoke, a highly technical style of killing outlined by Jonathan Kaplan

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Zola Mothusi Magano Israel Makoe Year:

2005

(2006: xi) in his introduction to a re-released version of Fugard’s book. In addition to this connection with the novel, much of the plot follows Fugard’s work closely, although some critics feel the film seriously lacks realism. Ed Gonzalez (2005) points out that, ‘[n]ot surprising for a film that trades in child’s-lit insight and character arching, Tsotsi sheepishly keeps its social realism at arm’s length’. In some cases, viewers might even feel the film romanticizes the destitution and violence of the townships. There are differences between the film and the book though, such as the way the baby is acquired and the film’s constant focus on Tsotsi’s dilemma. Also, most importantly, the conclusion is different between the two works. Although Tsotsi’s arrest at the end of the film is more realistic, his death at the end of Fugard’s novel stands as a grand gesture of Tsotsi’s change from thug to sympathizer. Overall though, the film portrays the struggle between right and wrong that Tsotsi faces throughout the novel, which is the crucial development for his character. Also, because of Tsotsi’s choice in the novel to leave the child alone in outlying ruins surrounding the township, the film portrays a more sympathetic and caring version of the character. As Ken Taylor (2006) points out, The film’s ninety-minute length is perhaps a little short to track a person’s journey from cold and brutal wannabe gangster to a weepy baby lover. Nevertheless, the central performance from amateur actor Presley Chweneyagae is stunning. He remains convincing throughout, both as a merciless thug and a confused teenager trying to do something right. Tsotsi’s changing personality is also depicted through numerous close-up shots where the audience gets a sense of the emotional and ethical decisions that he is contemplating. Another strength of the film is its excellent musical score. The soundtrack stands out as an important piece of township culture, bringing the film’s township to life on-screen. Music by Zola, a popular South African Kwaito musician, keeps the film moving with a lively and upbeat tempo. As Lexi Feinberg (n.d.) best describes, ‘Director Gavin Hood keeps the movie moving at a breezy, unsentimental clip with a fast-paced, gritty style similar to City Of God (Fernando Meirelles and Kátia Lund, Brazil, 2002), while energetic Kwaito music blasts throughout the picture’. The songs that are played could likely be heard in any shebeen, a township bar that illegally serves alcohol. The songs blend well with the actions on-screen, helping to draw the audience into the drama and tension during pivotal scenes. The music also captures the lifestyle and culture with which ‘tsotsis’ surround themselves. As a window into this unique subculture of the townships, Tsotsi blends the important message of hope from Fugard’s text with the visual and auditory beauty of the South African landscape, creating a cinematic experience worthy of the Oscar that Tsotsi won for Best Foreign Language Film in 2006.

J Coplen Rose

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Fools Countries of Origin:

South Africa France Mozambique Zimbabwe Languages:

English Afrikaans isiZulu, with English subtitles Director:

Ramadan Suleman Producer:

Jacques Bidou Joel Phiri Screenwriters:

Bhekizizwe Peterson Ramadan Suleman, adapted from Njabulo S Ndebele’s Fools Cinematographer:

Jacques Bouquin Music:

Ray Phiri Editor:

Christiane Lack Duration:

88 minutes Genre:

Drama Cast:

Patrick Shai Dambisa Kente Hlomla Dandala Thembi Seete Vusi Kunene Year:

1997

234 Reviews

Synopsis Set in December 1989 shortly before Nelson Mandela’s release from prison, an event that signalled the demise of the apartheid system, Zamani, a respected schoolteacher, has become disillusioned after enduring years of oppression. Although Zamani was at one time active in the struggle for liberation, in more recent years he has directed his anger and frustration towards the women in his life. Despite having raped Mimi, one of his students, Zamani is allowed by the community to continue teaching. With some trepidation, he agrees to plan a celebration for Dingaan’s Day, a national holiday commemorating the Afrikaner victory over the Zulu people at the Battle of Blood River on 16 December 1838. As Zamani contends with shame and regret, Zani, Mimi’s brother, returns home from boarding school in neighbouring Swaziland. Frustrated with his elders who he feels have become too passive, and determined to bring change to his community, Zani, somewhat naively, begins organizing resistance. While these two men from different generations frequently find themselves in disagreement, together they come to terms with the profound ways apartheid has shaped their lives.

Critique With the release of Fools in 1997, Ramadan Suleman became the first black in post-apartheid South Africa to direct a feature-length narrative film. Suleman began his career in drama as a founding member of the Dhlomo Theatre in Johannesburg. After the theatre was shut down by the apartheid government, Suleman relocated to France where he worked with distinguished African film-makers Med Hondo and Souleymane Cissé. This experience would prove formative as Suleman’s cinematic repertoire, in contrast to most South African films, is clearly influenced by aesthetic and thematic trends in African cinema. Suleman went on to attend the London International Film School before returning to South Africa in the 1990s and founding the production company Natives at Large with his collaborator Bhekizizwe Peterson. Peterson, a screenwriter, film producer and Professor of African Literature at the University of Witwatersrand, is one of a handful of independent black filmmakers to receive notoriety in post-apartheid South Africa. Together Suleman and Peterson have written and produced two fiction films, Fools and Zulu Love Letter (2004), and a documentary film, Zwelidumile (2009), about the life of South African artist Dumile Feni. Suleman describes Fools as a response to the slew of ‘antiapartheid’ films made by foreigners in the 1980s that tended to centre on white protagonists. As the nation transitioned to a multiracial democracy, Suleman felt it was time for South Africans to tell their own stories. Indeed, with Fools Suleman begins to develop a distinct cinematic style, experimenting with narrative structure, sound and symbolism as a way of exploring the lingering psychological effects of apartheid on ordinary black South Africans.

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Furthermore, by using Njabulo Ndebele’s 1983 novella Fools as the basis for the film, as well as incorporating African spiritual practices such as invoking the ancestors in the protection of the community, Suleman prods his audience to seek nourishment from cultural resources within the black community (Moyer 2003: 141). That Suleman and Peterson chose to adapt Ndebele’s novella just as the nation is on the cusp of a new beginning, is quite extraordinary. Although the novella is set in 1966, it also revolves around a schoolteacher who raped one of his students. Published during the height of apartheid, critics took issue with the novella for criticizing those who were victims of a repressive government. Nevertheless, for Suleman, understanding the various ways blacks have internalized violence and perpetuated oppression is central to the success of the ‘new’ South Africa. It is in this sense that Fools can be interpreted as a ‘warning to the politicians not to look for easy answers to society’s problems’ (Ukadike 2002: 293). Speaking of his motivation for making Fools Suleman asserts, ‘The amount of damage done to our people by apartheid is immense. […] black people have a history, which is to say that they need to come to grips with themselves first before coming to grips with white people’ (cited in Ukadike 2002: 293). Fools is largely centred around the transformation of two male characters: Zamani (Patrick Shai) and Zani (Hlomla Dandala). Through their interactions, Zamani is able to regain self-respect and Zani develops more compassion for the position of his elders who have been jaded by years of institutionalized violence. However, black women, who endure the double burden of racism and patriarchy, are the real heroes of the film. Though they do not always see eye-to-eye, and despite the various transgressions against them by men white and black, as well as by white women, Nozipho (Zamani’s long-suffering wife; played by Dambisa Kente), Mimi (the teenage girl raped by Zamani) and Busi (Mimi’s enraged sister), are able to maintain their dignity and come together as a community of women to care for one another in times of need. Ultimately, Fools is a powerful articulation of the need for greater equality for women in the newly established multiracial democracy. Suleman’s call for introspection, healing and equality within the black community is captured in the film’s title and postscript. Both are drawn from a passage in Ndebele’s novella in which Zani asks Zamani, ‘And when victims spit upon victims, should they not be called fools?’ (Ndebele 1997: 87). It is principally through the character of Zamani that Suleman encourages blacks to consider how the internalization of trauma and violence associated with the apartheid system, has led to the reproduction of oppression within their own community. Although the South African film industry is more than a century old, the discriminatory policies of the colonial and apartheid eras have resulted in fragmented audiences. Due to cost and location, the vast majority of blacks are unable to access cinema in theatrical venues. Fools performed poorly in theatres earning just over $8,000 in South Africa. However, it aired on local television channels SABC (South African Broadcasting Commission) and M-Net (Electronic Media Network) and was distributed on video, thus reaching larger Literary Adaptation 235

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audiences than the box office figures alone can convey. It is also important to note that as a way of building future audiences for South African cinema, and bringing greater awareness to a classic South African text, the producers arranged for Fools to be screened before students at roughly eighty schools throughout the nation (Dovey 2009: 66). Fools was screened at several international film festivals, including FESPACO and the Locarno International Film Festival where it won the Silver Leopard. With this innovative and daring call for healing within the black community, Suleman established himself as a pioneer in the emerging post-apartheid film industry and Fools is sure to become a landmark in South African cinema.

Cara Moyer-Duncan

Sambizanga Countries of Origin:

Angola France Republic of Congo (Brazzaville) Language:

Portuguese Studio:

Isabelle Films Director:

Sarah Maldoror Producer:

Jean Velter Screenwriters:

Claude Agostini Elisa Andrade Maurice Pons Sarah Maldoror Cinematographer:

Claude Agostino Art Director:

Sarah Maldoror Editor:

Georges Klotz Duration:

102 minutes Genres:

Drama Historical docu-fiction

236 Reviews

Synopsis Sambizanga, Sarah Maldoror’s best-known film, is based on Luandino Vieira’s novella (A Vida Verdadeira de Domingos Xavier (The Real Life of Domingos Xavier) [first published in French in 1971]), which chronicles the 1961 uprising against Portuguese domination in colonial Angola. Maldoror changed the title, however, into Sambizanga, the latter being the neighbourhood in Luanda where the Portuguese prison is situated, the same prison where Domingos was tortured and eventually murdered by the Portuguese secret police. The film recounts the life and death of Domingos Xavier, a construction worker who lives in a coastal village. He is married to Maria and they have a baby named Bastido. They are in bed when the secret police comes into the room, ties up Domingos and drives him away in a car. The next phase of the film shows Maria leaving the village with her baby Bastido on her back to undertake the long trek to the city in search of her husband. Upon arriving in the town closest to her village, she heads directly to the Administration building where she is told by an official that her husband has allegedly participated in anti-colonial activities and is being held in a prison in Luanda. After wiping her tears, Maria boards a bus and heads for Luanda where she tries unsuccessfully to see her husband but the police tell her that Domingos is not a political prisoner. The film ends with a shot back to Domingos’ village where his fellow workers learn that he was killed.

Critique Sambizanga won the Palme d’Or (Gold Palm) at the 1972 Carthage Film Festival in Tunisia. Maldoror’s film treats the theme of the liberation war in the Portuguese colony of Angola. The narrative implies that the main character’s misfortunes and death are due to his loyalty. Domingos (Domingos de Oliveira) is tortured in prison for refusing to provide the name of a key member of the liberation struggle. Maldoror’s film is highly political and certainly historical. A

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Adaptation Cast:

Domingos de Oliveira Elisa Andrade Jean M’Vondo Dino Abelino Benoît Moutsila Talagongo Lopes Rodrigues Year:

1972

third dimension is the feminist touch that Maldoror embeds within the character of Maria, Domingos’s wife (Elisa Andrade). Even though fiction has the upper hand in the film, the director subtly narrates the history of the liberation movement under the auspices of the MPLA (Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola). There were other major actors in the struggle such as Jonas Savimbi and Roberto Holden. The MPLA movement was headed by the poet Agostino Neto, the future president of independent Angola in 1975. The movement built its own network of informants and spies, in addition to levying its own army. Likewise, in the film, people of all ages and professions are included in the liberation movement. When Domingos is brought to Luanda heading for the prison, a young boy named Zito (Dino Abelino) sees him and alerts Petelo (Jean M’Vondo), an old nationalist who contacts Chico the postman and an active member of the movement. Chico (Benoît Moutsila) decides to conduct his own investigation and thanks to Miguel’s help, the leader Mussunda hears about Domingos’s capture and imprisonment. The character of Mussunda (Lopes Rodrigues) is the emblematic selfless figure that one finds in liberation movements. He is a tailor by profession but he is also a teacher as he is seen in a scene teaching a class of new recruits, telling them about the philosophy, aims and doctrine of the liberation movement. At this juncture, Maldoror dissects the colonial society as set up by the colonizer into ‘a type of creolized society’ (Peres 1997: 3). Obviously, at the top reigns the white Portuguese; in the middle there is the mulatto (Mestizo); and at the bottom comes the black man. Domingos is interrogated by a mulatto policeman. In effect, the mulatto – the product of miscegenation between white males and black women – is the go-between, the intermediary between whites and blacks. The plot of the film becomes even more complicated for, in addition to racial issues, Maldoror brings into the fray class issues as Mussunda emphatically argues that the society should not be perceived in terms of race (white, mulatto or black) but of the divide between the poor and the rich. Perhaps, here, Maldoror’s Marxist, leftist and anti-colonialist views act as a subtext. To any rule there is an exception and Sylvester represents that exception for he is a white engineer employed in the same company as Domingos yet he is an anti-colonialist and a sympathizer to the nationalist cause and liberation movement. The character of Maria is more politicized in Maldoror’s film than in Vieira’s novella. She is fighting for the truth. She leaves the village in search of her husband. She is often rudely treated even though, on a few occasions, she finds a sympathetic ear. She finally arrives at the prison where her husband is detained. When she hears that Domingos died under torture, Maria screams and cries but she is comforted by Zito and Petelo. Her pain is also alleviated by other women who tell her that Domingos did not die in vain and he is also survived by a son: the child should give her the courage to soldier on. In the character of Maria, Maldoror highlights the condition of women in a colonial society and the upshot of the director’s argument is that women are doubly oppressed: first, as women and, then, as colonized subjects. Literary Adaptation 237

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Sambizanga ends with muted happiness and sadness, grief and joy, mourning and the celebration of life. A party is organized where all the activists are assembled: Zito, Miguel and his mother, Chico, Sylvester and Petelo. Of course, Maria is present. Music is played and those present are eating and dancing. Mussunda gives a eulogy in which he states that Domingos was killed yet he died as a hero and for a cause, namely the liberation of his country. People will never forget him. Life must go on.

Samba Diop

Genesis La Genèse Countries of Origin:

France Mali Language:

Bambara Studios:

Balanzan CNPC Cinéma Public Films Kora Film Director:

Cheick Oumar Sissoko Producers:

Jacques Atlan Chantal Bagilisha Bogolan Kasobane Screenwriter:

Jean-Louis Sagot-Duvauroux Cinematographer:

Lionel Cousin Music:

Michel Risse Pierre Sauvageot Salif Keita Editor:

Ailo Auguste-Judith Duration:

102 minutes Genres:

238 Reviews

Synopsis A summary of the narrative plot shows that the film starts with the abduction of Jacob’s daughter Dinah by Shechem, son of Hamor of the Canaanite clan. As reconciliation, Hamor proposes intermarriage. However, Jacob’s sons impose a condition, namely that Hamor and all the males in his clan must first be circumcised; thus, they invoke Abraham’s covenant with God. Hamor agrees. Later on, Jacob’s sons slaughter Hamor’s followers. Afterward, a council is set up which tries to reconcile the two warring sides. At this juncture, Sissoko draws parallels with the famous African custom of palaver (l’arbre à palabres). In turn, Esau sets out to destroy Jacob’s tents and cattle; however, after the latter invokes the name Israel, Esau forgives him and then commands the clan to head for the land of Egypt where there is food in abundance. The film ends just as in the Old Testament with Joseph, as a slave who rises up to become the pharaoh’s Prime Minister. The conflict ends with Joseph – whom his father Jacob thought to be dead while he was alive and enslaved by the men of the desert – inviting all to come and live in Egypt. The setting of the film reflects the landscape of Biblical Palestine; however, there are similarities with the vast open, dry grasslands of the West African Sahel and the rocky cliffs of Bandiagara in the Dogon country in present-day Mali. The characters wear rags in order to better render the antiquity of the narrative. The material culture is represented by basic cooking gear and primitive dwellings made of mud-and-wattle huts. Genesis won the Golden Stallion Prize (Etalon de Yennenga) at the 1999 Panafrican Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou (FESPACO) in Ouagadougou.

Critique Genesis by Cheick Oumar Sissoko is an African allegory, a rereading of chapters 24, 25, 34, 37 and 38 of Genesis from the Bible and more specifically from the Old Testament. The main protagonists and their clans are the same as in the Bible: Hamor the farmer (Balla Moussa Keita), Esau the hunter (Salif Keita), and Jacob the pastoralist and cattle-breeder (Sotigui Kouyaté). However,

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Genesis

Historical epic Adaptation Cast:

Sotigui Kouyaté Salif Keita Balla Moussa Keita Maimouna Hélène Diarra Habib Dembélé Fatoumata Diawara Magma Coulibaly Oumar Namory Keita Year:

1999

the originality of Sissoko’s film resides in his imperious drawing of correspondences between Biblical events, on the one hand, and Mande civilization, on the other. Besides the historical references, the director projects these ancient Biblical events onto the stage of present-day postcolonial Africa by appealing to Biblical parables (Diop 2004: 47). In so doing, Sissoko grounds his indictment of the conflicts and wars that ravage the African continent and stunt its economic development along with endemic ills, such as corruption and mismanagement. However, Sissoko also stresses the universality of human conflict and suffering. In that sense, all three world religions – Judaism, Christianity and Islam – are featured in the film in a call for reconciliation. Director Sissoko resorts to storytelling in the traditional style. A parallel can be drawn with the Epic of Old Mali, in particular the Sunjaata Epic (Cissé and Kamissoko 1989). The director also uses flashbacks as the storyteller moves back and forth between text and lore. If the epic genre is orally recited, the Bible and the Koran are also recited even though these two texts have been fixed into writing long ago. However, the line between orality and writing is a thin one. Religion understandably permeates the film but it is a

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syncretic form of faith with the presence of Ma Ngala, the unique God of the Bambara cosmogony and symbol of animism and ancestor worship. This belief is mixed with Islam thus bringing forth a peculiar form of Islamic faith. In Genesis, storytelling is an encompassing artistic genre for Sissoko blends various artistic genres. An example provided by the film is when a slave recounts the story of Judas. The slave is at once a storyteller and an actor. In this scene, the slave publicly humiliates Judas by making homosexual allusions to the effect that Judas will not have sex with him (the slave). While narrating the story, the slave also dances. Thus storytelling, drama (kotéba, Malian traditional theatre), mime, dance and music coalesce in order to become a single entity. Satire is also a preferred tool as powerful men are publicly insulted by members of the lower rungs of society. Here, one sees that Sissoko borrows motifs from traditional customs. In ancient Africa, it was acceptable to mock the king or the prince. The griots excelled in this art form. In the same vein, in the film, after profusely mocking the higher-ups, the actors pay homage and respect to them, in a fascinating turnaround by the mockers. One minute they are making fun of the powers-that-be and the next they kneel with deference before them. Sissoko portrays Leah – Jacob’s wife (Maimouna Hélène Diarra) – as a strong woman who dares to criticize her husband. There is a scene in the film in which Leah boldly tells her husband to stop crying about Joseph’s disappearance and that, if he were a good husband, none of this would have happened. Leah’s words lead Jacob to come out of his hut and tell his wife that she cannot prevent him from mourning his son. Indeed, their son, Joseph, is alive. Finally, Sissoko makes abundant use of proverbs, thus putting more emphasis on the importance of the Word (la parole). Normally, in traditional society, older people make use of proverbs for they are purported to be wiser, to have more experience for they have lived longer. However, Sissoko subverts that assumption by having the young woman Dinah (Fatoumata Diawara) use proverbs when talking to Hamor. In these proverbs, animals are greatly represented. This anthropomorphic representation illustrates the idea that certain animal characters are found among humans; for instance, an aggressive behaviour, cunning and cowardice found in the lion and hyena or grace and elegance as carried by the gazelle. In the end, Sissoko’s Genesis is a complex oral narrative with contemporary applicability.

Samba Diop

240 Reviews

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Hyenas Hyènes Countries of Origin:

Senegal Switzerland France Language:

Wolof Studios:

ADR Productions (Paris) Thelma Film AG (Zürich) Maag Daan (Dakar) MK2 Productions (Paris) Director:

Djibril Diop Mambéty

Synopsis Dramaan Drameh (Mansour Diouf) holds a seat on the council of the impoverished village, Colobane, where he operates a grocery store. At a council meeting, the Mayor informs the councillors that Colobane is destitute, but that a visit from Linguère Ramatou (Ami Diakhaté), a former village girl who is now ‘richer than the World Bank’, could provide an opportunity to save the village. The Mayor (Makhourédia Gueye) asks Dramaan, Ramatou’s old paramour, to convince her to invest in Colobane. Ramatou, however, returns to Colobane for justice, and recalls how Dramaan impregnated her and then perjured against her, claiming that two other men raped her. Ramatou produces those men as witnesses, and, having proven Dramaan guilty, promises Colobane wealth if Dramaan is killed. At first, the villagers deny Ramatou’s request. Soon, the villagers turn on Dramaan as he seeks sanctuary, while Ramatou bribes the villagers and their institutional representatives. Eventually, Dramaan accepts his fate and meets with the village men, who devour him after a kangaroo court hearing. Meanwhile, Ramatou purchases the land out from under the villagers and has it bulldozed.

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Producers:

Pierre Alain Meier Alain Rozanes Screenwriter:

Djibril Diop Mambéty Cinematographer:

Matthias Kälin Music:

Wasis Diop Editor:

Loredana Cristelli Costumes:

Oumu Sy Duration:

113 minutes Genre:

Tragedy Cast:

Mansour Diouf Ami Diakhaté Mamadou Makhourédia Gueye Djibril Diop Mambéty Year:

1992

242 Reviews

Critique Hyènes is highly unique as an African adaptation of a play from Switzerland, Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s The Visit, while also being a loose sequel to director Mambéty’s previous feature from 1973, Touki-Bouki. In this adaptation, Dramaan Drameh and Linguère Ramatou stand in for Touki-Bouki’s protagonists, Mory and Anta, who were lovers separated by circumstances, with the male, Mory, staying behind in Senegal, and the woman, Anta, leaving Africa for Europe. Much of the later film’s iconography echoes imagery from Mambéty’s earlier feature. For example, Touki-Bouki opens on a herd of cattle, and Hyènes opens on a herd of elephants. In both films, the leading woman character gazes out over the sea as a metaphor for survival beyond the African shores. The films also share a titular similarity, as Touki-Bouki translates to Journey of the Hyena and Hyènes, more simply, to Hyenas. Although Touki-Bouki ended in both ambiguity and ambivalence with regard to the African subject’s postcolonial circumstances, Hyènes is a bleak representation of Africa’s neocolonial failure. The allegory is thick, with most characters given professional names to metonymize a range of institutions. A woman, who stands in for the World Bank, preys upon Colobane as a site of Africa’s relative poverty in the film. In turn, Colobane’s villagers prey upon one another out of desperation and destitution, and welcome neo-colonial financial influences that corrupt Africa’s people and institutions. Mambéty points his criticism at African governments, religions, militaries and justice systems, in particular. Yet the film is complex in its messages, with Dramaan guilty of a past crime but otherwise honourable, Ramatou justified but nonetheless ruthless and excessive in her vengeance, and the villagers treacherous as a result of despair. If the narrative bears its allegory on its surface, Mambéty’s surreal imagery and occasionally elliptical editing complicates the film’s meanings even further. Significantly in a film with an all-African cast, Ramatou’s bodyguard is a Chinese woman, which suggests globalized systems of economic oppression and international justice that update Touki-Bouki’s postcolonial framework. Animal symbolism permeates Hyènes, with the herd of elephants that open the diegesis being replaced by bulldozers in the end and hyenas appearing at narrative turning points. Indeed, Hyènes adds complexity to the hyena as a symbol in Mambéty’s oeuvre, with the term applying to this film’s characters as desperate, savage animals. Furthermore, Dramaan’s executioners disguise themselves as animals to hide their participation in an excessive act of justice from the community. Of course, Ramatou is able to administer a final justice to Colobane’s citizens by bulldozing the village, as her wealth places her in a role beyond conventional justice. From an African perspective, Ramatou stands in for the World Bank’s continuing exacerbation of African poverty from a position beyond reprisal. Interestingly, Ramatou is able to tempt the villagers in a psychedelic carnival sequence where she bribes and distracts them with the status, convenience and modernity promised by western consumer culture. Institutional corruption is also conveyed through

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imagery, with fans and chandeliers in a church displaying the vanity lurking beneath the surface narrative of Colobane’s desperation. Although Hyènes has a longer runtime and less kinetic editing than its predecessor, the film is nonetheless engaging. In a fashion similar to Touki-Bouki, Hyènes’s avant-garde aesthetics place it outside of the social realism, colonial confrontation and return-tothe-source narratives popular among African films that receive prizes at FESPACO. Yet Hyènes’s harrowing narrative of poverty, betrayal and retribution among characters that all exhibit corruptibility can appeal to a broad range of viewers beyond traditional art film audiences.

Stefan Sereda

Karmen Geï Countries of Origin:

Senegal France Canada Languages:

French Wolof Studios:

Euripide Productions Les Ateliers de L’Arche Zagarianka Arte France Cinema Canal+ Canal+Horizons Director:

Joseph Gaï Ramaka Producer Philippe Cosson:

Richard Sadler Screenwriter:

Joseph Gaï Ramaka, from the novella Carmen by Prosper Mérimée Cinematographer:

Bertrand Chatry Music:

Julien Jouga David Murray Doudou N’Diaye Rose

Synopsis The credits roll, and David Murray’s saxophone jazzes about, accompanied by sabar drumming in the background. Karmen Geï (Djeinaba Diop Gaï) opens and closes her legs to the rhythm, while Angelique (Stephanie Biddle), the warden of the Kumba Kastel women’s prison, and other female prisoners watch on in applause. As the drumbeats intensify and the rest cheer on, Karmen dances seductively and slowly moves towards Angelique, who eventually arises to join in with Karmen in a near erotic duel. The prison quietens down at night while Karmen lies with Angelique and gets away in the morning. Then Karmen dances and sings critiques of police corruption at a wedding celebration for Majiguene, the daughter of a military chief and Lamine, an officer and former lover (Magaeye Niang). Majiguene challenges Karmen in a duel dance and is pushed to the ground by Karmen. In an attempt to return her to prison, Lamine succumbs to Karmen’s amorous words, sets her free and ends up in jail himself. Reunited with her gang, Karmen springs Lamine from jail and returns to her mother’s bar. During a later police raid, Massigi (El Hadji Ndiaye), acting as a griot, forces them to retreat by reminding them of the past resistance heroines and martyrs. Meanwhile, Majiguene fails to persuade Lamine to return to her, while Karmen’s mother instructs Angelique about Karmen’s free spirit and urges her to give up as both Lamine and Angelique are trapped in a love triangle with Karmen. Later at the Cape Manuel lighthouse, Karmen, Lamine and the gang meet for a smuggling operation. While playing cards with Samba, Karmen sees a vision of women with painted faces in an alley and senses an omen of death. Back at the prison, Angelique suffers from loneliness without Karmen and later drowns herself. When the police ambush and await the smugglers at the shore, all jump ship, and Lamine proves his loyalty to the gang. After a Catholic funeral in Angelique’s memory, Majiguene begs Karmen to free Lamine, who in turn pleads with Karmen to leave their risky lifestyle but is rejected. Having seen Karmen flirt with Massigi, Lamine is filled with jealousy.

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Karmen Geï

Editor:

Hélène Girard Duration:

82 minutes Genres:

Musical Drama Adaptation Cast:

Djeinaba Diop Gaï Magaeye Niang Stephanie Biddle El Hadji Ndiaye Year:

2001 244 Reviews

Critique An often quoted statement of the director Joseph Gaï Ramaka best describes his intention of adapting a popular cultural icon of freedom and rebellion: Carmen is a myth but what does Carmen represent today? Where do Carmen’s love and freedom stand at the onset of the 21st century? Therein lies my film’s intent, a black Carmen, plunged in the magical and chaotic urbanity of an African city. Ramaka employed locally as well as internationally famous musicians to star in the film and for the music score in this musical drama, and the narrative of Karmen Geï follows the Carmen prototype: it is all about love and death, with an undercurrent of rebellion in search of freedom. The Senegalese Karmen here is turned into a political martyr not without the legendary exotic

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context that demands local colour: sabar drumming by Doudou N’Diaye Rose’s ensemble, a griot singing at a wedding, saxophonist David Murray’s jazzy scores, Julien Jouga’s choir, as well as voices of famous local singers like El Hadj Ndiaye (who plays a love interest of Karmen, Massigi), and the blind diva Yandé Codou Sène. The choice of music for Angelique’s Christian burial – a Muslim dirge (Khassaïde) – was however controversial and caused the Senegalese government to censure the film (see Petty 2009: 108, note 1). Karmen Geï also explores the forbidden topic of lesbianism, making the politics of the film even more controversial and yet much more up to date and even avant-garde using a past myth to cast the eternal symbolism of the Carmen theme. The seduction of this Senegalese Karmen also functions at a couple of levels: first, as a reflexive manoeuvre to invite the audience into a cinematic world through an active gaze at the central character, as the story unfolds through her provocative moves and gestures in the opening sequence when Angelique duels with Karmen in a seductive dance, and second, as a symbolic move to engender a gaze back to the embodiment of Carmen, to liberate her from the classical shell of sexual exoticism by turning her into a universal tour de force which can navigate between classes and even genders to serve as sociopolitical critique. The fair-skinned Angelique, a Christian herself, stands for the colonial power who imprisons Karmen and other local women, and commits suicide after realizing that she cannot possess Karmen’s body or soul. Karmen, on the other hand, exercises her sexual power to get out of jail, seduces men to work for her, smuggles illegal goods, and during a powerful dance sequence at the wedding of her lover and a military chief’s daughter, critiques the corruption of government officials, acting as a griot, a traditional West African storyteller. She is the only one who freely travels between gender and class boundaries. And yet, from reading the tarot cards, she is also quite aware what lies in the future for her – death, instead of love as her dialogue toys with the sounds of the original French words: l’amour and la mort. Carmen in the Romantic as well as the contemporary popular culture and cinema has become a femme fatale and femme libre at the same time, whose freedom comes at the price of death. As Ramaka shot the film on location in the Senegalese coastal town of Joal and the historic Gorée Island, a centre of the Atlantic slave trade in the eighteenth century, memories and reminders of slavery and its price were obvious and appropriate. In embodying the theme of emancipation and circumventing the traditional gender and class hierarchies in Karmen’s rebelliously free character, the director reminds the audience of the paths to liberty through political struggles, as she repeatedly sings: ‘Love is a rebellious bird and no one can tame it. If it does not feel right to him, it’s really no use to call him. There is no use trying. You can’t buy it.’

Yifen T Beus

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U-Carmen e-Khayelitsha Country of Origin:

South Africa Language:

Xhosa Studio:

Dimpho Di Kopane, in association with Spier Films Director:

Mark Dornford-May Producer:

Ross Garland Screenwriters:

Mark Dornford-May Andiswa Kedama Pauline Malefane, from the opéra-comique Carmen by Georges Bizet Cinematographer:

Giulio Biccari Music Director and Conductor:

Charles Hazlewood Choreographer:

Jol Mthethwa Editor:

Ronelle Loots Duration:

122 minutes Genres:

Musical Drama Adaptation Cast:

Pauline Malefane Andile Tshoni Lungelwa Blou Ruby Mthethwa Year:

2005

246 Reviews

Synopsis The film is set in the South African township of Khayelitsha, where Carmen (Pauline Malefane), a worker and company choir member of the ‘Gypsy’ cigarette factory, has a fiery temperament, while Don José’s South African counterpart, Jongikhaya (Andile Tshoni), is a local police officer and a devout Christian. One day while Jongikhaya is out on duty, Nomakhaya (Lungelwa Blou) awaits patiently outside the police station’s barracks with a message from home about Jongikhaya’s dying mother’s grief and longing for him. During a flashback, the audience discovers that Jongikhaya has left home after drowning his brother during a quarrel but has told the police that his brother has accidentally slipped. Carmen, knowing her power to command men’s attention, ‘ignores all rules’ and taunts the men in the township with her stubborn yet controlled arrogance and amorous voice and dance. As other men strive to get the factory girls’ attention, Jongikhaya reads his Bible and ignores Carmen’s advances. Later, she gets into a fight with Pinki (Ruby Mthethwa), who turns off the TV while Carmen excitedly watches the footage of a famous opera singer. Jongikhaya takes Carmen into police custody after she injures Pinki. Jongikhaya is attracted to and eventually trapped by Carmen’s sex appeal, so Carmen gets away, promising him her love. Demoted for her escape, Jongikhaya attempts to catch Carmen and other drug dealers, but Carmen’s emotional appeal lures him to declare his love for her: he quits his job and joins the drug smuggling gang. During a caper, Jongikhaya becomes jealous of another man Carmen befriends, gets beat up by this man and rejected by Carmen, who firmly declares to him that she belongs only to herself. Days later, filled with vengeful anger, Jongikhaya pursues and confronts Carmen outside of a concert hall where she is due to perform.

Critique The film is a version of French composer Georges Bizet’s famous opéra-comique, Carmen, a late-nineteenth-century work of love and jealousy, rebellion and revenge, also an adaptation of French writer Prosper Mérimée’s novella. The libretto has been translated from the French into Xhosa and adapted to a contemporary South African context, mixed with local songs and dance. The film is performed and staged by the members of the local Dimpho Di Kopane theatre company. Although the film follows faithfully the original operatic scores, Dornford-May uses mise-en-scène and cinematography to deconstruct the notion of the gaze and problematizes spectatorship from the film’s beginning. The unidentifiable male voice-over in the opening sequence comments on the facial features of the South African Carmen and compares them with the ‘thirty positive qualities’ presented by French writer Mérimée for women to be considered beautiful in Spain, where the original Carmen story is set. Through this reference to the Spanish standards of beauty and pointing out the unfitting criteria for describing this African Carmen, the audience sees the relocation

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of the Carmen myth, here serving as an archetype for freedom and rebellion and necessitating a willing suspension of disbelief on the audience’s part of the authenticity in viewing a well-known western opera set in South Africa and performed by a local cast from a theatre company. Through the manipulation of the camera, such as quick zooms in and out, changes of the speed, angle and distance, details within the mise-en-scène (all walks of life in the township in particular) are revealed, perspectives can be created and the audience’s gaze oriented. All such cinematic manipulations cannot be achieved in the original operatic context due to the very nature of the operatic performance and the physical constraints of the theatre. For instance, by having the Carmen character looking directly into the camera at a photo shoot during the opening sequence, the director creates multiplicity of the act of looking/gaze and destabilizes the spaces between the world of drama and the audience’s reality, allowing flexible subjectivity during the process of viewing and decoding, again an attribute quite specific to the cinema machine. On one level of re-writing, re-appropriating the Carmen myth, the politics of such a production is quite obvious as South Africa faces its own challenges in rebuilding a post-apartheid identity: it is a postcolonial reworking of a well known western operatic text that embeds issues of language, class, gender and social justice. As a source work of adaptation since the early days of film history, Carmen has certainly proven to be one of the most flexible and adaptable stories as it is already a cultural icon transferred to France from a Spanish story reported to Mérimée, and now transferred from Bizet’s France to South Africa. On another level as the film is co-funded and produced by Spier Films and Nando’s, a fastfood chain that has fashioned its own cultural connection with and inspiration for recipes from the history of Portuguese exploration, the film’s predominantly South African identity also strives to find a cross-boundary niche to further manifest the universality and flexibility of the Carmen story. After all, Carmen ultimately is a story about the protagonist’s will to be independent from what men desire her to be. Like the tragic end of Bizet’s original opera, Carmen’s fate has been foreshadowed by her wilful desire to belong to no one. This very theme continues to be relevant in societies striving for gender equality as with South Africa today. However different this Carmen might be from Mérimée’s imagined Spanish one, as compared at the beginning of the film, they have this very same irresistibly enduring quality, a defining characteristic of the Carmen-esque that transcends time and space, medium and genre.

Yifen T Beus

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Sleepwalking Land Terra Sonãmbula Countries of Origin:

Mozambique Portugal Language:

Portuguese Studios:

Ebano Multimedia Filmes de Fundo ICAM Radio Televisão Portuguesa ZDF Arte Director:

Teresa Prata Producers:

Alexander Bohr António da Cunha Telles Pandora da Cunha Telles Screenwriter:

Teresa Prata, based on Mia Couto’s novel Cinematographer:

Dominique Gentil Art Director:

Caroline Alder Music:

Alex Goretzki Editors:

Paulo Rebelo Jacques Witta Duration:

95 minutes Genres:

Literary adaptation Magic realism Cast:

Nick Lauro Teresa Aladino Jasse Year:

2007

248 Reviews

Synopsis Muidinga and his companion and guide, an old man the African boy addresses as Uncle Tuahir, are on the run from marauding, gun-toting factions of the civil war. They come across a charred bus with burnt corpses and some luggage that escaped the fire. The pair takes shelter in the bus. Among the possessions of the dead passengers are notebooks that describe a story of a woman named Farida, a squatter on an abandoned ship, waiting for her young son to find her, and a hardworking young man Kindzu, who has fled his burning village and the civil-war-mongers. In this discovered manuscript, which Muidinga reads to Uncle Tuahir for entertainment, Kindzu writes about his meeting with Farida and their subsequent search for Farida’s lost son. Muidinga associates the story of the lost boy with his own and convinces Tuahir to embark on a quest to find Farida, who he believes to be his mother.

Critique Not many filmgoers may be aware of Mozambican-born director Teresa Prata’s Sleepwalking Land, a film that took her some seven years to complete and is yet to be extensively screened beyond the international film festival circuit. The movie is evidently Ms Prata’s labour of love after she spotted a goldmine in Mia Couto’s novel Terra Sonãmbula/Sleepwalking Land, published in Portugal in 1992 and translated into English in 2006 by David Brookman (Serpent’s Tale, London). Born in Mozambique from Portuguese migrant parents, Mia Couto is now widely recognized as a major writer of African fiction. Extracts from Sleepwalking Land (his first novel) that I read in English indicate a remarkable, powerful literary work, falling within the realm of magical realism. It was indeed a work screaming to be captured on celluloid with the help of special effects and convincing local acting talent. Teresa Prata, who received an international education, grabbed the opportunity to shoot the film in Mozambique and do the special effects in Portugal. Sleepwalking Land won the international FIPRESCI (International Federation of Film Critics) Award for the Best Film in competition at the 2007 Kerala Film Festival, and an award for Best Director at the lesser known Pune Film Festival. The book Sleepwalking Land and its film version are both set during the 15-year civil war that crippled Mozambique (1977–92). Mia Couto has a gifted philosophical turn of phrase to describe the catastrophe of the war: ‘what’s already burnt can’t burn again.’ The film (as in the book) looks back wistfully at the tragedy of the unrest through the eyes of a dreaming orphan boy and provides a glimmer of hope for the survivors of civil anarchy to cope with what is left to build anew. The orphaned Muidinga (an endearing performance by an acting novice, Nick Lauro Teresa), who can fortunately read and is even familiar with Melville’s Moby Dick, and Tuahir, his unrelated, illiterate, wise old guardian (played by non-professional actor Aladino Jasse), are accidentally tossed together by the civil war.

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The film and the book trace their common will to survive the difficult days. The young boy might have read, or rather heard, the story of Moby Dick, but the name is indelible in his memory. Director Teresa Prata takes creative license in allowing Muidinga to call ‘Mody [sic] Dick’ first, his pet goat and second, the ship in which Farida and Kindzu, the heroes of the manuscript he found in the burnt bus, are squatting. When I queried the director on these details, she stated that she was responsible for these changes and that it was not part of Couto’s book. A strength common to the book and the film is that the parallel love story of Farida and Kindzu never takes centre stage – the backbone remains the dreams of the young boy under the guiding spirit of the wise old man. Between the two, the viewer of the film is introduced to the problems of Mozambique, of Africa, of any developing country. As in a Greek tragedy, you trudge along a path that gives you a notion of travel and progress, only to return to the same spot, literally and metaphorically. Pretence and dreams, however, make the film move forward. To aid the young boy on his ‘journey’ to his ‘loving mother Farida’, squatting on ‘Mody Dick’, the old man devises the means to reach the sea (Indian Ocean) from the bushes of Mozambique. He digs a hole in the ground. Water spouts and a stream forms. The stream becomes a river, and at the end of the river there is the ocean. In the Ocean, the lead characters find the derelict ‘Mody Dick’ with Farida on it. Obviously, if you demand conventional realism – there is very little that the film can offer. If you accept magical realism as a tool to narrate a realistic sociopolitical scenario in Africa, then both Mia Couto and Teresa Prata have much to offer and delight your senses. The viewer gets a glimpse of Couto’s Mozambique: an elderly Portuguese lady chooses to remain in her house even when her servants have fled; a Gujarati shopkeeper family opts to return to India, after their shop is ransacked during the war. There are railroads that have no trains to run on them. But among the ruins, Couto and Prata, show a glimmer of hope in the form of an orphan, learning hard lessons of life in the bush. Teresa Prata has proven her capability to adapt an imaginative novel and inspire any person interested in good African cinema. Spot the real Captain Ahab and the real Moby Dick that confront Africa today and you could enjoy the film even more. The description of a civil-war-torn country as a sleepwalking land offers fodder for thought, beyond the usual images of violence, poverty and carnage that pervade many films set in Africa, in particular those made in the West.

Jugu Abraham

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The Silence of the Forest (aka The Forest) Le Silence de la forêt Countries of Origin:

Cameroon Gabon Central African Republic France Languages:

French Sango Studios:

CNC Les Films Terre Africaine Nord-Express Productions

Synopsis Gonaba (Eriq Ebouaney) is an African intellectual fresh from Europe and driven by the extravagant belief that western curriculum and pedagogy are sufficient assets to bring positive change back home to the Central African Republic, a place he hardly knows having left decades ago. He vows to transform his country with the motto, ‘I can already see the day when I can triumphantly say: “Look what I did for this country.”’ To Gonaba’s frustration, people he thinks need him the most, such as the Baka people, reject his offer to empower them through western education so that they might revolt against their oppressors. Quite the opposite, the Baka people come to see Gonaba as part of the problem and not the solution. The Baka people constitute an ethnic group inhabiting the rainforest of the south-western Central African Republic. They are historically known under the derogatory name ‘Pygmies’ for their alleged backwardness, savagery and cannibalism, and regarded with racist contempt by the Central African elites running the state as an internal colony, as well as the multinational foreign corporations threatening their lifestyle by engaging in illegal treecutting.

The Silence of the Forest (aka The Forest)

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Arte-France Écrans Noirs Directors:

Bassek Ba Kobhio Didier Ouenangaré Producers:

Bassek Ba Kobhio Guillaume de Seille Annie Izoungou Charles Mensah Abderrahmane Sissako

Gonaba’s alienation is summed up by his girlfriend Simone (Nadège Beausson-Diagne) who tells him that ‘he has the body of a black man and the mind of a white man’. Simone’s description of Gonaba is meant as a compliment for the kind of man that she wants, which she defines as a combination of both the virility and sexual power she gives to Africans and the intellectual refinement and culture she recognizes in white men. In the movie, however, Simone’s description of her boyfriend comes instead to symbolize with a dark irony the symbolic violence of education and neo-liberal multiculturalism imposed on the Baka. The movie shows how, despite his best intentions, Gonaba becomes the repository for all the failed development policies concocted outside of Africa.

Screenwriters:

Bassek Ba Kobhio Marcel Beaulieu Didier Ouenangaré, based on the eponymous novel by Etienne Goyémidé Cinematographer:

Pierre-Olivier Larrieu Art Director:

Didier Ouenangaré Music:

Manu Dibango Editor:

Joseph Licide Duration:

93 minutes Genre:

Drama Cast:

Eriq Ebouaney Nadège Beausson-Diagne Sonia Zembourou Year:

2003

Critique Gonaba, who fears that the Baka people’s contact with modernity is becoming an omen for their programmed extinction, decides to dedicate his life to helping educate them, and teaching them to read so that they are able to fight the encroachment of poachers and multinationals illegally cutting down the forest and threatening their way of life. This is where Gonaba fails because he assumes that the Baka people never had the capacity to engage with the developed world. This is a colonial attitude that Gonaba has absorbed which puts him at a disadvantage in accomplishing his personal mission because he has never understood the Baka from the beginning, and for his mission to succeed, he would need to afford the Baka people a modicum of intelligence, which he does not and which results in his banishment from their communities. Gonaba’s failures bring up a set of questions: first, what do we mean when we say that the Baka people are ‘primitives’? Within that context, what do we mean when we say that western education will deliver them from barbarism? One can begin by recognizing that Gonaba’s concept of pedagogy relies on his own notions of normativity, performance and results. For Gonaba, education is a one-way process with no possibility for student– teacher dialogue. These processes lead to a complete un-learning of teaching processes and a complete rupture between reality and imagination. Thus, Gonaba’s failure as a teacher is his misunderstanding of Baka customs, and his failed initiation into the clan seals his fate. For example, his Baka students were more interested in knowing facts such as why chimpanzees do not have tails. The popular response is that chimpanzees brought fire to the people and were punished by the gods for this transgression by losing their tails. The chimpanzee story shows that the Baka people have their own scientific understanding of the world’s creation and they are not innocent noble savages. The Baka people have a relationship to the world that is more complex than Gonaba dares to acknowledge. Thus, by not taking the time to appreciate that the Baka people, like all cultures, are equals in the quest for knowledge, Gonaba, despite his good will, shows a subconscious disdain for their culture. Gonaba’s clash with the Baka shows the disjunction

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between enlightenment ideals and postcolonial realities. The question of nature and the domination over nature that includes the ‘savages’ lead to his own dehumanization. The Silence of the Forest’s co-director, Bassek Ba Kobhio, has dealt with these issues before in Sango Malo (1990) in showing how the indigenous cultural reservoir of Africa was discarded for a Eurocentric idea of development to no avail. He relied on Brazilian educator Paolo Freire’s theory of ‘conscientizao’ which contends that dialogue is more important than strict curricular orthodoxy. Thus, the pedagogy of the oppressed is a pedagogy which must be forged with, not for, the oppressed (whether individuals or peoples) in the incessant struggle to regain their humanity. This pedagogy turns oppression and its causes into objects of reflection for the oppressed and such reflection will incite the oppressed to engage in the struggle for their liberation. In an interview with Olivier Barlet (2003), Ouenangaré explains how he approached Bassek Ba Kobhio with the original project of The Silence of the Forest because he knew that, being more experienced and better known than he was, Bassek would help him find financing for the film. Ba Kobhio and Ouenangaré’s collaboration makes The Silence of the Forest the first feature-length film shot in the Central African Republic and the success of the film set a great precedent in Central African cinema history.

Jean Olivier Tchouaffé

252 Reviews

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Literary Adaptation 253

History and Film

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Thomas Sankara, the Upright Man/ Thomas Sankara, L’homme intègre (Robin Shuffield, France/Burkina Faso, 2006). Thomas Sankara, as himself

Historical films are usually encouraged by governments when history, remembered individually or collectively through written and oral accounts, is used as a source of inspiration to help a nation pull through difficult times. Apart from South Africa and possibly Egypt and Algeria, few or no African countries have had the financial means or the political determination to produce historical films on a grand scale, with a view to exalting national identity or promoting a regime. Maingard (2007: 25–34) thus explores the meaning of an early silent film (De Voortrekkers [Harold Shaw, 1916]) for the success of the migration of Boers from the Cape Colony to establish a ‘free republic’. The film emphasizes the white alliance with the British to defeat the Zulu masses. The epic with countless extras is not the only film genre that may be considered historical. Film-makers may declare history as their subject, claiming in the opening sequence to tell a ‘true story’, as do both Raoul Peck in Lumumba (2000) and Zola Maseko in Drum (2004), or they may choose a historical context for a fiction, as does Roger Gnoan M’Bala for his slavery drama, Adanggaman, roi nègre/Adanggaman (2000). In addition, through its style and preoccupations, a film may become historical in the various ways it reflects the era when it was made. Finally, a historical film can be a meditation on historical evolution or responsibility of ordinary people in the making of history. As a specialization, historical films or rather history films, for a flexible concept favoured by Vivian Bickford-Smith and Richard Mendelsohn, the editors of the informative Black + White in Colour: African History on Screen (2007), are a challenge to film critics who must be proficient in film and history of a chosen country and era. Josef Gugler (2004: 70) is right to request that scholars working on film and history inform readers about the veracity of the facts represented in their selected films. Such intellectual rigour, however, may raise stakes too high. Priding themselves on their own knowledge, viewers of historical films and readers of critiques in this field have such expectations that the issue of accuracy engenders insoluble and tedious debates, just as those that occur among critics discussing the fidelity of literary adaptations.

Dealing with the complexity of history Different versions of historical events should be considered as complementary rather than exclusive of one another. One prevailing attitude among researchers is to claim that African film-makers rewrite African history in order to dispel the colonial denial of African agency. This argument amplifies interviews with militant directors from francophone countries, in particular Ousmane Sembène, Med Hondo or Jean-Marie Teno, who take on the role of historian and purport to expose shameful deeds that French official sources have obfuscated. Combating the denial of official history no doubt inspired many film-makers and their commentators but colonial disciplinary action or ‘pacification’ was not really hidden as there was no sense of guilt in the colonial enterprise. Thus, Harms’s view (2007: 81) that colonial exploitation starting from the slave trade has been reported in countless publications unknown to large audiences is more convincing than the indicting function attributed to postcolonial

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film. Colonial administrators and militaries were keen diarists, memoirists and dutiful report writers so that colonial abuses frequently reached the press and thereby the public sphere. On 7 December 1900, for example, a motion was put to the French parliament for a judicial inquiry into various examples of colonial abuse, including the massacres committed by bloodthirsty Captains Voulet and Chanoine in Niger in 1898– 99. This motion was unfortunately defeated (Klobb and Meynier 2001: 210–19) but the abuses were made public. Historical events are multisided and might be irreconcilable in one film. To give an African example, I wish to dwell on three different narratives of this Voulet–Chanoine scandal in Niger and look at Queen Sarraounia’s role in defeating the French culprits. The official French version came out in the publication of Colonel Klobb’s and other officers’ diaries as well as press excerpts published by Madame Klobb in 1931 (Un drame colonial: À la recherche de Voulet) and it is now available in paperback (Klobb and Meynier 2001). The French Government sent Colonel Klobb as a disciplinary envoy to arrest the captains who, instead of gaining the populations’ trust, were devastating a whole region while advancing on their Dakar–Chad reconnaissance mission. On 14 July 1899, instead of surrendering, the captains shot the French envoy dead. Their African recruits (tirailleurs and spahis) in turn killed them a few days later. Queen Sarraounia is not named once although the captains had come across a fiercely independent ‘fetishist population’ (Klobb and Meynier 2001: 88). In Abdoulaye Mamani’s 1980 novel, Sarraounia, le drame de la reine magicienne, the tirailleurs turned against their captains rather than obey the order of attacking the formidable ‘sorceress queen’. Sarraounia’s name is on everyone’s lips in Mamani’s novel but never seen, as though her absence should magnify her supernatural power. Finally, as Madelaine Hron shows in her introduction to the next chapter (‘Screening War, Surviving War’), Hondo’s film version, Sarraounia (1987), presents the queen upfront and, thanks to the usual glorifying film techniques of western cinema, gives her the stature of a fearless ruler and an African heroine. The historical context of the confrontation between the French captains and the magician Queen Sarraouina suggests that the pilfering resulted from the need to feed not only the soldiers and porters, but also their wives and children. This convoy of 1,700 people, who often outnumbered many villages, inspired Chanoine, the more ferocious of the pair, to think he was ‘the Samory of the white people’ (‘le Samory des blancs’) (Klobb and Meynier 2001: 161), comparable to Samory Touré, the Manding Emperor who eluded the French Army for years because he moved his empire with him. Novelist Maryse Condé described such warring masses in her epic of the Bambara Empire (Ségou, Paris: Robert Laffont, 1984), but showing such large-scale spectacles on the screen proved to be too costly and controversial to carry out even for Sembène who never made his Samory biopic. In the Voulet–Chanoine story, the fact that their budget was minimal also incriminated the colonial politicians. The infamous officers had to bribe their African recruits with the prospect of war spoils including wives and slaves. The construct of either superstitious or righteous African soldiers would have clashed with such evidence of material greed and ruthlessness. Indeed, the thousands of victims mentioned by Klobb and Meynier in their search of Voulet and Chanoine would have been killed mainly by their African recruits.

Beyond the hidden truths syndrome: Meaningful approaches to history films The detour through Niger has proved, I hope, the difficulty of aiming at comprehensive historical truth in a film project, be it fiction or documentary. Piecing all aspects of a historical event might be mission impossible, even when a film lasts nine or ten hours,

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such as Alex Haley’s Roots, a ten-hour American TV miniseries about slavery (American Broadcasting Company [ABC], 1977). Critics of state violence in film could subscribe to Jacqueline Maingard’s remark apropos Zulu Love Letter (Ramadan Suleman, 2004) and the long-term suffering inflicted by apartheid: ‘The nature and possibility of truth itself is questioned’ (Maingard 2007: 172). Narratives offered by witnesses and participants as well as by artists who revisit these testimonies carry their subjective interpretation of either experience or sources. Various theoreticians of history and film agree on the freedom that film-makers need to reconstruct rather than reproduce history in all verifiable detail. Marc Ferro’s most striking argument in favour of narrative creativity is that of the scene taking place on Odessa’s famous stone stairs in Sergei Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin (1925). There were no massacres on that location yet the shot of the pram rolling down the steps without tipping over is a genial invention because it is an indelible image of popular resistance against imperial repression – the essence of the 1905 Revolution (Ferro1988 [1977]: 68, 73). The African equivalent of Eisenstein’s invented pram would be the invented tanks in Camp de Thiaroye (Ousmane Sembène, 1988), since there were no tanks at that time in French West Africa, as pointed out by Gugler (2004: 73). At this stage, Rosenstone’s attractive distinction between ‘true and false inventions’ is inescapable (Rosenstone 1995: 19, cited in Bickford-Smith and Mendelsohn 2007: 2). Nevertheless, Rosenstone’s notion of agreement in mainstream historiography, as a condition for validating a narrative invention, is inconclusive. Indeed, a critic’s or historian’s authority is rarely unchallenged and the notion of agreement is relative. Establishing historical truth is not the ultimate interest of history films including African ones. The reviews that follow give other meaningful and inspiring approaches, in particular the analysis of re-historicized events and the interpretation of omissions or divergences from historiography. Our selection of eleven films offers a survey of several centuries of African history and is presented in the chronological order of the subject-matter of the films: slavery, both the Atlantic slave trade (Sankofa) and the African slave trade (Adanggaman); the anti-colonial resistance just after World War II in Senegal (Camp de Thiaroye) and in Madagascar (Tabataba [Raymond Rajaonarivelo, 1988]); liberation wars in Algeria (L’Opium et le bâton/Al-afyun wal-asa/Opium and the Stick [Ahmed Rachedi, 1969]), Kenya (A Time There Was [Donald McWilliams, 2009]), Belgian Congo (Lumumba) and Angola (Sambizanga [Sarah Maldoror, 1972]); finally the internal conflicts that plagued independence wars and their aftermath, namely in Algeria (Horsla-loi/Outside the Law [Rachid Bouchareb, 2010]), in Burkina Faso (Thomas Sankara [Robin Shuffield, 2006]) and in South Africa, with the specific challenges of combating and surviving apartheid (Drum and Zulu Love Letter). Re-historicizing consists in reviving the past in order to apply its lessons to cope with the present and hope for the future. The educational power of historical cinema is summed up in Marc Ferro’s remark that Eisenstein’s Alexander Nevski (1938), by warning against Hitler’s threat to Russia and the world with frightening images of helmeted Teutonic knights, gives more information about Soviet ideology of unity than about medieval Russia (Ferro 1993: 14). This patriotic re-historcization seems to be a strong motivation for films like Sembène’s Camp de Thiaroye and Rajaonarivelo’s Tabataba, both released in 1988, some 28 years after independence, as though Senegal and Madagascar needed to boost their self-confidence in national unity by honouring their historical resistance against the former colonizer. Likewise, the review of Drum shows that the story of a friendship between a black journalist and a white photographer under apartheid was still a valid example for the interracial reconciliation that was not yet achieved in South Africa ten years after the official end of apartheid. On a less optimistic note perhaps, Zulu Love Letter evokes the pain and difficulty of remembering the past and testifying to the Truth and Reconciliation Committee.

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Significantly, these two South African films, which came out in 2004, were in competition for the Golden Stallion at FESPACO 2005. Drum won the Étalon d’Or and Zulu Love Letter, the European Union Special Award, a hierarchy that proves that a biopic is more accessible and consensual than a narration structured on intertwined flashbacks. Variations in reported facts are only enlightening inasmuch as they reveal the reasons why facts are modified. The review of Opium and the Stick makes far-reaching comments on director Rachedi’s modification of novelist Mouloud Mammeri’s presentation of women’s roles in the Liberation War of Algeria. Indeed, the minimization of women’s contribution to independence in other national cinemas has been noted by critics, among others by Barnes in Flame (Ingrid Sinclair, Zimbabwe, 1996): ‘As brief a scene as it is, when Flame is raped by Che you can almost hear thirty-odd years of mainstream nationalist historiography crashing to the floor’ (Barnes 2007: 251). To be fair to Sinclair and Zimbabwean freedom fighters, Thompson (2011) argues that Flame also introduces alternative, more positive models of masculinity. Barlet (2012: 324–25) nevertheless remarks on a similar rehabilitation of women fighters in films made by Maghrebi men and women who reject stereotypes of exclusively male bravery. Readers will find other examples of counter-misogynist historiography in films reviewed in this chapter. The placement of Donald McWilliams’s personal documentary about his time as a British service man in Kenya during the Independence War (A Time There Was) illustrates the eruption of history in people’s lives and their participation in it, whether they can immediately acknowledge it or not as history. This reflexivefilm approach to history is particularly relevant today as more people are caught unawares in wars and terrorist attacks, whether they are political refugees, working expatriates or tourists.

Blandine Stefanson

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Sankofa Countries of Origin:

USA Ghana Burkina Faso UK Germany Language:

English Studios:

Channel 4 Films Diproci Ghana National Commission on Culture Mypheduh Films Negod-Gwad Productions Norddeutscher Rundfunk (NDR) Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR) Director:

Haile Gerima Producer:

Haile Gerima Screenwriter:

Haile Gerima Cinematographer:

Augustin Cubano Art Director:

Kerry Marshall Music:

David J White Editor:

Haile Gerima Duration:

124 minutes Genre:

Drama Cast:

Oyafunmike Ogunlano Kofi Ghanaba Alexandra Duah Mutabaruka Year:

1993

Synopsis Sankofa is a bird of passage in Akan culture and language (from Ghana, the former Gold Coast). The film features Mona (Oyafunmike Ogunlano), an African American fashion model doing a photo shoot at Elmina Castle (Ghana), the infamous slaveholding and slave trading site where thousands of Africans perished. Donning white western accessories (e.g. a blonde wig) and sexually appealing clothes, Mona is photographed by a white man holding a long-lens camera. His sexually explicit encouragement combined with Mona’s acquiescent corporeal responses seems to connote violation, an illicit relation and acculturation (for Mona). These connotations seem consistent with a bewildered Mona being told by an African elder that she is chosen to return to the past. During one break, Mona wanders in the castle’s dungeons, is transported to the Lafayette plantation somewhere in America and becomes Shola the slave. She meets Nunu (Alexandra Duah), an African-born Akan woman who introduces her to Akan spirituality. In love with Shango (Mutabaruka), Shola joins him to organize slave rebellions. Mona is eventually transported back to the present, reborn and no longer willing to acquiesce to white male objectification. However, it remains uncertain if, like the other chosen ones, she would now listen and respond to the call of the Sankofa drum.

Critique The bird Sankofa is multiply symbolic in Akan culture and language but Ethiopian-born film-maker Haile Gerima privileged and built his film around the belief that one must ‘return to the past in order to move forward’. Gerima’s influential reading of the Sankofa has strengths and weaknesses. Sankofa’s plot and story draw on elements of ‘Third Cinema’ as outlined by Teshome Gabriel (1989: 53–61). This cinema evolved from domination to liberation (like Mona-Shola) while Third World film cultures and audiences went from circulating/consuming alienating Western images to consciousness of self and nation (like Mona/Shola) and internationality – through film. Moreover, in the late 1960s–early 1970s, while learning film-making in Los Angeles, Gerima received direct cultural and political influences from the Black Arts Movement (BAM). Third Cinema and BAM combine to strengthen Sankofa by aligning it with Hegel’s master–slave dialectic within which the slave is not human. Indeed, Sankofa uses this dialectic to remember and experience ‘the original traumatic violence of slavery’ (Keeling 2007: 53). Simultaneously, however, Third Cinema exposes weaknesses in Sankofa. As a case in point, in the 1980s (when the production of Sankofa began) it was no longer useful to think of Third Cinema as ‘an ideal type’ for it had already transmuted into ‘a wide spectrum of alternative practices’, such as multiplicity and hybridity (Stam 2003: 31, 32), which Sankofa ignores in order to indulge in racial, Afrocentric binaries and essentialisms.

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As a result, Sankofa simplistically requests ‘the extrication of the Black from the White and the achievement of a hypothetical prior African purity’ (Keeling 2007: 53). Such weakness is laid bare in the sequence of Mona’s branding: as she declares ‘I’m not an African; I’m an American’, Sankofa collapses race, gender and nationality. Rather than ‘drag the spectator into slavery with Mona’ (Keeling 2007: 56), the sequence and the whole film folds race, gender, nation and identity into an obsolete time warp – one always looked at through/in connection to whiteness. Mona only speaks for herself in order to deny her Africanness. Morally judged by Sankofa, an African man (Kofi Ghanaba) who does not understand Mona’s American culture, her Americanness is ignored while she is enslaved and eventually raped repeatedly by white men. Mona’s extreme passivity is nothing short of disturbing, not least because Gerima, seemingly blinded by whiteness-equals-evil, does not disentangle the multidimensionality of her being and condition. In my view, before Mona is able to connect to the cosmos or walk on the bridge connecting diasporized Africans, as Afrocentrism would like her to, such a disentanglement needs to happen and her agency, in gender terms, squarely asserted. What is more, certainly ‘both male and female characters share cultural authority in the film’ (Petty 2008: 34) but Sankofa’s obsolete time warp makes women, or at least Mona, always come second after/behind men (we should not forget that Shango dominates Shola as well). And yet Sankofa retains a strong spiritual aspect that may provide the viewer/theorist/critic a way out of the film’s binaries, essentialisms and its overreliance on whiteness and pure black identity. In so doing, Sankofa’s informing logic, background and influences must be de-Americanized (which includes ‘African American’ and ‘Afrocentric’ as categories) at a connotative level. Only then may the viewer/theorist/critic be able to posit a rationale for a much needed breakthrough reading of Gerima’s film. Such a rationale approximates historian Robert Harms’s (2007: 81) description of the film in another context: ‘Sankofa uses the fantasy device […] to address the important issue of historical connections between modern Africans and the descendants of African slaves living in the New World.’ Thus, how fantasy can be mobilized to read Sankofa anew is a good place to start.

Saër Maty Bâ

Adanggaman Adanggaman roi nègre Countries of Origin:

France Switzerland Ivory Coast 260 Reviews

Synopsis In the late seventeenth century, Ossei (Ziablé Honoré Goore Bi), a young man in a West African village, is to be married to a local princess at the behest of his father. Ossei loves a woman of a lower class, much to the dismay of his family. When he refuses to marry his intended, he is beaten and cast out. Without warning, his village is raided by the warriors of King Adanggaman (Rasmane Ouédraogo). The village is burned and the weak and elderly are killed, including

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Burkina Faso Languages:

Gouro More Bambara Studios:

IMTM Film Amka Films Abyssa Film Direction de la Cinématographie Nationale (DNC) du Burkina Faso RTSI – Televisione Svizzera Director:

Roger Gnoan M’Bala Producer:

Tiziana Soudani Screenwriters:

Jean-Marie Adiaffi Roger Gnoan M’Bala Bertin Akaffou Cinematographer:

Mohammed Soudani Art Director:

Jean Baptiste Lerro Music:

Lokua Kanza Editor:

Monica Goux Duration:

85 minutes Genre:

Slavery drama Cast:

Rasmane Ouédraogo Albertine N’Guessan Mylene-Perside Kouame Ziablé Honoré Goore Bi Bintou Bakayoko Nicole Suzis Menyeng Year:

2000

most of Ossei’s family. Ossei escapes but Mô Akassi, his mother (Albertine N’Guessan), is among many who are captured to become slaves, sold by Adanggaman to local farmers or European slave traders. As Ossei makes his way into the heart of Adanggaman’s kingdom to rescue his mother, he is confronted by one of Adanggaman’s Amazon warriors, Naka (Mylene-Perside Kouame), who injures him before he is able to escape. Ossei manages to find his way to the vain king’s seat of power and negotiates for the release of his mother. However, things do not go according to Ossei’s plans and he sees first-hand the brutality of the slave trade. This is, however, only the beginning of Ossei’s struggle against Adanggaman and his warriors.

Critique A recurring theme in Adanggaman is the frequent mention of ‘changing times’, a comment on our own changing times. The Amazon Naka at one point implores: ‘Can’t we put the past behind us? Destroying each other would only please our enemies.’ Such a call for forgiveness and reconciliation remains strong in presentday Africa. King Adanggaman’s kingdom of ‘peace, justice and happiness’ distinctly echoes the early postcolonial rulers of the late 1950s and 1960s, promising to rule fairly but often resorting to an iron fist. The film does not present a blanket indictment of cultures or races, but rather, a variation on the idea that absolute power corrupts absolutely. King Adanggaman is unable to see the value of freedom for others aside from himself. The straightforward yet satisfying visual style of the film in conjunction with editing that does not allow scenes to linger propels the narrative effectively: the opening scenes with Ossei dealing with his family’s arrangements for his wedding are short and to the point, not impinging on the screen time for the narrative proper. (However the film cries out for a better transfer to video to capture more nuances in the night cinematography, with scenes often lit by single-source lighting.) Overall pacing is brisk and effective. Just as lives are interrupted by the flow of events outside of our control, so too does M’Bala interrupt the flow of his own narrative, with justified intentions. In the opening of the film, what appears to be a plot about a family dispute is upended by Adanggaman’s raiders, who burn the village and capture villagers for slavery. With scenes of manacled slaves the narrative pauses, concentrating on documenting the mechanics of how slaves were guarded, transported and held. Here the film takes an abrupt turn to docudramatize the process of slavery itself. And as Ossei and Naka’s relationship and fortunes change during the course of the film, so too does the narrative thrust. The skilful integration of such dramatic recreations – prisoners shackled in cages, waiting for transport to the Dutch and British – within the overall narrative of Ossei on his quest to free his mother, is a testament to the film-makers’ desire to tell a compelling story of human beings caught in extraordinarily difficult

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circumstances, rather than to only show African collusion with the slave trade. The visual neutrality of the slave auction for the local farmers, without melodrama or sentiment, is extraordinary in its uninflected presentation: what embellishment would slaves dancing on command or being auctioned in exchange for goats, cows and a basket of yams require to elicit further repugnance from an audience? Only with the addition of a mournful song on the soundtrack toward the end of the auction sequence, when a newly sold slave is branded, do we have such a use of a cinematic convention designed to elicit an emotional response. The recurring mention of how the spirit always desires freedom serves as a motif that resonates, even through the adverse conditions depicted on-screen. As one character states, ‘This serious dilemma means we must look to the memory of the past’. It is clear that film-maker M’Bala wishes our present-day world to heed such words. The ultimate message of Adanggaman is not just of the evils of slavery, but also speaks against power that wishes to deprive us of freedom: the epilogue, a shot of the seaside implicit with its dual meaning of the lands beyond the Atlantic, and the barrier between life and afterlife, tells of Ossei and Adanggaman’s lives after the events of the film. Suffice to say that one is reminded of Thackeray: ‘Good or bad, handsome or ugly, rich or poor, they are all equal now.’ Upon the film’s release throughout 2000 and 2001, much controversy resulted as to Adanggaman’s depiction of the complicity of some African tribal leaders in the historic global slave trade. M’Bala himself has said, ‘Europeans could not have taken hold on a continent like Africa and stolen the strongest of our children if there had not been collaborators.’ If it adheres to historical veracity, Adanggaman shines light on a little-known and reprehensible chapter in human affairs.

Brett Bell

Camp de Thiaroye Countries of Origin:

Senegal Algeria Tunisia Languages:

Wolof Bambara Diola French, with English subtitles Studio:

Filmi Domireew, Films Kajoor, 262 Reviews

Synopsis In the colonies, during World War II, many a young peasant enlisted in the French Colonial Army, eager to defend the ‘fatherland’. These troops were known as ‘tirailleurs sénégalais’ though some of them may have come from as far as central Africa. In late 1944, many of these conscripts were entitled to demobilization and repatriation to their respective countries via Camp Thiaroye, located on the outskirts of Dakar. Sembène’s Camp de Thiaroye dramatizes the post-war tragedy of a group of such infantrymen. As they wait to be sent home, these ‘tirailleurs’ discover that, being previously considered as mere cannon fodder in the European battlegrounds, they are seen as a disposable nuisance. First, they realize that the French had no uniforms for them. Yet, when the US Army generously gives uniforms, the French colonial officers quickly supply khaki shorts,

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ENAPROC (Algeria) SATPEC (Tunisia) Director:

Ousmane Sembène Producers:

Mustafa Ben Jemja Ouzid Dahmane Mamadou Mbengue Screenwriters:

Ousmane Sembène Thierno Faty Sow Cinematographer:

Samïl Lakhdar-Hamina Music:

Ismaël Lô Charlie Parker Charles Trenet, Editor:

Kathéna Attia-Riveil Duration:

147 minutes Genre:

Historical drama Cast:

Ibrahim Sane Sijiri Bakaba Jean-Daniel Simon Ismaël Lô Marthe Mercadier Year:

1988

short sleeve shirts, shoes fashioned from used tyres and a red chechia (fez): the pants, long sleeve shirts and khaki ties donated by the US Army made their dress similar to their French superiors, much to the latter’s dismay. As they collect their monetary benefits, they find that the normal exchange rate does not apply. Their officers deem half the amount owed, minus other benefits, appropriate. Incensed, the ‘tirailleurs’ rebel. A general is held captive and then released on the promise that ‘they would be paid back’. But after the unsuspecting infantrymen have gone to bed after a night of celebration, they are attacked by colonial army tanks.

Critique Colonial history has long been a subject of predilection for Ousmane Sembène. Whether in Borom Sarret, La Noire de…/ Black Girl (1966), Mandabi (1968), Xala (1974), Emitaï (1972) or even his last film, Moolaadé (2004), Ousmane Sembène has been a most articulate advocate for the history of popular resistance on the continent. His reading of slavery and colonialism is nothing short of pragmatic and subversive and shows that dominated Africans sought to regain their dignity by counteracting the mystifications, lies and brutalities of their dominators. Sembène’s typical narratives are grounded in the African soil; they denounce arbitrariness, sexism, exploitation and various kinds of ‘-isms’ which jeopardize the existence of various characters. Camp de Thiaroye is no exception. On the one hand, the incident at Thiaroye in 1944 serves as an allegory for the true nature of colonialism. On the other hand, this film illustrates a struggle for agency and the risks involved in such strife. Camp de Thiaroye is a story of lies and deceptions that unfolds as soon as the infantrymen are demobilized in France: the payment of their benefit, which could have been easily settled in France, is deferred and entrusted to other officers who had had little or no knowledge of the tirailleurs’ experiences on the European front. Capitaine Labrousse’s welcoming speech is replete with vacuous greeting formulas and fraudulent claims. He refers to the magnanimity and benevolence of ‘the fatherland’ towards its children, white and black. Yet a few shots earlier, African and French welcoming parties are deliberately kept apart. In one corner, the former breathlessly shouted ‘long live France’ while members of the latter are only too glad that their sons have not died. Labrousse extols the courage and the commitment of the infantrymen to ‘our dear country’, yet later in the film he remains silent as his own superior intimates that the African veterans stole jewellery and money from dead soldiers at the front. The shell-shocked and now mute infantryman, simply named ‘Pays’ (‘Country’, played by Sijiri Bakaba), perceives the camp and its claims of freedom as a big lie. The barbed wires around this space set it up to be just another prisoners’ camp in Europe. Sergeant Diatta (Ibrahim Sane), the educated African who speaks fluent English, a cause of much resentment for Capitaine Labrousse, is sadly reminded of the duplicity of the French colonial system as he discovers

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that French soldiers had murdered his parents as he was fighting for the ‘fatherland’. Finally the systematic practice of deception in the camp reaches its highest level when the General swears on his ‘officer’s honour’ that the normal rate of exchange would apply for all returning veterans, only to order the attack of the camp, a few hours later. Seeking to assert their agency, Sembène’s protagonists discover that years of warring in Europe had earned them no more than dormitory-style barracks, open latrines and open-air showers. In addition, the mere smell of their first meal makes them push away their plates. They confront the cook who explains that meat is rationed according to rank and skin colour. As free human beings tolerant of each other’s religious choices, they choose practicality over orthodoxy when slaughtering sheep for consumption. Debates in a language that sounds like a distorted version of French reveal their high status in their villages and their ability to look after their own interest. They successfully critique their white superiors’ decisions and defend their own in spite of pressures and threats. Camp de Thiaroye is a film based on a true historical fact, but not history in film. Senegalese historian Mbaye Guèye (1995) has successfully shown how Sembène has taken liberties with historical veracity. What motivated the pioneer of African cinema was not so much mimesis as an opportunity to image the organizing principle of colonial domination, the experience of Africans during World War II and to suggest the foundations of nationalist movements that would galvanize entire populations across the continent in the years to come. Finally, contrary to what some critics have written about this film, Camp de Thiaroye is one of the least Manichean films of Sembène. That there is opposition between the infantrymen and the white military administration is not in doubt. That race underlies most decisions and positions taken by one side or the other is not in question either. What matters is Sembène’s portrayal of the processes and agents of oppression. Here it is as much the actions of the officers as it is those of the infantrymen who are fighting oppression. A few of them, drivers, servants and even infantrymen hesitate to side with the majority. In the scene immediately preceding the attack of the camp, the colonel is driven outside the camp, carrying with him the money destined for the rebelling infantrymen. In addition, as the event of Thiaroye is still fresh in everyone’s mind, another contingent of Senegalese infantrymen is allowed to sail off to war.

Sada Niang

264 Reviews

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Tabataba

Synopsis 

Producers:

Tabataba tells the story of a small Malagasy village during the Independence Uprising which took place in 1947 in the south of the country. For several months, part of the Malagasy population revolted against the French Colonial Army in a bloody struggle. The repression in villages that followed was terrible, leading to fires, arrests and torture. Women, children and the elderly were the indirect victims of the conflict and suffered particularly from famine and illness. One leader of the MDRM Malagasy Party, which campaigns for the independence of the country, arrives in a village. Solo (François Botozandry), the main character, is still too young to fight but he sees his brother and most of the men in his clan join up. His grandmother, Bakanga (Soavelo), knows what will happen, but Solo still hopes his elder brother will return a hero. After months of rumours, he sees instead the French Army arrive to crush the rebellion.

Jacques Le Glou Gilles Lejamble

Critique 

Country of Origin:

Madagascar Languages:

Malagasy French Studios:

CNC La Sept Cinéma JLA Audiovisuel Minazara Productions Director:

Raymond Rajaonarivelo

Screenwriters:

Raymond Rajaonarivelo Robert Archer Cinematographer:

Bruno Privat Music:

Eddy Louiss Editor:

Suzanne Koch Duration:

90 minutes Genres:

Fiction Historical drama Cast:

François Botozandry Soavelo Lucien Dakadisy Philibert Wang Year:

1988

Tabataba, released in 1988, relates the events of 1947 in Madagascar. This subject, which inspired several novels, had already been dealt with in the cinema two years previously by the Malagasy director Ignace Solo Randrasana in his film entitled Ilo tsy very/Eternal Blessing (1986), a title derived from a Malagasy proverb meaning that one should not forget the past (interview with Randrasana, Blanchon 2009). Born in Madagascar in 1952, Raymond Rajaonarivelo was an assistant director before he made his own short film in 1974 called Izaho Lokanga Ianao Valiha/I am ‘lokanga’, you are ‘valiha’. But it was his first feature film, Tabataba (‘Rumour’) that really helped him make a name with a wide audience. Indeed, this film went on to appear at several international film festivals, winning various awards. It was also selected for Directors’ Fortnight at the Cannes International Film Festival in 1988, for the Taormina Film Festival in Italy and for FESPACO a year later. Beyond the historical description of these events, the film-maker justifies his choice of theme by what he calls the ‘duty of memory’. It took Raymond Rajaonarivelo six years to complete his first feature film, from the initial idea to the film’s release in cinemas, notably because of the care he took to give a specific meaning to each image. He took a major event in Madagascar’s history as his theme: the film evoked the 1947 uprising as a rumour. During the event, everyone involved predicted their own imminent victory, and peddled false reports on the arrival of reinforcements and canons, so as to destabilize or motivate the troops. The imaginary world built around this revolt is clearly evoked throughout the film, from the title to the final scenes when the insurgents’ weapons are discovered to be nothing more than pieces of wood in the shape of guns. Rajaonarivelo deliberately took the side of the Malagasy insurgents by placing the camera in the heart of the village. Furthermore, in showing the community’s resistance to the

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oppressor, he encourages the spectator to side with those who are fighting for their freedom. The film relates some particularly deadly events but without ever showing bloody images on-screen, with the exception of the first battle scene. Violence is latent and omnipresent without being visible, which makes the subject more penetrating. The first name of the main character of Tabataba is also significant because ‘Solo’ means ‘replacement’. He will replace his brother as head of the family after his relatives’ death and keep alive the memory of those who died during the revolt. Not only is this child a unifying link between all of the film’s characters, he above all symbolizes the collective memory that he represents and of which he is the beneficiary. Tabataba is fiction, and, even if it has a real historical subject, its message is coloured by the feelings of the film-maker for his native country given that the dialogues are in Malagasy and only the colonial soldiers speak in French. In Tabataba, traditions appear to be a tool with which to affirm Malagasy national identity.

Karine Blanchon

Opium and the Stick L’Opium et le bâton/Al‘afyun wal-'asa Country of Origin:

Algeria Languages:

Arabic French Studio:

L’Office National pour le Commerce et l’Industrie Cinématographiques (ONCIC) Director:

Ahmed Rachedi Producer:

Smail Ait Si Selmi Screenwriter:

Ahmed Rachedi, based on Mouloud Mammeri’s novel Cinematographer:

Rachid Merabtine

266 Reviews

Synopsis Opium and the Stick is the story of two brothers, Dr Bachir and Ali Lazrak during the Algerian War of Liberation from French colonization. When a young man solicits Bachir (Mustapha Kateb) to treat his uncle who allegedly shot himself hunting, the incredulous doctor recoils: any journey is dangerously suspicious as the curfew is about to begin in Algiers. On leaving the building, the youth is immediately arrested by the French Army. Fearing that by association he too will be arrested as a National Liberation Front (FLN) sympathizer, Bachir flees to his native village. Tala is occupied by a French Army contingent helped by local collaborators (harkis). Bachir’s growing indignation at the cowardice he witnesses, spurs him to reconsider his neutrality and seek participation in the struggle for independence. The arrest of the common friend who had recommended the doctor to the youth seals his fate, and Bachir joins the local FLN military chief. Meanwhile, his brother Ali (Sid Ali Kouiret) is leading his own group in successful ambushes in the area. When the French officer in command establishes, through the help of local pariah and harki Tayeb (Rouiched), that the villagers have not been as cowardly as they had led them to believe, Captain Delécluze (Jean-Claude Bercq)’s wrath is unleashed on Tala and its inhabitants with ferocious force.

Critique Opium and the Stick is the third instalment of a trilogy first published in 1965 in the French language by Algerian ethnographer and anthropologist Mouloud Mammeri. Ahmed Rachedi’s film adaptation was produced in 1969. It is a realist depiction of a community living

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Art Director:

Mohamed Bouzid Music:

Philippe Arthuys Editor:

Eric Pluet Duration:

127 minutes Genres:

Fiction Historical drama Cast:

Mustapha Kateb Sid Ali Kouiret Rouiched Marie-José Nat Jean-Claude Bercq Jean-Louis Trintignant Year:

1969

in harsh circumstances and for whom liberation seems the only possible avenue. Despite setting the plot in the same period as that of the novel and being faithful to the major threads, significant parts of Mammeri’s book have been modified or omitted. Whilst Rachedi’s choices may have been informed by considerations of heightened dramatic effects or for ease of understanding, this critique focuses on alterations which bear significant historical implications. The most conspicuous revision to the characters is that of historical Colonel Amirouche, considered a major figure in the Algerian Revolution, and whose role and importance is emphasized in the novel. Amirouche is replaced in the film by a guerrilla chief named Si Abbas. Although the actor playing Si Abbas resembles Amirouche physically, this name is never mentioned. Colonel Amirouche was killed in combat, and so is Si Abbas. The circumstances of Amirouche’s death in 1957 remain a contentious issue in Algerian history, as some allege that internal disagreements within the revolutionary leadership may have led to his being betrayed by an informant. This contention may be a possible motive for this striking change in the cinematic version. When the French draw up a list of village suspects, there are twenty women and ten men. Director Rachedi reverses this to twenty men and ten women. This numerical reversal is significant inasmuch as it epitomizes Rachedi’s debasement of women’s roles in the struggle. The character of Tasadit, only present in the novel, is an example of this. Tasadit is a young woman considered ‘the best liaison agent in the area’. Soon after the atrocious death of her husband flung out of a helicopter by French soldiers, Tasadit is caught by Tayeb during a mission. It is only after Tayeb snatches her son, threatening to give him up to the French soldiers, that he succeeds in extracting from Tasadit the details of local hideouts. This crucial confession implicating the community of Tala brings about the displacement of its people and the destruction of the village. Tasadit’s trajectory is unequivocally represented as that of a woman who had willingly and consistently put her own life in danger. The threat of her son’s death proves the ultimate sacrifice she cannot make, the visceral reaction of a woman who is left with nothing but her progeny. In the film adaptation, it is Bachir and Ali’s sister Farroudja (Marie-José Nat), whose son is taken away and who then divulges the information. Though the confession is transferred on-screen to another female character, Tasadit’s courageous involvement is discarded. Mammeri’s more complex as well as historically accurate descriptions are not only an evocation of Algerian women’s transgression of the social codes and norms of the time by participating in the struggle, but also a recognition of some of their immense sacrifices. By reducing Farroudja’s confession as solely the expression of the maternal love for her child’s safety, Rachedi thereby undermines the extent of women’s resilience and resistance in the war. The novel concludes with Ali’s tragic yet dignified execution by the French, and the destruction of the village. Tayeb is left unscathed, and Bachir, whose political consciousness has been firmly awakened, returns to Algiers. A passage to highlight is that of Tayeb walking through the ghost town. He unanticipatedly comes to acknowledge the ramifications of his actions, and loses his emotional bearings. On History and Film 267

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encountering an elder whom he had previously humiliated, he attempts to persuade him to escape and begs for forgiveness, a salvation which is denied to him by the older man. In the film adaptation, Ali is executed and the village is indeed destroyed. However, Tayeb’s remorseful stance is disregarded. Instead, he is blown to pieces during the village’s annihilation by French mortar. Tayeb the menacing traitor (an excellent performance by comedian legend Rouiched), who had shamefully taken revenge on the villagers for the humiliation he had long suffered in their hands, here embodies the villain with no redeeming features, and for whom death is the only just reward. Although Rachedi captures the essence of much of the novel, the climactic conclusion of the film articulates an effusion of patriotism through the glorification of the (exclusively male) resistance that is soberly understated in the novel. The rural setting provides viewers with an illuminating counterpoint to urban landscapes such as that of Gillo Pontecorvo’s Battle of Algiers (1966) or Mohammed LakhdarHamina’s Hassan Terro (1967). Rachedi’s acclaimed adaptation was a success on its release, and both the removal of Amirouche and the demotion of women’s role may be considered prescient interpretations: the exaltation of the struggle and its participants continued unabated for decades stifling alternative historical readings, whilst the part played by women was continually played down. This reached its paroxysm in 1984, when the Algerian parliament ratified the ‘Family Code’, a set of laws (since partially modified) governed by the sharia pertaining to family rights and obligations, and which officially relegates women as minors by severely restricting their rights. The most salient feature of Opium and the Stick – characteristic of Algerian films of the era – does remain the skilful rendering of a people’s struggle and sacrifices as a collective in overthrowing colonialist oppression.

Rosa Abidi

A Time There Was: Stories from the Last Days of Kenya Colony En ce temps-là: Souvenirs des deniers jours de la colonie du Kenya Country of Origin:

Canada

268 Reviews

Synopsis 1 May 1955 – Donald McWilliams and two other British soldiers are participants in the killing of fifteen men of a Mau Mau gang as they escape through the bush in Kenya. In shock, he writes home about it and later, writes a short story that he packs away. He never talks about it and never tells anyone how he has shot someone. He decides to return and understand the events of the Kenya Emergency, when the Mau Mau fought for independence from British Imperialism. McWilliams documents the stories of three people from this time: Achrroo Kapila, an Indian lawyer, who defended 500 Mau Mau people and was imprisoned in the 1980s on trumped-up charges by enemies in the Kenyan government; Mwaria Njuma, also known as Major Ruku, a Kikuyu who took the Mau Mau oath, fought against the British and the Loyalist Home Guard; and John Nottingham, a British District officer in the District Colonial Service, whose job was

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Language:

English Studio:

National Film Board of Canada Director:

Donald McWilliams, with Karen Feiertag Producers: 

Marcy Page Adam Symansky Screenwriter:

Donald McWilliams Cinematographer:

James V Aquila John Walker Music:

Kevin Dean Editor:

Donald McWilliams Duration:

87 minutes Genre:

Documentary Cast:

Mwaria Njuma John Nottingham Achrroo Kapila Year:

2009

to rule people and be a secular missionary, but by the end of his ten years of service found that his loyalties had shifted. Finally, McWilliams tells the story of his time in Kenya from 1954 to 1956 and his role in the Mau Mau Rebellion, as so many years later he tries to make sense of the fateful day in 1955.

Critique In 1990, a friend of McWilliams finds 150 lantern slides of East Africa from the early 1920s that have been hand-tinted. Now, 80 years later, the images have faded and the emulsion has bubbled and boiled. The film-maker realizes the memory of his time in Kenya has decayed like the photographs. He revisits the photographs that he took during his time in the National Service, and feels separated from his past. He utilizes his technical and artistic skills as a filmmaker and documentarist to meditate on the Mau Mau Rebellion. Through the expressive use of sound, home videos, photographs, animation and archival footage, McWilliams considers two types of memory, cultural and personal, and the blurry divisions between them. Imperialism’s collision course with the Kikuyu people altered their future and blurred their past and McWilliams’s film tries to understand his role amidst it. Yet, by addressing this period in the Kenyan colony, he must also confront how discoloured his memories are, whether through misunderstanding or misrepresentation, or perhaps because he has chosen not to consider them. He communicates these notions on the screen, with images that dissolve slowly into aged film, or images of the Kikuyu and their history juxtaposed against the Queen’s coronation. He employs hand-drawn animation to reflect on his youthful self’s daydreams of the British spirit. Yet, it is his smaller experiments, such as stepping back from the documentary, framing photographic moments removed and distanced from his interviews, when McWilliams reflects on his understanding of the events that seem most intriguing. It is these inward moments that demonstrate that tenuous appreciation of what we perceive and what has actually occurred. Early on in the film, McWilliams acknowledges how his camera was indifferent to the perception of the events. The film struggles with the notion that hiding behind the machine we lose sight of what is really going on. McWilliams, caught within the machine, was made indifferent to his actions in Kenya until he became aware of the human lives at stake when he looked into the eyes of a young Mau Mau soldier. John Nottingham, the secular missionary and district officer, is caught in the machine of the Colonial service and says that when ‘you commit yourself morally […] in a theory that leads you to see people killed, to be able to say at any point this is wrong […] this is very difficult’. And yet, Mwaria Njuma or Achrroo Kapila resisted the machine of imperialism that spread across the land, at great cost to themselves. With this documentary, McWilliams reconsiders that position, using his camera as a tool to reveal the detention camps, propaganda and other abuses of British power.

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A Time There Was reconsiders the independence of the Kikuyu, an independence that should not have needed to be gained the way it was. It is a record of the innumerable atrocities that occurred and how significantly prejudiced and unjust the actions were. Most importantly though, it is a document of the toll on the people from both sides, with consequences that are felt long after the events took place nearly sixty years ago. For McWilliams, it is facing the unfinished business of his life, the feelings of guilt and what it revealed to him about then and now.

David Gane

Outside the Law Hors-la-loi Countries of Origin:

France Algeria Belgium Tunisia Italy Languages:

French Arabic, with English or French subtitles Studios:

Studio Canal Cohen Media Group Director:

Rachid Bouchareb Producer:

Jean Bréhat Screenwriter:

Rachid Bouchareb Cinematographer:

Christophe Beaucarne Art Director:

Yan Arlaud Music:

Armand Amar Editor:

Yannick Kergoat

270 Reviews

Synopsis Algeria, 1925. A family receives a court order to leave their homeland within three days. Their land now belongs to colonialist France. The three sons – Abdelkader (Sami Bouajila), Messaoud (Roschdy Zem) and Saïd (Jamel Debbouze) – and their parents move to the city of Sétif. Year after year, tensions between the Algerian people and the French colonialists intensify. When VE Day (Victory in Europe Day) is celebrated in Paris on 8 May 1945, the Algerian people organize a demonstration for their independence. This day, the father is killed by the colonialists, who violently repress the demonstration. Ten years later, in 1955, Saïd convinces his mother to leave Algeria, where the situation is still highly tense, for France, the land of the enemy, with the objective of reuniting the family. Meanwhile, Messaoud is enlisted in the French Army in Indochina, and Abdelkader is in jail as a political prisoner. Saïd arrives in France persuaded that he can become a businessman. Thus freedom, in a variety of ways, becomes a dream for the three brothers.

Critique Outside the Law is a historic drama about the struggle for Algerian Independence, through the story of one Algerian family, from 1925 onwards, with a particular focus on events between 1955 and 1962. As the family is being torn from their land, because of the French Code de l’Indigénat, the mother packs a handful of dirt, as a promise and an eternal souvenir. France imposed this code on all its colonies to establish social and racial boundaries from 1881 – this type of code was also employed by other European colonial powers, under the concept of ‘Indirect rule’ – which allowed the colonists to impose forced labour, to receive arbitrary monetary taxes, to requisition food and property, etc. This code was abolished in 1946, except in Algeria, where the code was enforced until 1962, when Algeria gained independence. This is a story of revenge, the revenge of a family and of the Algerian people. As the central theme of the story, independence is the ultimate objective. Nevertheless, this movie is subtle enough

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Duration:

138 minutes Genre:

Historical drama Cast:

Jamel Debbouze Roschdy Zem Sami Bouajila Bernard Blancan Thibault de Montalembert Ahmed Benaissa Samir Guesmi Year:

2010

to combine an historical point of view with the saga of a family: three brothers, three ways of fighting for independence – and three points of view on the notion of liberty. The movie is full of irony and historical parallels, making it complex and interesting: the war in Indochina – a country which also fought for independence – where Messaoud was involved; 8 May 1945, ‘Liberation Day’ for France as a cynical moment for the Algerian people; the jail where Abdelkader receives his inspiration for the revolution he will eventually lead; Saïd starting his business by hiring Algerian prostitutes in France, the country that dispossessed his family and country. This film is clearly about politics and the FLN (Front de Libération Nationale/National Liberation Front) – a socialist political party that was founded in Algeria on 1 November 1954. The FLN often had little choice but to fight as a terrorist organization. Without exposing the ‘dark side’ of the Algerian resistance, Rachid Bouchareb shows how the movement for independence was not necessarily a homogenous one, with families forced to make cruel and brave decisions that often tore them apart. He also portrays how the French themselves were divided along lines of loyalty. With Outside the Law, Rachid Bouchareb has created a powerful and politically controversial film. FLN massacres remain a touchy issue today as French sources estimated that 70,000 Muslim civilians were killed or abducted and presumed killed by the FLN during the Algerian War. Bouchareb does not cover up this part of the story, giving the film a well-rounded intellectual credibility even though the French press reproached him for his bias towards the FLN. Last but not least, the actors, with a special mention to the three main actors, Jamel Debbouze, Roschdy Zem and Sami Bouajila, are excellent. These three actors had contributed to the enormous success of Indigènes/Days of Glory in 2006, a film about the colonial troops that fought for France against the Nazi power. Outside the Law is hard hitting but realistic, sometimes violent but also poignant – certainly a work of art.

Angéline Dubois

Lumumba Countries of Origin:

France Belgium Mozambique Languages:

French Lingala, with English subtitles Studio:

JBA Production

Synopsis The Haitian film-maker Raoul Peck offers a compelling portrayal of iconic leader Patrice Lumumba’s life and legacy, dramatizing the rise, fall and eventual assassination of this leader (portrayed by Eriq Ebouaney). Lumumba highlights the time period of transition to Congolese Independence in the early 1960s. The film is circular in narrative structure, and takes the artistic liberty to foreground Lumumba’s point of view as omniscient in taking viewers on a journey back to examine the series of events that has culminated in his own death and horrible desecration. The film foregrounds an overlay of historical photography showing scenes from the era of Belgian colonial domination, which adds to its realist aura History and Film 271

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Art Director:

and reinforces the textual assertion at the beginning that ‘This is a true story’. It moves on to a scene that depicts the clandestine exhuming, dismemberment, burning and dissolution of three bodies in sulphuric acid, including Lumumba’s and two of his comrades, Maurice Mpolo (Théophile Moussa Sowié) and Joseph Okito (Cheik Doukouré), by the Belgian police commissioner under the cover of night, a horrific and graphic scene that recalls lynching. In several didactic early scenes, the film offers background on the history of Congo and its relation to Belgium, and situates Lumumba at the heart of the movement for independence, revealing him to be a major catalyst, and also points to his advocacy for civil disobedience.

André Fonsny (Production Designer)

Critique

Director:

Raoul Peck Producer:

Jacques Bidou Screenwriters:

Pascal Bonitzer Dan Edelstein Cinematographer:

Bernard Lutic

Music:

Jean-Claude Petit Editor:

Jacques Comets Duration:

115 minutes Genres:

Biopic Historical drama Cast:

Eriq Ebouaney Alex Descas Théophile Sowié Maka Kotto Dieudonné Kabongo Pascal N’Zonzi Cheik Doukouré Makena Diop André Debaar Mariam Kaba Rudi Delhem Year:

2000

272 Reviews

This film is a follow-up to Peck’s earlier examination of Lumumba in the 1991 documentary entitled Lumumba: Death of a Prophet. The feature film, whose screenplay went through more than eight drafts, was written by Pascal Bonitzer, Dan Edelstein and Peck, and shot on location in Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Belgium because civil war prevented filming in Congo. Lumumba leaves viewers with a feeling of outrage that a man so visionary could have been undermined before he had an opportunity to fulfil his mission and his great promise, and that he ended up being so misunderstood and unappreciated in nations such as Belgium and the United States, as well as by the UN and some of the Congolese, in particular, Colonel Joseph Mobutu (Alex Descas). As the film opens, the camera cuts from still images of the various black-and-white photographs documenting abuses of blacks during the era of colonial occupation, including labour exploits, beatings, shackling and torture to scenes highlighting the celebration of Mobutu’s takeover and, as is revealed at the end of the film, the sixth anniversary of the nation’s independence. Then only does the film turn to Lumumba. After his arrest and prison sentence for being a ‘subversive’ the film highlights his experience with white Belgian prison guards and their brutality, in particular when they are ordered to release him to go to Brussels to attend the Belgian conference on the Congo. In spite of the violence that he suffers at the hands of state-based authorities, the film captures his resilience as he emerges triumphantly to face the public. As time in the film advances, we recognize that these earlier scenes eerily foreshadow his later imprisonment, torture and death. The fact that the film returns to the 1966 anniversary of independence at the end and cross-cuts it with the gruesome deaths of Lumumba and his comrades situates these penultimate scenes within the nation’s larger history of colonial domination and violence. One of the most vivid and colourful scenes of the film depicts Leopoldville in June of 1960. The film focuses on the impact of Lumumba in a speech in a climactic scene made before Belgian governmental officials and Joseph Kasavubu, the first Congolese president (Maka Kotto). In this historical speech given on Independence Day (30 June 1960) Lumumba affirms Congo’s agency in the struggle for independence, and underscores the

Directory of World Cinema

Lumumba. Eriq Ebouaney as Patrice Lumumba

need for African unity, a bold and powerful message that resonates with the spirit of liberation. Meetings filmed indoors with government officials contrast starkly with the growing unrest that surrounds them outside, which Peck captures in scenes set outside in open space that emphasize the escalating violence and pressures from the black Congolese Army. The portrait that dominates is one of Lumumba as heroic, in spite of the growing opposition that he faces and his betrayal by figures such as the secessionist Moise Tshombe (Pascal N’Zonzi), the leader of the secessionist Katanga regime along with an increasingly duplicitous army chief Mobutu, as Lumumba struggles to help build a democratic nation. Set in the Katanga province in January 1961, the film’s penultimate scenes emphasize the brutal beatings and torture to which he and two of his comrades are subjected by officials such as Moise Tshombe and Godefroid Munungo (Dieudonné Kabongo). From the beginning, Ebouaney, by wearing glasses, a goatee and through his commanding persona, epitomizes qualities that made Lumumba captivating and eventually iconic as a leader. The three other main actors (Descas, N’Zonzi and Kabongo) have also been praised for impersonating less engaging personalities (Mobutu, Tschombe, Munungo). Low-key lighting predominates in the film, particularly in representing clandestine violence. For example, the dark, smoky

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and hazy atmosphere in which headlights are most visible as a line of cars moves forward ominously as the film begins resurfaces at the end and culminates in the scene of violent deaths. The camera techniques of filming Lumumba close-up or from below and centring him on-screen emphasize his charismatic persona and in the end, dramatize his death. Costuming is an important device in the film. The formal, western-style suits that black Congolese government officials wear, and the European furniture in the buildings, offices and meeting rooms where they are depicted, visually contrast with the military uniforms of the black soldiers in the film, along with the Africanprinted attire worn by the women. They serve as an important marker and signifier of Lumumba’s role as a public official. That the film grossed a mere $684,121 in the United States suggests that there is still much reluctance when it comes to thinking about the legacy of Lumumba. Yet, the final message in the film is that it is impossible to hide the legacy of Lumumba, and that in spite of those who have attempted to cover it up or make it disappear, the principles for which he fought and died live on. Malcolm X, the African American black Muslim leader who, like Lumumba, has been linked to pan-Africanism, famously referred to him as ‘the greatest black man who ever walked the African continent’ at the rally on 28 June 1964 where he established the Organization of Afro-American Unity (Breitman 1972: 88).

Riché Richardson

Thomas Sankara, the Upright Man Thomas Sankara, l’homme intègre Country of Origin:

France Language:

French Studio:

Arte France cinéma, CRRAV Nord-Pas-de-Calais, France 3 Production Lille, France 3 Lorraine – Champagne Ardennes, Zorn Production International Director:

Robin Shuffield 274 Reviews

Synopsis Robin Shuffield’s documentary focuses on Thomas Sankara, who came to power at the age of 34 following a popular coup, and was President of Burkina Faso from 1983 to 1987. With his military uniform, a gun in his belt and a book by Marx in his hand, ‘Tom Sank’ or ‘Comrade Sankara’ decided to make a clean sweep in his country. As a symbolic gesture, he gave a new name to Upper Volta: Burkina Faso (‘Land of Upright People’). With his charisma and altruism, Captain Sankara tried to rally the population to his political project: development of local production, prosecution of chieftains who appropriate villagers’ land, restrictions of the State’s living expenses, autonomy from the dictates of international institutions, and diplomatic freedom in relation to the former colonial power, France. Such an ambitious agenda brought him enemies and the leader soon became isolated and vulnerable.

Critique Thomas Sankara, the Upright Man could have led the director into a trap. The lure of hagiography was strong in the face of Sankara’s altruistic policies. Admittedly, the film is biased and the components that best symbolize the Sankara myth all figure in the documentary: ‘The battle of the rails’, the phrase Sankara may have

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Screenwriter:

Robin Shuffield Cinematographer:

Marc Ridley Robin Shuffield Sound:

Serge Dietrich Music:

Cyril Orcel Editor:

Samuel Gantier Serge Dietrich Duration:

52 minutes Genre:

Documentary Cast:

Thomas Sankara Jonas Sawadogo Jean Ziegler Gervais Ouédraogo

borrowed from René Clément’s 1946 Resistance film La Bataille du rail, for his commitment to link by rail Ouagadougou and its neighbouring capitals, Bamako in Mali and Abidjan in Ivory Coast; literacy programmes; women’s rights; vaccination campaigns; and, finally the famous uniform whose design was inspired by tradition and that Sankara made compulsory for public servants. Staff only wore it when the President popped around the offices, hence the idea of calling this garb Faso Dan Fani – ‘Sankara’s coming’. Robin Shuffield, however, does not hesitate to portray the limitations of the Burkinabe Revolution including the excesses of revolutionary courts, teachers’ strikes and other settlings of scores. One of the film’s strengths is to give voice to an existing opposition. The documentary shows how the policies advanced by Sankara and the National Revolutionary Committee impacted on the Burkinabe people’s lives, for example through access to food-reliance or economic protectionism, which Sankara promoted with the slogan ‘Let’s consume Burkinabe’. Such measures boosted some economic sectors but, as he questioned the feudal structure of chiefdoms, Sankara unsettled the population. The film also demonstrates how the Revolution wreaked havoc with the geopolitics of West Africa and beyond. Thus, Houphouët-Boigny in Ivory Coast and Moussa Traoré in Mali both disavowed Sankara’s autonomy because France’s support helped them secure their stranglehold over their respective countries.

Thomas Sankara, the Upright Man

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Dragoss Ouédraogo Jean-Hubert Bazié Marie Roger Biloa Abdoulaye Diallo Boukary Kaboré Year:

2006

276 Reviews

The film opens with an energetic speech delivered by Thomas Sankara, showcasing his outspoken and charismatic style. The viewers are simultaneously introduced to the President’s commitment to Burkina Faso and to his disengagement from France. The documentary sheds light on the Vittel African Summit (3–4 October 1983) whose veiled agenda was to consolidate France’s former colonies’ status of vassal states. Sankara rejected this subordination and boycotted the official dinner at the Elysée Palace. While on a visit to Burkina Faso in 1987, Mitterrand appears ill at ease when he hears Sankara criticize countries that have welcomed South African President PW Botha, whom Sankara accuses of having ‘blood on his hands’. Mitterrand tells Sankara that, due perhaps to his youth, he has gone too far. Robin Shuffield’s main narrative device is the use of archival footage that may be blurred but suits the film’s purpose. Important events are missing in this footage, such as the first interview given by Captain Sankara the day after his coup, but the director’s aim is to show concrete images of the leader’s action. Shuffield collates interviews he conducted with Sankara’s former colleagues and partners. There are conversations with political leaders, such as Ghanaian President Jerry Rawlings, Jean Ziegler (UN reporter for the Feeding Rights Commission) and Jonas Sawadogo (‘pioneer of the Revolution’); with journalists Marie-Roger Biloa, Abdoulaye Diallo and Jean-Hubert Bazié as well as with former student Gervais Ouédraogo, teacher Dragoss Ouédraogo and former Captain Boukary Kaboré. All these interviews are essential because they fill the archives’ lacunae and, as such, make the documentary invaluable. A non-identified voice-over (actor Van Sivers in the French version), which is at once haunting and judiciously spaced, interweaves archival images with witnesses’ retrospective testimonies. The film follows the chronological order and the spectators are immersed into the Revolutionary experience. It is as though the viewers are accompanying Sankara with the constant perspective of his destiny, which seems beyond belief during the 86 minutes of the documentary, even though the outcome is known and inevitable. Who killed Captain Sankara? On 15 October 1987, Thomas Sankara and twelve of his companions and ministers were massacred in a coup that brought Blaise Compaoré to power. Historians and researchers suspect that this massacre was motivated by geopolitical as much as personal interests and that France, the United States, Liberia as well as some of Sankara’s closest collaborators share the guilt. So far, no historical truth has been established and the court case is still pending. Sankara had less than four years to lift his country’s morale after more than twenty years of neo-colonialism; brave and daring without compare, he seemed unaware that his innovations would eventually destroy him. The director seduces the spectators by creating a sense of proximity with the president just as the latter appeared to be close to his companions and people. The young head of state has been a mythical role model for the youth of Burkina Faso since the mid-1980s. He fought to free his people from the neo-colonial yoke, i.e. from these underground mafia-like networks that the French refer to as françafricains. His assassination

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made him not only a martyr but also a paragon of pan-Africanism in Africa and elsewhere. The story of the film distribution is as fascinating as that of the film itself. The documentary immediately circulated on the sly in Ouagadougou during FESPACO 2007 and abroad. Each screening almost unleashed an upheaval. Even when tropical rains poured over Ouagadougou, people who missed out on tickets stayed outdoors hoping to have a glimpse of the film. More than 25 years after Sankara’s death, the Captain’s ghost haunts the capital of ‘the upright men’. The leader, who is commonly seen as the African Che, obsesses people today as much as he obsessed his contemporaries. This film was longed for and it was acclaimed by filmgoers and critics alike. This review was adapted from French into English by Blandine Stefanson.

Colin Dupré

Drum Studios:

Armada Pictures Drum Pty. Ltd. VIP 2 Medienfields Director:

Zola Maseko Producers:

Dumisani Dlamini Zachary Matz Matt Milich Chris Sievernich Rudolf Wichmann Screenwriter:

Jason Filardi (Maseko and Timothy Grimes unaccredited first screenplay) Cinematographer:

Lisa Rinzler Art Director:

Lisa Perry Music:

Cédric Gradus Samson Editor:

Troy Takaki Duration:

94 minutes

Synopsis Drum is a political thriller about the legendary South African investigative journalist, Henry Nxumalo (b.1917–d.1957), who used the platform of Drum, a magazine aimed specifically at black Southern African readers to expose the injustices of apartheid. The film is set in the 1950s in Sophiatown, a multiracial township on the outskirts of Johannesburg. Watching Sophiatown through Nxumalo’s eyes, the audience experiences the rich, vibrant life of this world – a place reminiscent of 1950s Harlem in its jazz, black political consciousness and style. We are enchanted as we listen to the music and meet cultural and political icons and gangsters of the day. The apartheid authorities, however, cannot allow this free world to remain, and as the film progresses, we witness their attempts to destroy Sophiatown and to enforce a system of racist, segregationalist laws. In the film, Nxumalo courageously speaks out against injustice, striving against all odds to fight apartheid. We watch as he poses as a labourer to investigate the near-slavery conditions suffered by black workers on farms and gets himself arrested to reveal the cruel treatment of prisoners in Johannesburg Prison. The narrative is framed as a thriller, with the survival of Sophiatown and the protagonist himself remaining under constant threat. The film also has melodramatic undertones, which surface in the character-driven subtext that follows the transformation of the lead character Nxumalo from a fun-loving carefree Sophiatown playboy to politicized agent of change within his community.

Critique Drum is an international co-production between South Africa, the United States and Germany. It is the debut feature film of the South African director, Zola Maseko, a politicized film-maker who has made a number of award-winning documentaries and short

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Genre:

Political thriller Cast:

Taye Diggs Jason Flemyng Gabriel Mann Fezile Mpela Tumisho K Masha Bonnie Mbuli Moshidi Motshegwa Year:

2004

278 Reviews

films. Much of his work focuses on black South African history and society. See for example Ouma Pitso, Lenny and Me (1994), The Foreigner (1996), The Life and Times of Sara Baartman (1998), Children of the Revolution (2002), A Drink in the Passage (2002) and The Manuscripts of Timbuktu (2008). Drum is an important film in the post-apartheid cinematic repertoire since it was the first South African film to win the Golden Stallion (Étalon de Yennenga, 2005), which is the top award at Africa’s prestigious FESPACO. It was also in the official selection at the Toronto International Film Festival (2004), London Film Festival (2004), Sundance Film Festival (2005) and Critics Week at the Cannes Film Festival (2005). It is clear that Maseko is a successful and prolific film-maker. Furthermore, as one of the pioneering black South African film-makers, he is also one of the ‘new voices’ of the post-apartheid film industry. Through his work, Maseko aims to commemorate and reclaim black history and legends. This is evident in Drum, which highlights the cultural, political and literary achievements of black South Africans, in particular Henry Nxumalo (Taye Diggs) of the Sophiatown period. The film was released in 2004, ten years after the advent of democracy in South Africa, and was intended to serve as a source of historical inspiration for South Africans in the rebuilding and re-envisioning of the country. The historical context of the film is carefully invoked through accurately designed costumes, motor vehicles and sets. Originally, Maseko intended to tell the story of the magazine Drum and of Sophiatown through a six-part television series. He planned to follow the lives of three journalist friends: Cann Themba (Tumisho K Masha), Todd Matshikiza (Fezile Mpela) and Henry Nxumalo. However, when he was unable to secure funding from the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC), he decided to make a feature film instead, believing this format to have a greater potential to attract production finance. Maseko also decided to focus on the single character of Henry Nxumalo in the film. Drum follows Nxumalo’s professional transformation from a sport’s journalist to a cutting-edge investigative writer. The film’s subtext focuses on his personal ‘interior’ life: his transformation from a self-absorbed, carefree playboy to a committed husband and father. The narrative is framed within the classical Hollywood structure with a strong emphasis on the development of the central protagonist. This mainstream narrative format is symptomatic of the co-production finance, since Armada Pictures insisted that Maseko and Grime’s original script be re-written by Hollywood screenwriter Jason Filardi to align it with mainstream structures and standards. The visual aesthetic of the film is clean and glossy with clean lines and dramatic contrasts providing reference to American noir. There is also a distinctly ‘Harlem-look’ to many of the scenes. This is evident in the sparkly textures and colourful hues of the Sophiatown nightlife, the 1950s style costumes and the central role that jazz plays in the film. This slick visual aesthetic, together with the references to Harlem, might be read as evidence of American involvement through Armada Pictures. Nevertheless, a local aesthetic is also being invoked, since many of the exquisite images in Drum are exact replicas of Jürgen Schaderberg’s original

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photographs. Schaderberg (Gabriel Mann) was a young German photographer active in the Drum period who later achieved international acclaim. In the film, he is Nxumalo’s ‘right hand man’ and serves as an important source of audience identification. In fact, one might argue that Schaderberg is employed by the film-makers as a device to secure the emotional interest of white audiences in a narrative that is centred on black culture and society. One of the most puzzling features of this film is the director’s muddled portrayal of historical facts. First, one of the central characters, Jim Bailey (played by British actor Jason Flemyng) is shown to be the editor of Drum, while in fact he was the owner and Andrew Sampson was the editor. The motivation behind this narrative choice remains unclear. Perhaps it was intended to simplify the story for mass, international consumption. The historical events portrayed have also been simplified with a five-year period (1952– 57) being condensed to fit the time frame of a single year (1955). This restrictive framework and the time limitations of the feature film format itself have resulted in a number of important people and historical events being underplayed or ignored, for example the Freedom Charter of 1955 and the 1956 Women’s Anti-Pass March to the Union Buildings in Pretoria. This is particularly true for the other journalists working for Drum such as Ezekiel Mphahlela, Abrahams, Casey Motsisi, Can Themba, Todd Matshikiza and Benny Gwigwi who, despite being accomplished writers, are shown to be lazy, insignificant and uncommitted. This portrayal of history and the Hollywood look and structure of the film have received certain criticism. Nevertheless, Drum is a powerful film, which shows an uncommon ‘black’ perspective of the human impact of racism and apartheid in South Africa.

Astrid Treffry-Goatley

Zulu Love Letter Countries of Origin:

South Africa France Germany Languages:

English isiZulu Afrikaans Director:

Ramadan Suleman Producers:

Jacques Bidou

Synopsis Zulu Love Letter is set just before the start of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). When the world is celebrating South Africa as a symbol of hope for the possibilities of reconciliation and forgiveness, Thandeka (Pamela Nomvete Marimbe), a journalist active in the anti-apartheid movement, is having difficulty adjusting to life in the ‘new’ South Africa. She is plagued by traumatic memories and is sceptical about the TRC. Without reparations for the victims of apartheid and punishment for the perpetrators of gross human rights violations, she feels that it has little to offer her. She is on the verge of losing her job and has a strained relationship with Mangi (Mpumi Malatsi), her teenage daughter who she neglected during the struggle. Through a series of ‘interludes’, a word Suleman prefers to flashbacks because ‘the past is now’ (Personal Communication, Cape Town, 8 October 2008), it is revealed that Thandeka witnessed the assassination of a young activist named Dineo during History and Film 279

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Zulu Love Letter

Bhekizizwe Peterson Marianne Dumoulin Ramadan Suleman Screenwriters:

Bhekizizwe Peterson Ramadan Suleman Cinematographer:

Manuel Teran Art Directors:

Patrick Dechesne Alain-Pascal Housiaux Music:

Zim Ngqawana Editor:

Jacques Comets Duration:

99 minutes

280 Reviews

the waning years of apartheid. She published an article about the assassination and soon after found herself in detention. Thandeka, then pregnant with Mangi, was brutally beaten by her captors and, as a result, her daughter was born deaf. As Thandeka attempts to mend her relationship with Mangi, she agrees to assist Dineo’s mother, Me’Tau (Sophie Mgcina), with finding her daughter’s remains and filing a claim with the TRC. It is unclear whether either will testify before the Commission or overcome their grief.

Critique Since the release of Fools (1997), the first feature-length narrative film by a black director in post-apartheid South Africa, Ramadan Suleman, has emerged as a pioneer in the nation’s budding film industry. Often working in conjunction with Bhekizizwe Peterson, one of Zulu Love Letter’s writers and producers, Suleman is known for his inventive style and bold treatment of controversial subjects like violence within the black community and the efficacy of the TRC. He refuses to conform to the standards of mainstream film, viewing cinema as a form of ‘therapy’ for a nation that even with the

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Genre:

Drama Cast:

Pamela Nomvete Marimbe Mpumi Malatsi Sophie Mgcina Kurt Egelhof Hugh Masebenza Connie Mfuku Year:

2004

implementation of the TRC, was unsuccessful in helping ordinary South Africans recover so that they could live ‘normally’ after the violence and trauma of the apartheid era (interview with author, 8 October 2008). With the end of apartheid and the implementation of the TRC, the ‘truth and reconciliation film’ became a genre of sorts in South African cinema. Since 2000, more than a half-dozen narrative films focusing on the Commission have been released. However, as Jacqueline Maingard (2009: 6) observes, Zulu Love Letter stands in stark contrast to the best known amongst these: John Boorman’s In My Country (2004), Tom Hooper’s Red Dust (2004) and Ian Gabriel’s Forgiveness (2004). Unlike his counterparts, Suleman did not attempt to capture commercial appeal by casting Hollywood stars, nor does his film rely upon blacks forgiving whites that hope to gain amnesty or are plagued with guilt. Zulu Love Letter features a non-linear narrative with a uniquely South African aesthetic that highlights the personal and political complexities of memory and reconciliation, and it focuses solely on healing within the black community. By incorporating interludes, which were shot at sixteen frames per second to give a blurred effect, Suleman powerfully shows viewers the past as Thandeka remembers it and continues to experience it. Throughout the film, Mangi crafts a Zulu love letter made up of beads, fabric, bottle caps, photos and hand-written notes as a gift for her mother. She is inspired by a customary practice of Zulu beadwork traditionally used to express love between romantic partners or mothers and daughters. Mangi’s love letter draws from the past to engage memory and tradition as a way of encouraging love and understanding. Moreover, it demonstrates how art can be used as a tool to promote healing and nation building. Quite imaginatively, the film’s narrative applies the same pattern. Made with support from South Africa’s National Film and Video Foundation and the European Union ACP Cinema Fund, Zulu Love Letter was filmed for just over $1 million. It was shown at several international film festivals and won a number of awards, including the European Union Award at the 2005 FESPACO. Although Zulu Love Letter had a modest release on seven screens within South Africa and earned just $20,000 at local boxes, it prompted a significant amount of discussion in local newspapers regarding the development of a national cinema and the lingering effects of apartheid on the national psyche. In his review of Zulu Love Letter, Shaun De Waal (2005) described the film as an ‘overplayed drama’ with an ‘unclear’ narrative. De Waal also says the film ‘inevitably’ refers to ‘apartheid-era brutality’ which is ‘so standard for a South African story nowadays’. Although the film is challenging, De Waal’s review diminishes the profound ways that apartheid has shaped and continues to shape contemporary South Africa. Wilhelm Snyman (2005), on the other hand, maintains Zulu Love Letter reflects blacks’ experience of whites and doesn’t bother to perpetuate the rainbow-nation myth […] it represents a marked

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departure and is a frank portrayal of how, arguably, the majority in this country feel: let down, frustrated, angry, vengeful and misunderstood. Ultimately, Suleman raises a number of questions regarding the idea of truth and the possibilities for reconciliation. While these questions have the potential to make some audiences uncomfortable, they are absolutely essential to the nation’s recovery. With Zulu Love Letter Suleman has demonstrated that film has the power to do more than entertain by serving as a site of memory, reclaiming history and promoting healing.

Cara Moyer-Duncan

282 Reviews

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Daresalam, Let there be Peace/ Daresalam (Serge Coelo, Chad, 2000)

From the earliest footage of a staged skirmish during the Boer War (1899) to current sensational newscasts, war in Africa has long been mediated by the West. Sixty years after the first features, the British Simba (Brian Desmond Hurst, 1955) and Hollywood’s Something of Value (Richard Brooks, 1957) which both posit facile black and white reconciliation in light of the Mau Mau Uprisings in Kenya, western films continue to reflect paternalistic, colonial attitudes, and to offer simplistic solutions to complex conflicts, as showcased, for instance, in the colonially nostalgic Nirgendwo in Afrika/Nowhere in Africa (Caroline Link, 2001) and Wah-Wah (Richard E. Grant, 2005), or in Shooting Dogs (Michael Caton-Jones, 2005) and Blood Diamond (Edward Zwick, 2006), where sympathetic ‘white saviours’ succour suffering blacks. African cinema about war vies to counter these stereotypes, while concomitantly furthering its own specific themes and aesthetics. While African war films also feature recognizable heroes and villains, unlike Hollywood war epics, they rarely idealize warriors, glamorize battle or justify conquest, by featuring larger-than-life heroes, panoramic battle scenes, epic soundtracks, melodrama or stylized violence, such as one-on-one combat, slow-motion bullets, spectacles of gore, etc. Rather, subSaharan films about war, social realist in scope, generally eschew grand narratives about masculinity, patriotism, nation-building, etc., to expose stories dismissed in official histories, while offering social critique – often about patriarchy, neo-colonialism, the erasure of traditional African culture, or the oppression of women and the marginalized. Aesthetically, such social commentary is communicated with long shots, slower, more reflective pacing, and more intimate focus on the individual, environment and community. Early African films about war include Emitaï (Sembène, 1971) about the Diola people’s refusal to surrender rice to the French Army during World War II; Sambizanga (Sarah Maldoror, 1972) about the 1961 uprising against the Portuguese by the Popular Liberation Movement of Angola; Ceddo (Sembène, 1976), about nineteenth-century Senegalese vying to maintain their traditions in light of Islam and Christianity, and Chronique des années de braise (Mohamed Lakhdar-Hamina, 1975) and L’Opium et le bâton/Al-Afyoun wal-’Asa/Opium and the Stick (Ahmed Rachidi, 1969), about the Algerian Liberation Front’s struggle for independence. Unlike the Algerian epics which concentrate on

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the FLN’s encounter with French colonizers, sub-Saharan war films are not limited to the struggle of resistance and independence. Rather, they deploy war as the backdrop to examine African culture and the characters’ quests for freedom, while underscoring the dehumanizing effects of colonization and conflict on African culture and its people. Interestingly, these early examples portend many themes of later films, namely, the reclamation of disregarded narratives, the futility of colonial confrontation, the doleful aftermaths of war, or the revolutionary role of women in war. Like Ceddo, some African films revisit pre-colonial contexts to address current conflicts and social concerns. For instance, the Burkinabé and Ivorian co-production Adanggaman (Roger Gnoan M’Bala, 2000) unflinchingly examines the role of Africans themselves in the slave trade – hero Ossia battles to save and avenge his kidnapped family. Though pre-colonial in scope, Adanggaman also alludes to slavery today, wherein children from Malian tribes are kidnapped and forced to work as slaves in Ivorian cocoa plantations. Similarly, Cheick Oumar Sissoko’s aesthetically stunning La Genèse/Genesis (1999) heralds back to the Biblical rift between herder Jacob, hunter Esau and their cultivator Hamar, to allegorically explore various ethnic conflicts in Africa – be they between Tuareg herders and Bamana farmers in his native Mali; between Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda or Burundi; or between warring ‘cousins’ in Liberia and Sierra Leone. Neo-colonial exploitation of natural resources, familial vengeance and notions of ‘African brotherhood’ are also important tropes in both of these films. Following Emitaï or Sambizanga, some African films also showcase colonial confrontation, such as Camp de Thiaroye (Sembène, 1988) about disenfranchised World War II veterans: Mortu Nega (Flora Gomes, 1988) about the wars of independence in Guinea–Bissau (1956–75); Tabataba (Raymond Rajaonarivelo, 1988) about the 1947 uprising in Madagascar, which is crushed by the French. Notably though, in African cinema, films of resistance and independence are more limited when compared to other world cinemas, and certainly not as triumphalist or epic in tone. Rather, while critiquing imperialism, African films generally reveal disillusionment with liberation struggles, emphasizing their damaging effects on both individuals and communities. Exemplarily, in Camp de Thiaroye, African World War II veterans demanding their rightful benefits are ultimately massacred by the French Army where they served. Similarly, Mortu Nega also follows disenchanted war veterans, Sambizanga ends with Maria discovering that Domingo, her husband and main freedom fighter, has died, and Tabataba showcases the suffering of repression, hunger and disease endured in a Malagasy village, as a result of war. Again, cinematic aesthetics emphasizes disenchanted individuals rather than heroic battle scenes, and stress the pernicious conditions and consequences of war, rather than the glories or spoils of war. Colonial confrontation films also often establish the vital role of women in armed struggle. Interestingly, the most recognizably epic African resistance film, Sarraounia (Med Hondo, 1987), lionizes the nineteenth-century queen of the Aznas who successfully battled the French forces in Niger. Multi-talented, Sarraounia is presented as an unassailable warrior, clever tactician, judicious ruler, powerful sorceress and skilful orator – thus a heroic figure, corresponding to male heroes such as Sundiata, Shaka or Samuri Ture. Her on-screen representation also aligns with conventional western war heroes: she is often aggrandized in low-angle, soft-focus or close-up shots; her personal battles are melodramatic and her war campaigns, of monumental proportions, accompanied with striking, majestic music. By contrast, Flame (Ingrid Sinclair, 1996), focusing on female Zimbabwean freedom fighters, is much more realistic. It reveals how women enjoy unprecedented

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opportunities for education, advancement and leadership in rebel camps, despite, ironically, their harsh brutality. Flame was in fact censored for its ‘pornography’; it not only features stark images of wartime killing, but also horrific scenes of rape. Heroine Flame is raped, bears her rapist’s child, but nonetheless, continues to live for combat. When fighting ceases, this fierce fighter experiences difficulty adjusting to rural civilian life. The film ends with a televised shot of the words ‘la luta continua’ (‘the struggle continues’). Generally, women in African war films are depicted as strong or sympathetic figures. Not mere victims or accessories, women often espouse, or develop, some form of revolutionary consciousness and thus reflect models for spectators to emulate. For instance, in Emitaï, it is the village women who organize passive resistance against the French. In Adanggaman, ‘Amazon’ Naka’s fierce combat skills are crucial to the success of the slave trade operation. To win against Adanggaman, hero Ossia must persuade Naka to join him, by appealing to her own experience as a kidnapped slave. More subtly, Sambizanga, the first African war film directed by a woman, is narrated from the perspective of Maria, who moves from naïveté to revolutionary awareness through her grief. Mortu Nega similarly privileges the perspective of wife Diminga, who also emphasizes that, after independence, ‘la luta continua’ – not by battling the Portuguese, but by women struggling to feed their children. One generation after independence, most African films about war are ostensibly anti-war films; in that they either showcase the ills of war – especially of civil wars, religious and ethnic conflict – or, more commonly, the negative aftermaths of war. Films about internal conflict include the South African Son of Man (Mark Dornford-May, 2005), a retelling of the story of Jesus, born in Africa, amidst civil war; Daresalam (Issa Serge Coelo, 2000) about childhood friends turned enemies in Chad’s civil war; Les Feux de Mansaré (Mansour Sora Wade, 2008), a love tragedy set amidst Islamic–Christian clashes in Senegal; or the documentary trilogy The Nigerian–Biafran War I-II-III (Charles Enonchong, 2001). Doubtless, the most powerful film about civil war is the multi-award-winning documentary Cry Freetown (2000) for which Sierra Leonean director Sorious Samura risked his life to capture footage of fighting between the rebel Revolutionary United Front (RUF) and Nigerian supposed peacekeeping forces in Freetown, Sierra Leone, in January 1999. The raw footage, shot on a handheld camera, is disturbingly shocking and graphic. Samura’s subsequent investigation and interviews about the atrocities change the conventions and expectations of news coverage of Africa and set new, higher, and much more dangerous, standards for existing embedded war journalism. In 2004, the success of Hotel Rwanda (Terry George) ushered in the production of numerous western films about the 1994 genocide in Rwanda (e.g. Shooting Dogs (Michael Caton-Jones), Un dimanche à Kigali/Sunday in Kigali, Robert Favreau) and documentaries about reconciliation efforts post-2003, given the release of more than 70,000 accused killers (e.g. Rwanda: Living Forgiveness [Ralf Springhorn, 2004]; In Rwanda We Say [Anne Aghion, 2009]). To counter the historical revisionism and ‘white saviour’ narratives of feature films, and the ethnographic gaze of documentaries positing facile post-conflict resolution, Rwandans themselves started producing films. Intriguingly, aside the early 100 Days (Nick Hughes, 2001), a feature about the tragic fates of a young rural Tutsi couple, most Rwandan treatments of the genocide are non-fiction documentaries, such as Keepers of Memory (Eric Kabera, 2004), Iseta (Juan Reina, 2008) and By the Shortcut (Dady Mitali, 2009). Focusing on exposing the truth, they comprise harrowing interviews with survivors and killers, reflect on the sites and mechanics

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of slaughter, and generally, are much more graphic, veracious and poignant than their western counterparts. By contrast, post-genocide reconciliation is generally addressed via fictional explorations of individuals, emphasizing that resolution is a personal choice and private struggle, often influenced by generational worldviews, such as in A Love Letter to My Country (Thierry Dushimirimana 2006), Munyurangabo (Lee Isaac Chung, 2007) and Long Coat (Edouard Bamporiki, 2009). Films such as My Bobo (Yves Niyongabo, 2010) about street kids, Grey Matter (Kivu Ruhorahoza, 2011) about refugees, or the Rwandan co-produced Africa United (Deborah Gardner-Patterson, 2010), a comedy with a child sex slave, AIDS orphan and child soldier, underscore that there are further concerns in Rwanda post-genocide. Paralleling a trend in African literature, child-soldier narratives have also become a popular means of addressing the ravages of civil war. Associated with diverse charities, a number of pathos-laden western documentaries such as Invisible Children (Carol Mansour, 2006), Soldier Child (Neil Abramson, 1998) or Children of War (Bryan Single, 2009), emphasize child soldiers’ trauma and rehabilitation, thus, as various scholars argue, commodifying their suffering. The FESPACO-winning Nigerian feature Ezra (Newton I Aduaka, 2007) eschews such sentimentalism and infantilizing. Narrated in flashbacks, it follows Ezra, a youth on the cusp of adulthood, who claims to suffer amnesia as he testifies to his crimes as child soldier before Sierra Leone’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, crimes which include the murder of his parents. Unlike its western counterparts, this politically contextualized film leaves spectators questioning the moral worldview and possible rehabilitation for such child killers. In the documentary Return to Freetown (Sorious Samura, 2001), interviews with Sierra Leonean child soldiers similarly leave spectators questioning their possible future. O Herói/The Hero (Zézé Gamboa, 2005) broaches the fate of Angolan child soldiers by following the fate of disabled and destitute Vitório, a war veteran long ago recruited as a child, whose post-war life is contrasted with that of equally disenfranchised street orphan Manu. As intimated above, many films examine the socio-economic and psychological sequelae of war. Of central concern are issues such as economic restitution, refugees, children’s and women rights; again, these themes are often developed through the lens of the individual. For instance, like Camp de Thiaroye, the Burkinabé Tasuma (Daniel Kollo Sanou, 2003) follows a World War II veteran vying to obtain his pension for more than fifty years; like The Hero, Na Cidade Vazla/ Hollow City (Maria João Ganga, 2004), observes a vagrant child in the aftermath of Angola’s civil war. Numerous documentaries examine women’s plight, such as Pray the Devil Back to Hell (Gini Reticker, 2008) about women protesters in Liberia; Three Sisters (James Heer, 2008) about demobilized female soldiers in Eritrea; Mothers Courage (Léo Kalinda, 2005) about female survivors in postgenocide Rwanda or Women in War Zones (Melanie Blanding, 2009) about rape survivors in Congo. The documentary Acampamento de Desminagem/ Demining Camp by Licinio Azevedo (2005) highlights both reconciliation and the environmental impact of war; it investigates the demining of Mozambican fields by both civilians and freedom fighters who fought on opposite sides of war. Finally, Teza (Haile Gerima, Ethiopia, 2007) and Conversations on a Sunday Afternoon (Khalo Matabane, South Africa, 2005) both spotlight ongoing wars in the Horn of Africa from the perspective of refugees; the former features an exile tortured under the 1970s Mengistu regime, who returns to 1990s Ethiopia, while the latter shadows a woman seeking refuge in South Africa from the ongoing Somali Civil War.

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Finally, many African films probe the possibilities of peace post-conflict. Exemplarily perhaps, La Nuit de la vérité/The Night of Truth (Fanta Régina Nacro, Burkina Faso, 2004) explores a tenuous peace truce between ethnic factions in an unnamed African country and Daratt: Saison sèche/Daratt, Dry Season (MahamatSaleh Haroun, Chad, 2006), set after Chad’s 40-year civil war, shadows a youth who is expected to avenge his parents’ death, following a civil-war amnesty. More specifically, in the case of South Africa and Rwanda, peace is amalgamated with other concepts, such as truth, unity and reconciliation. As in the case of Rwanda, it is enlightening to compare western films about post-apartheid (e.g. In My Country [John Boorman, 2004], Red Dust [Tom Hooper, 2004], Long Night’s Journey into Day [Deborah Hoffmann, Frances Reid, 2000]) with those produced in South Africa, such as Ubuntu’s Wounds (Sechaba Morojele, 2002), Forgiveness (Ian Gabriel, 2004), Zulu Love Letter (Ramadan Suleman, 2004) or documentaries such as Between Joyce and Remembrance (Mark Kaplan, 2003) or Spear Cleansing (Ingrid Martens, 2005). In so doing, the perceptive critic not only revisits salient thematics and aesthetics of African cinema, but also reaffirms that finding viable solutions in post-conflict Africa is not as facile as western media have been purporting since the first features in the 1950s.

Madelaine Hron

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Mortu Nega, Death Denied Mortu Nega, celui dont la mort n’a pas voulu Countries of Origin:

Guinea–Bissau France Languages:

Portuguese Criolo Studio:

National Film Institute of Guinea–Bissau

Synopsis Mortu Nega revolves around Sako (Tunu Eugenio Almada), a veteran fighter who took part in the liberation war and his wife Diminga (Bia Gomes), who also actively participated in the struggle by accompanying a group of soldiers carrying weapons and supplies from Guinea–Conakry to the war front. The country is in ruins but hope prevails for the fighters strongly believe that victory is not far off. The war ends, the fighters return to their villages and to civilian life. There is, however, a severe drought and life is difficult. Sako falls ill and gets no help. Thus, Diminga has to take care of him. His comrades, now at the helm of the new State, effectively wielding political power, seem to have forgotten about people like Sako and Diminga who made tremendous sacrifices during the war but were left out in the cold when the time came to share the spoils.

Director:

Critique

Flora Gomes

Mortu Nega, Death Denied has historical leanings; it covers the period that goes from 1973 to 1977 and includes both the War of Liberation against the Portuguese and the ensuing independence of Guinea–Bissau in 1974. However, Gomes puts more emphasis on the period following independence, commonly referred to as postcolonialism. Gomes seems to ask: we are free, now what? This question is indeed relevant to all the former European colonies in Africa. Mortu Nega can be roughly divided into three parts: the first part features a convoy of soldiers – Diminga among them – carrying supplies to the war front. The convoy arrives at the camp where Diminga meets Sako. In this sequence, one hears the noise made by the rotors of a helicopter that belongs to the Portuguese Army which tracks the freedom fighters. As well, one hears in the background the sound of mines exploding and gunfire. The second section of the film is about the demobilization of the fighters after victory has been achieved. People are back in their villages, including Sako and Diminga. However, times are hard because the peasants are affected by an ongoing drought. At this juncture, Flora Gomes makes a stinging indictment of the postcolonial government. The people now leading the new country have forgotten those like Sako who took part in its liberation. The order of the day is to enjoy the material and symbolic trappings of power. In this section, the director deliberately adopts the technique that film-maker Mahama Johnson Traoré has termed ‘the new aesthetics’ of African cinema, in which time and lifestyle are slower and more relaxed than in Euro-American cinema where the aim is often economy of narrative (cited in Hennebelle 1975: 96). In the third section of the film, Gomes delves into the ethnographic aspects of life in Guinea–Bissau. Thus, the viewer discovers the ethnic tapestry of the country with its various cultures, and languages: Balante, Peul, Manjak, Papel, Mandinka, etc. The message conveyed by the director is that, after the ravages of war,

Producers:

Cecilia Fonseca Odette Roas Nina Neves Jacques Zajdermann Screenwriters:

Flora Gomes Manuel Rambualt Barcellos David Lang Cinematographer:

Dominique Gentil Music:

Djanun Dabo Sidonio Pais Quaresma Editor:

Christiane Lack Duration:

92 minutes Genre:

Historical docu-fiction Cast:

Bia Gomes Tunu Eugenio Almada Mamadu Uri Balde M’Male Nhasse Sinho Pedro DaSilva Homma Nalete Year:

1988 290 Reviews

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Mortu Nega, Death Denied

the reconstruction of the country compels the nation to pay special attention to culture and not just focus on economics. Culture is linked to both identity and memory. It is by celebrating their culture that the people of Guinea–Bissau will know who they are, what their purpose should be, in addition to never forgetting the upheaval caused by the Portuguese colonialist war. Thus, history occupies a central role. As Mbye Cham points out, the subject of African history continues to command the attention of African filmmakers as they continue the task of making sense of the distant and recent past in ways that speak to the present and the future in significant ways. (Cham 1998)

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There are sequences in which we see traditional symbols, such as the dance-of-the-dead with an imaginary coffin placed in the midst of the dancers. In Mortu Nega, collective dance occupies a paramount role and serves as therapy for the trauma caused by the war. Along the same vein, there is a scene which features a tree trunk placed on the ground. People beat on the trunk in order to evoke the genealogy and deeds of the dead. These religious and cultural practices highlight the importance of ancestor worship for reconciliation between the ethnic groups of Guinea–Bissau. Flora Gomes adopts an altogether optimistic approach to the liberation war and its outcomes. He starts by showing that, in order to survive and win the war, people must close ranks and show solidarity. Towards the end, he brings in an optimistic note with a scene showing a child running in the rain and, Sako, the protagonist of the film, seemingly healed. However, as soon as the war ends, individualism prevails. Sadly enough, this is what happens to Sako. All the same, his wife is now happy. The director’s final note is that in spite of the hardships in postcolonial Guinea–Bissau, one must expect positive change. The hardest part, i.e. the liberation of the country, has been accomplished; now, it is about the way forward. People like Sako and Diminga are the ones who will effect that change. Flora Gomes makes no moral judgment and his film is not ideological. The emphasis is put on love for, lest we forget, Mortu Nega is also a love story which features a man (Sako) and a woman (Diminga). Even in war, a man and a woman can love each other.

Samba Diop

Daresalam, Let There Be Peace Daresalam Countries of Origin:

Chad Burkina Faso France Languages:

French Chadian Arabic Studios:

Centre National de la Cinématographie (CNC) DCN La Sept-Arte Parenthèse Films

292 Reviews

Synopsis In the countryside of the fictitious nation of Daresalam, two young men, Djimi and Koni, spend their time talking about women and paying little attention to the world around them. One morning Djimi (Haikal Zakaria) and his father take their bags of millet for sale at market, but the government representative refuses to pay full price while insisting that the locals must pay their taxes in order to fund the government’s fight against insurgents. At a subsequent village council meeting, an official attempts to arrest a village elder and without thinking, Koni (Abdoulaye Ahmat) throws a spear into his leg. A government minister returns with the army, and they burn the village and slaughter its residents. Djimi and Koni escape and find their way to a camp for the armed insurgent group, FRAP (Front Révolutionnaire du Peuple). After training, Djimi and Koni fight the government’s forces, with FRAP achieving decisive victories and liberating some rural areas. In one village, Djimi meets Achta (Baba Hassan Fatime) and her daughter Halimé; Achta’s husband was killed in combat. But not all of FRAP’s campaigns are successful; after one disastrous raid on an army base, the leadership of FRAP becomes mired in accusations

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Director:

Issa Serge Coelo Producer:

Pierre Javaux Screenwriters:

Ismael Ben-Cherrif Issa Serge Coelo Pierre Guillaume Cinematographer:

Jean-Jacques Mréjen Music:

Khalil Chahine Editor:

Catherine Schwartz Duration:

100 minutes Genre:

War drama Cast:

Haikal Zakaria

and counteraccusations. Koni joins a faction that disagrees with the leadership and for the first time, these two friends find themselves on different paths, split apart like their homeland.

Critique The fictitious nation of Daresalam and its conflicts appear to be loosely based upon the First Chadian Civil War, which lasted from 1965 to 1979 and was similarly instigated by a peasant uprising. Although there are few parallels drawn to specific incidents in the real-life war, hostilities in fact and fiction erupt from tax revolts. (The character of a rebel leader named ‘Félix’ (Sidiki Bakaba) seems to beg comparison at the film’s end to Félix Malloum, although the character has a very different history than the former President.) There are references to religious divisions within the country itself, echoing the schism between Chad’s Islamic north and Animist south: to the viewer more acutely aware of the struggles in Chad, there are deeper references to Libya’s support of Chad’s National Liberation Front (FROLINAT) and the French expeditionary force’s combat of the same. However the time frame appears purposefully vague and could be set at any point in the latter part of the twentieth century, which reinforces the universality of the characters’ struggles. Daresalam is more concerned with the effect

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Abdoulaye Ahmat Gérard Essomba Sidiki Bakaba Youssouf Djaoro Garba Issa Malloum Baba Hassan Fatime Year:

2001

of combat on the individual rather than the state and perhaps it is for this reason that Coelo desires to fictionalize the setting, to emphasize the film’s humanism rather than its historical veracity. Coelo and his cinematographer Jean-Jacques Mréjen rely on a shooting strategy of long-take, medium-framed scenes. The camerawork is complementary to the action in that by remaining a neutral observer the matter-of-factness and verisimilitude of depicted situations and events, even in day-to-day activities such as town meetings, visits to remote health clinics and random checkpoint inspections, capture how those in rural areas persevere despite government-inflicted neglect and hardship. Combat scenes are filmed in handheld, documentary style, adding to Daresalam’s sense of authenticity; this technique becomes unsettlingly voyeuristic during a harrowing scene depicting the torture and slaughter of villagers by government forces. Daresalam concentrates on the process by which people become drawn into conflict, politicized and in some cases, divided either through dislocation or choosing opposing sides. This is the most affecting aspect of the film and where Daresalam succeeds is in the day-to-day details of life under an oppressive regime. Village councils discuss appropriate responses to new imposed hardships; the sick must journey for days to receive medical attention. But despite this implied gloom, Daresalam rewards us with its humanity in surprising ways, even with an occasional moment of levity. Many slogans and ideas of the era’s struggles permeate the movie, manifesting in phraseology relayed by characters throughout: ‘No work or progress without unity’; ‘If the fighters are scared they should stay far from the revolution’. In a crucial scene, Djimi confronts a former freedom fighter, now serving the government’s forces; their argument sounds more like a polemic rather than natural conversation and if Daresalam has a fault, it is when characters act as transparent mouthpieces for the screenplay’s ideas rather than communicating its central ideas through actions. But screenwriters Ben-Cherrif, Coelo and Guillaume do make an effort to explain the point of view of the government’s rationale for the struggle through one major character after he has switched allegiances, even if their screenplay clearly sympathizes with the liberator’s side. Ultimately, no one is infallible, Djimi, Koni or the generals for whom they fight; all have strengths and weaknesses and their conflicts are not limited to the battlefield. Daresalam transcends its ambitions to portray life during war by climaxing with life after war: the struggle not resolved but momentarily lulled, we return to Djimi’s village to get the full impact of what is lost, not only in the number of lives but in qualities within the self, such as hopes, dreams and faith in others. Daresalam codas with a cautiously propitious moment that reminds us that in the face of such incomprehensible violence there still can be hope, but it can be difficult to come by under such circumstances.

Brett Bell

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The Hero O Herói Countries of Origin:

Angola Portugal France Language:

Portuguese Studios:

David & Golias Les Films de l’après-midi Gamboa & Gamboa Director:

Zézé Gamboa Producer:

Fernando Vendrell Screenwriters:

Carla Baptista Pierre-Marie Goulet Fernando Vendrell Cinematographer:

Mario Masini Art Director:

Lucha d’Orey Editor:

Anna Ruiz Duration:

97 minutes Genre:

Drama Cast:

Oumar Makena Diop Milton ‘Santo’ Coelho Maria Ceiça Patrícia Bull Neuza Borges Year:

2005

Synopsis Vitório (Oumar Makena Diop), a discharged sergeant, struggles with the bureaucracy at a hospital. Toward the end of Angola’s long-running civil war, he lost his leg to a landmine and has been waiting since for a prosthetic replacement. A sympathetic doctor gives him a leg and Vitório starts to turn his life around, buying new clothes and trying to find work in Luanda. But no one will hire him, fearing he will be unable to lift or climb. Vitório shows his medal to potential employers, telling them he is a hero. But all he gets in return is indifference or ridicule. The only person who displays any sympathy for him is Judite (Maria Ceiça), a prostitute at the bar Vitório frequents. Parallel to this, Manu (Milton ‘Santo’ Coelho), a young orphaned boy, lives with his grandmother, abandoned by his mother and his father among the war’s unaccounted. At school Manu’s middle-class teacher Joana (Patrícia Bull) encourages him, but when the teachers go on strike Manu hangs out on the streets, stealing and getting into trouble with local gangs. Through his difficulties, Manu remains hopeful that one day his father will return from the war. Meanwhile, Vitório’s life takes a turn for the worse when, after he has passed out drunk, a boy from a gang steals his leg and medal. Vitório vows that he will find his leg and through his travels in Luanda, he will cross paths with people who will change his life in unexpected ways.

Critique The Hero is anchored by Senegalese actor Oumar Makena Diop’s performance as the titular hero, Vitório. At once angry yet charismatic, he compels us to understand Vitório’s growing frustration with a system that is indifferent to his war record and injury. The Hero features an ensemble cast of seasoned actors, with the exception of Milton ‘Santo’ Coelho who debuts as the boy, Manu. All the performances are compelling and this is one of the film’s greatest strengths. There are many reminders of how the war affected Angola, even in the small details: two children play in the wreckage of a downed fighter plane at the outskirts of Luanda; seemingly endless lines of people queue for the television cameras, to ask on camera where their missing family or loved ones might be; the well-off return to the nation after conflict has ceased. When the war is used as a backdrop, it provides more resonance than when directly referred to in dialogue. The film plays to its social realist aspects through dialogue that is on occasion prescriptive, with characters speaking directly to the country’s ills and possible solutions. Unfortunately, this has the effect of speechmaking rather than of naturalistic conversation. The film attempts many cinematic tropes, even introducing a love triangle in the last section: such subplots feel like digressions away from the inevitable story conclusion. Vitório’s motivations appear unclear at certain points, for example his interest in the

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The Hero

schoolteacher Joana seems to come entirely without warning. Even an element of magical realism is introduced, when Manu imagines the moon falling from the sky. Occasionally, the bluntness of the narrative’s momentum interferes with its realism, making us more aware of the film’s melodramatic aspects. But all of the stories are compelling, relating a litany of experiences about contemporary life in Luanda from a number of perspectives: young and old; poor, middle class and rich. Perhaps the directness of the film’s message is necessary to foster the feeling of solidarity in Angola that the film-maker clearly desires. The coalescing of the multiple storylines might appear obvious, but not unaffecting. It is its spirit that makes The Hero a rewarding journey. The message that everyone is in the same boat is oft-repeated, even in a short scene where Vitório hitches a ride to the hospital thanks to a government official using his Minister’s Mercedes as a taxi, the official rationalizes it as: ‘You gotta do what you gotta do.’ Fate can sometimes intervene, but it is through our own willingness to do whatever it takes to make our way that grants opportunity. The film ends with a montage of shots filmed while driving through various sections of Luanda, showing a more prosperous, beauteous community than the one seen in the opening credits.

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However, the opening shots of the poorer districts are replayed, tempering hope with practical realities. There are problems, but only through solidarity of the classes can there be renewal. The Hero leaves us with aspirations, but not with unrealistic expectations.

Brett Bell

Sometimes in April Quelques jours en avril Countries of Origin:

France USA Rwanda Languages:

English Kinyarwanda Studios:

HBO Films Velvet Film Production Yolo Films Director:

Raoul Peck Producer:

Daniel Delume Screenwriter:

Raoul Peck

Synopsis Sometimes in April is a fictional film set within the historical events of the Rwandan genocide (April to July 1994). The frame story centres on Augustin Muganza (Idris Elba), an ex-captain of the Hutu Army and survivor of the genocide who lost his Tutsi wife, Jeanne (Carole Karemera), two sons and a daughter in the violence. Augustin receives a letter from his brother, Honoré Butera (Oris Erhuero), a former member of the Hutu political establishment, and radio personality for Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM) where he once disseminated racist propaganda against the Tutsi and moderate Hutu. Now on trial for inciting genocide, Honoré asks his brother to come to Tanzania so that he can relieve his conscience and tell Augustin what happened to his wife and sons. The letter thus creates a mystery surrounding the death of Augustin’s family that will play out in the film’s climax. The second story strand, occupying much of the screen time, is set in 1994 and focuses on the events of the genocide. Although focused on Augustin’s family, the story strand also demonstrates the disintegration of Rwandan society as Augustin, his daughter Anne Marie and other victims of the violence struggle to survive the horrors they are subjected to. Finally, the third story strand concerns the response of the United States to the genocide, including news footage and the efforts of Prudence Bushnell (played by Debra Winger), a US Department of State official, who unsuccessfully tries to get the US government to intervene.

Cinematographer:

Critique

Eric Guichard, AFC

Sometimes in April is a film that explores the Rwandan genocide from the victims’ perspectives. As such, it is less concerned about the specific geopolitics that spawned the genocide than it is about the actual events and the consequences to those who survived its cruelties. Although the film does provide a credible albeit truncated introduction to the genocide’s historical context it is far more effective when describing what happened during the genocide as opposed to why it happened in the first place. The difficulty with this approach is that the Hutu extremists behind the genocide remain ciphers and their actions seem incomprehensible. As such, they can be dismissed by spectators as a sort of generic evil, making the genocide easily perceived as an anomalous event spearheaded by individuals so possessed of racism that their hate overrode their sense of humanity.

Art Director:

Christophe Couzon Editor:

Jacques Comets Duration:

140 minutes Genre:

Historical drama Cast:

Idris Elba Carole Karemera

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Pamela Nomvete Oris Erhuero Debra Winger Year:

2005

298 Reviews

A similar point may be made about the third story strand and its depiction of the American response. Although the film strives to outline how the failure of the Americans to respond to the situation contributed to the duration of the genocide, it does not engage with the role of the French, the Belgians or the United Nations, arguably larger international players. Although Sometimes in April was originally commissioned for Home Box Office (HBO), and therefore naturally focused on the American context, the film would have benefited from casting a wider geopolitical net. Still, one of the things the film does extremely well in the third story strand is to integrate actual news footage and reports into the body of the film in a seamless fashion. In one especially poignant moment, Prudence Bushnell, who has been striving for action on Rwanda, sits in her office watching the now infamous US State Department press briefing where spokesperson Christine Shelley vainly tries to split the hair between genocide and acts of genocide. Shelley explains why the US refuses to categorize the events in Rwanda as genocide. However, because Bushnell simply watches the programme without a high-key emotional reaction, spectators are allowed to formulate their own opinion on the US response. Sometimes in April truly excels at depicting the disintegration of Rwandan society, victim experiences and the post-traumatic stress still felt by survivors. Unlike Hotel Rwanda (Terry George, USA, 2004), Sometimes in April eschews melodrama form to create a far more moving experience through poetic realism. For example, Augustin’s survivor guilt is quietly but profoundly evidenced during a scene when he and Martine (Pamela Nomvete), now his common-law wife, discuss his initial refusal to see Honoré. When Augustin tells Martine that he simply wants to protect her, she lightly asks where her wedding ring is and notes that he still wears his. Augustin’s response that he cannot let the ring go indicates the depth of his trauma and the sense that he is polarized in a nowhere zone between the past and present. In another sequence, after he finally decides to travel to Tanzania, where Honoré is imprisoned and facing the tribunal, Augustin attends the testimony of Valentine, a young mother with two sons whom he met at his lodging. She is a special witness who testifies about her war rape experience, doing so with a movingly quiet dignity to an otherwise degrading situation. As these two examples suggest, the emphasis is placed on ordinary people coping with extraordinary events. Violence in the film is neither glorified nor exoticized. It is often depicted off-screen or framed in a long shot, a strategy that distances the spectator and provides room for social debate. It also has the tendency to focus spectator attention on the victim, rather than the death itself. An excellent example of this occurs during an incident that takes place at the private school attended by Augustin’s daughter, Anne-Marie. Gathered in a dormitory and under Hutu extremist attack, the girls know they will be divided along Tutsi and Hutu lines; they decide they are sisters and refuse to separate. The film uses a number of loose close-ups to depict their fear as they refuse to obey the commander’s orders. As many of these close-ups depict several girls at once and use pans, a sense of social community is created, a brief glimpse of what Rwanda might have become

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had the genocide not occurred. Moreover, because they hold their resolve despite their evident fear, the decision to execute them seems all the more shocking. Their shooting is framed in a medium long shot, distancing the spectator from the violence but also leaving emotional space for the spectator to consider the ethical contrast between the girls’ actions and those of the Hutu soldiers. Sometimes in April does not rely on easy resolutions. When Augustin finally visits Honoré in prison, it is not a warm brotherly reunion. Despite having pleaded guilty to the charges brought against him by the tribunal, Honoré demonstrates an anger barely held in check. He asks if Augustin’s purpose in coming was to parade his superior conscience, as if his own humiliation outweighs his crimes. Significantly, Honoré does not ask for forgiveness for his role in perpetuating the genocide through his inflammatory anti-Tutsi broadcasts, but instead expresses remorse only for the death of Augustin’s family. Augustin does not comment on this behaviour, but his silent reactions allow spectators to draw their own conclusion regarding the legitimacy of Honoré’s claim that he accepts responsibility for his actions. Sometimes in April’s reliance on an active audience is one of its greatest assets. This opportunity for debate differentiates it from other films on the same topic. The film does not sentimentalize its subject matter and makes it clear, in the end, that moving beyond the traumas of the past will be a long and difficult road.

Donna-Lynne McGregor

The Night of Truth La Nuit de la vérité Countries of Origin:

Burkina Faso France Languages:

Diola (Jula) Moré French Studios:

Acrobates Films Les Films du Défi France 3 Cinéma Director:

Fanta Régina Nacro Producer: 

Claire Lajoumard (as Claire-

Synopsis A vicious civil war has ended in a truce between the Nayak ethnic group (representing the current government) and the Bonandé (representing the rebel forces). The film begins on the eve of peace talks, initiated by Colonel Théo (Moussa Cissé), leader of the rebel forces, in order to bridge the conflict between the groups. Beneath the surface of this fragile peace effort, however, runs the mystery of the death of President Miossoune’s (Adama Ouédraogo) young son, Michel, who was found murdered and terribly mutilated after the Govinda massacre. Edna (Naky Sy Savane), Miossoune’s wife, is consumed with grief and hatred and determined to seek revenge. During the start of the peace talks, she importunes Colonel Théo to name her son’s killer. Colonel Théo has his own secrets, and eventually, overcome with guilt, reveals to Edna who was responsible for her son’s death and mutilation. What Edna does with this information has the power to disrupt the entire peace process.

Critique According to Fanta Régina Nacro, the first Burkinabe woman to direct a feature-length drama, The Night of Truth was first inspired by viewing documentaries on ethnic violence in Yugoslavia. Shortly after the Rwandan genocide, Nacro became interested in how such

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Agnès Lajoumard) Screenwriters:

Marc Gautron Fanta Régina Nacro Cinematographer:

Nara Keo Kosal Duration:

100 minutes Genre:

Drama Cast:

Naky Sy Savane Moussa Cissé Adama Ouédraogo Rasmane Ouédraogo Georgette Paré Year:

2004

300 Reviews

communities, faced by atrocities on both sides, might bridge the cultural trauma and come to a place of peace. The Night of Truth is significant because it is one of the few films that examines ethnic violence in Africa and beyond from an African viewpoint. The film takes place in a fictional county on the eve of a celebration in the Bonandé compound to start off peace talks. The film takes the position that neither side is without innocent blood on its hands and is concerned with how war corrupts soldier and civilian alike. From this perspective, despite the narrative’s reliance on melodrama, the film constructs an active spectator who must explore each side’s actions and justifications and arrive at his/her own perspectives. The film achieves this debate by presenting Colonel Théo and Edna as sympathetic characters. For example, Edna’s palpable anger at her son Michel’s grave on the day of the celebration is emotionally rooted in her overwhelming grief at losing him in such a hideous fashion. Colonel Théo’s crime is mitigated by the fact that he is a charismatic leader in a difficult war where atrocities occurred on both sides. More to the point, his remorse for murdering Michel shames him to such a degree that the incident serves as the prime motivation behind calling the peace talks. In effect, the characters stand as complementary consequences of the same violence: Edna is a good woman turned avenger by the cruelty of war and Théo is a good man turned murderer by the same circumstances. By playing one character off the other, the film poses a series of questions to the spectator. Do Théo’s actions, motivated in part by the trauma of war, justify such cruelty? Is Edna justified in clinging to revenge? Will their actions result in a return to civil war? Violence as expressed through the mutilated body and the testimony of war experiences is central to the film’s depiction of the effect of war on the civilian population. The film walks an interesting line on the notion of testimony, asking if such remembrances are a necessary shriving or a means of prolonging old hatreds. In one striking scene, a group of mutilated children and adults exchange recollections of the atrocities done to them by Nayak soldiers. One child claims not to have felt pain or fear when the Nayak soldiers cut off his fingers. Another girl asserts that she will chop off the head of any Nayak she sees to stop him from thinking. When asked why, the girl explains that a soldier cut off her leg to keep her from running. Eventually, the exchange is broken up by Awa, the woman in charge of organizing the celebration feast, who chastises the adults for permitting such morbidity. When she states that they should tell tales of the hare and the hyena instead, she is implying that hatred and violence are replacing traditional values in a negative way. Another means of counting the cost to the civilian population is done in a purely visual fashion which once again invites the spectator to consider the destructive nature of war. The film achieves this by having the exterior and interior walls and buildings of the Bonandé compound painted with images of violence including rape, physical mutilation, decapitation and murder. Created by women, the images provide a landscape of living memory and trauma that often serve as transitional devices in the film. For example, following Théo’s nightmare of the Govinda massacre, the camera

Directory of World Cinema

tracks from right to left, revealing several vignettes: a soldier shoots a civilian in the abdomen; a screaming woman’s face marked by a tear; soldiers’ heads floating above the violence. This montage of images provides a narrative rest between Théo’s dream and the continuation of the drama, and provides the spectator with space to consider both the violence these works immortalize as well as the implications of Théo’s trauma as a soldier. Later, these images prove to be memorials and, like the oral testimonies of the children, serve to fix events in time and place. In a scene where a woman creates a tableau of two mutilated children on a wall, a group of children gather to watch. Whispering together, the children identify the largescale figures in the painting as Minata and Souli, signalling that the artworks are depictions of traumatic memory rather than fictionalized works. The iconic images are thereby humanized, given names and authenticated as real experience. The film’s one flaw is that the ending is too quick and too easy, with the two cultures deciding to merge into ‘Bonandayaks’. Although this ending satisfies the requirements of the melodrama form the film espouses, it does not negate the strength of the film to provoke debate and leave the spectator considering the issues, including whether or not such a resolution is actually practical, long after the screen is dark.

Sheila Petty

Hollow City Na Cidade Vazla Countries of Origin:

Angola Portugal Language:

Portuguese, with English subtitles Director:

Maria João Ganga Producer: 

François Gonot Screenwriter:

Maria João Ganga Cinematographer:

Jacques Besse Editor:

Pascale Chavance

Synopsis N’dala (Roldan Pinto João) is a 12-year-old boy who has lost his family in war-torn Angola. Evacuated from his rural village in the province of Bie˙ to the capital city of Luanda by missionaries, N’dala escapes their custody desperate to find a way back home. N’dala meets a variety of characters, including an old fisherman (Custodio Francisco), who still lives in traditional ways; Zé (Domingos Fernandes Fonseca), an older boy who splits his time between going to school and working for Rosita (Júlia Botelho), a tough woman bent on survival; and Joka, a mechanic and small time criminal (Raúl Rosário). Taken in by Rosita as her servant, N’dala is soon immersed in the corrupt existence of Luanda, smoking, drinking and selling cigarettes to motorists. When he is beaten up by a group of boys for selling in their territory, N’dala decides to return to the beach and the fisherman’s traditional ways. Before he leaves, he promises to help Joka with a robbery.

Critique Hollow City, released in 2004, is one of the first films made by an Angolan to discuss the aftermath of Angola’s civil war (1975–2002). Also noteworthy is the fact that the director, Maria João Ganga, is the first Angolan-born woman to direct a feature film.

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Duration:

88 minutes Genre:

Drama Cast:

Roldan Pinto João Ana Bustorff Domingos Fernandes Fonseca Júlia Botelho Raúl Rosário Custodio Francisco Carlão Machado Pulquéria Bastos Edson K De Almeida Lisandra Pita Year:

2004

302 Reviews

The film’s narrative structure is comprised of three parts. The first follows N’dala’s experiences in the city after he escapes from the missionaries. The second concerns the efforts of the missionary sister to locate N’dala and bring him to the safety of the church. The third part involves intertextual references to the famous 1972 novel, As Aventuras de Ngunga by Pepetela (Artur Carlos Maurício Pestana dos Santos), a major Angolan writer. Adapted as a play and acted by Zé and his classmates, As Aventuras de Ngunga explores the life of a child soldier, Ngunga, as he travels Angola fighting for his beliefs. Cast in an epic style, the play valorizes courage and revolutionary spirit. As is the case with many first films, Hollow City is somewhat uneven in approach. The frantic search of the missionary sister for N’dala often seems contrived and although its presumed purpose is to add narrative suspense and irony, not enough is known about the sister (Ana Bustorff) or the motives behind her search to make this a particularly effective device. Hollow City has also received some criticism for the use of Pepetela’s novel, based on a failure to successfully parallel N’dala’s struggle with that of the novel’s young hero. A more fruitful way of reading the intertextual connections might lie in the fact that the passages of Pepetela’s idealized portrayal of the revolutionary process stand in stark contrast to the grim realities of civil war faced by N’dala and the other characters in the film. For example, Zé foreshadows N’dala’s downfall during a scene on the beach. Zé reads part of the play to N’dala, which reveals that Ngunga’s true quest in journeying through Angola was to find out if men were the same everywhere, thinking only of their best interests. The statement becomes ironic in the latter part of N’dala’s story, which occupies the most screen time, and is extremely compelling. N’dala’s characterization as an inexperienced rural boy offers the narrative the opportunity to explore the social architecture of the city through a number of contrasting points. Traditional Angolan society is represented by Antonio, the old fisherman who treats N’dala with compassion by feeding him on his first night in the city without thought of recompense. Zé, who discovers N’dala taking shelter on the roof of his godmother’s building, also demonstrates generosity. When N’dala reveals he is a runaway, Zé is inspired by N’dala’s aloneness, an element that makes him just like Ngunga, the hero he is playing in his school production. He assists N’dala in finding shelter with his godmother Rosita and introduces him to the city. As is the case with Antonio, Zé’s interest in N’dala is without personal gain, suggesting that compassion can exist even in a city where war has broken down social mores. In contrast, the other adults in the film treat N’dala as a commodity. Rosita’s acceptance of N’dala in her home is contingent on his availability to clean the house, run errands and sell cigarettes on the street for her financial gain. Joka, Zé’s uncle, is a mechanic and petty thief whose facade of toughness greatly impresses N’dala. In one scene, Joka teaches N’dala how to use tools to make his toy car more impressive, a seeming act of generosity. Later, Joka exploits N’dala and his small size to break into an apartment. The transactional nature of these relationships demonstrates that N’dala, and others like him, have become disposable children.

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Maria João Ganga is a director who allows images to carry spectators into the characters’ emotional worlds. Just after N’dala escapes from the missionaries who have transported him from rural Bie˙ to urban Luanda, he happily pushes his toy car along a street. Suddenly, he is confronted with a panoramic view of Luanda. He slows, and walks forward hesitantly, staring at the cityscape. This pause allows the spectators to consider how vast Luanda is and how dangerous it will be for an inexperienced child on his own. Often, crucial decisions made by N’dala occur in silence, depicted only in image. This gives an interesting ambiguity to the character, and space for spectators to speculate on the implications of N’dala’s choices, the adults who compel them, and a society that survives by exploiting its weak.

Sheila Petty

Ezra Countries of Origin:

France UK Sierra Leone Language:

English Director:

Newton I Aduaka Production Companies:

Arte France Cinéma Cinefacto Granite Filmworks Sunday Morning Productions Screenwriters:

Newton Aduaka Alain-Michel Blanc Cinematographer:

Carlos Arango de Montis Editor:

Sébastien Touta Duration:

102 minutes Genre:

War drama Cast:

Mamadou Turay Kamara Mamusu Kallon

Synopsis Ezra recounts the long journey of a child (Mamadou Turay Kamara) from which the title takes its name. Kidnapped by a rebel faction during wartime in the Sierra Leone region, Ezra is conscripted as a soldier for seven years. As a rebel, he commits atrocities and murders, even in his native village, eventually becoming chief of a section of this irregular army where he also finds love with the character of Mariam (Mamusu Kallon). They get married and are expecting a child when Mariam is killed. Ezra decides to leave the rebel army but his past continues to haunt him. Ezra must explain his crimes and confess to the murder of his parents to Sierra Leone’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Because he has lost all memory of the atrocities, witnesses from his childhood come to the courtroom to help him recover his past.

Critique Ezra is one of the rare African films, along with Daratt, saison sèche/ Daratt, Dry Season by Mahamat-Saleh Haroun in 2006 and Bè Kunko by Cheick Fantamady Camara (2004), which has as its subject a recent African conflict. The film was shot with a digital camera in Rwanda. Non-professional actors play the characters. Nigerian born film-maker, Newton Aduaka moved to Lagos after the end of the Biafran War. After his diploma at the London International Film School, he created Granite Filmworks, a film production society in London. The film-maker now lives in Paris. As in all his previous feature films, such as On the Edge (1998), Rage (1999) or Sale Nègre (2005), Newton Aduaka exposes dramatic social realities. Here, the narrative structure is built around the main character, a child soldier named Ezra. Focused on transcribing the humanity of the characters, the film-maker underlines the growing problem of child soldiers in Africa, and the silence that surrounds this issue. In showing the physical and psychological traumas of war,

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Mercy Ojelade Emil Abossolo M’Bo Richard Gant Year:

2007

Ezra

304 Reviews

the film is a ‘re-presentation’ of the civil war in Sierra Leone and of its social effects, playing on this ambiguity between fiction and reality. The character of the child soldier in Ezra exemplifies an ideological representation of the Sierra Leone conflict. It engages the viewer to go beyond the entertainment of a war-film genre. Indeed, the war is not overexposed in Ezra. This film is more focused on the socio-psychological implications of a child soldier’s identity. The alternation of present and past with the use of flashbacks integrates the audience not as a witness of the war but of its consequences, such as the loss of memory. The amnesia of the character goes hand in hand with the questioning of identity. This applies to both the child soldier’s identity and some African societies’ collective identity. Indeed, the character has as much difficulty remembering his crimes as some African societies have facing the questionable reality of child soldiers. On the screen, this confusion is shown through the work of montage. The order of the events is disrupted in this film as much as these events are disrupted in the main character’s psyche. The character of Ezra is complicated and exemplifies the ambiguity of being a child soldier. If the childhood of Ezra is mostly evaded in the story, the last minutes of the film remind the audience

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that he is still a child by introducing the image of Santa Claus. Ezra is not shown as a physical child, except for the first five minutes, but most of the time as an adult. The film is constructed as a circle, starting with the childhood and ending with it. The character is a man when he learns of his wife’s pregnancy or when he commits atrocities in order to stay the leader of his child army. In this community, he has some level of choice, roles and responsibilities. The female characters Mariam (Mamusu Kallon) and Cynthia (Mercy Ojelade) differ from the male protagonists because they contribute to Ezra’s growth. For example, Mariam, who becomes Ezra’s wife, helps him to read. This is not only a passage to manhood but also an attempt to restore in him what was lost in his childhood. She also considers Ezra as an adult when she educates him about the political reasons for the war. However, when he decides to leave the army after his wife’s death, he becomes again a child, alone, who refuses to confess his crimes beyond the framework of Sierra Leone’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Aduaka does not deny the soldier’s childhood, but he chooses to acknowledge it in a way that always revolves around the relationships between Ezra and the people around him. The main character symbolically embodies an Africa that is battling to remember its past, but fails to do so because of a psychological, social and economic trauma. In a sense, this feature film delivers a message of hope and that is why Aduaka received the Prize of Peace and Tolerance for the film from the United Nations. This film won several other prizes at international film festivals, such as the Yennenga Golden Stallion at FESPACO 2007 and was selected for the New York African Film Festival in 2008. Film critics underline the aesthetic qualities of the film, the fusion between images and sound, which help the audience share the intimacy of the characters.

Karine Blanchon

Summer of 62

Synopsis

Cartouches Gauloises

Set during the last spring and summer of the Algerian War of Independence, Summer of 62 depicts events from the perspective of five boys: four French and one Algerian. The latter, 11-year-old Ali is, alongside best friend Nico, central to the plot and story (played by Mohamed Faouzi Ali Cherif and Thomas Millet). Summer of 62 opens at dawn with Ali’s (nameless) father kissing him goodbye before leaving to join other Algerian freedom fighters. To support his mother, Ali sells newspapers and runs various errands. A typical day in his life sees him criss-cross bars, train stations, movie theatres, orchards and markets, and encounter the very different people who inhabit those spaces/places. Early in the film we realize that Ali is the only link or interlocker of disparate contemporary ideals, powers and practices in a time of war. Being children, Ali and his friend refuse to believe that the French will leave Algeria. Ali clings to such a belief because Nico’s parents

Country of Origin:

France Languages:

French Arabic (Algerian) Studio:

KG Productions Pathé France Director:

Mehdi Charef

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Producers:

Yacine Laloui Michèle Ray-Gavras Screenwriter:

Mehdi Charef Cinematographer:

Jérôme Alméras Art Director:

Nourredine Benhamed Editor:

Yorgos Lamprinos Duration:

92 minutes Genre:

War drama Cast:

Mohamed Faouzi Ali Cherif Thomas Millet Zahia Said Tolga Cayir Mohammed Dine Elhannani Marc Robert Year:

2007

306 Reviews

fervently support the concept of an Algérie française, which means Nico will stay. The latter’s departure is only one of five big questions Summer of 62 addresses since daily events unfolding through Ali’s eyes deal with prostitution, colonization, war ethics and finally birthright/ethnicity and belonging.

Critique Multi-award-winning Algerian director Mehdi Charef is a mildly political film-maker in that he often uses satire and irony to get his political message across while always trying to remain neutral. In addition to tackling matters personal to him or his immediate communities, Charef displays his playful politics in film titles. For example, Le Thé au Harem d’Archimède (1985), literally translated as Tea in Archimedes’ Harem foregrounds various crises affecting marginalized youths in French cités (poor urban suburbs) but has nothing to do with tea rooms or harems. The Greek scientist Archimedes (c.287 bc–c.212 bc) is known for his theorem (which the film is not about) not for his harems; he may not have liked tea but, if pronounced quickly in French, ‘le thé au Harem’ sounds like ‘le théorème’ (the theorem). Similarly, Summer of 62 is playful in terms of language and film content. The original title translating literally as ‘Gallic Cartridges’, invokes a militarized brand of French cigarettes – Gauloises caporal (or ‘corporal’) – available in ‘French’ colonies/territories in cartridges (cartouches) of twenty sky-blue packs showing a Gallic warrior’s helmet adorned with wings. At the same time, the content of Summer of 62 invokes simultaneously military patriotism and the wounds that cartridges (cartouches) inflict on people. Charef, I would argue, is not interested in living bodies as carriers/concealers of firearms, but rather in unprotected (or exposed) human beings who signify fragility and can be stopped. Therefore, Charef’s protagonists, including Ali, can overcome adversity, carry hope and challenge established or supposedly official ideas about who is good or bad in the Algerian war. Charef’s film gives a voice to all parties caught up in the conflict, notably the pieds noirs (Algeria-born French people); the anti-independence, terror-prone Organisation de l’Armée Secrète (OAS); Algerian prostitutes; Algerian men in uniform who serve the French cause; Algerian freedom fighters; and children like Ali. Ali’s movements and interventions show his awareness of space, place and ways of negotiating both in order to stay alive and to continue working. Staying alive is particularly difficult in volatile 1962 Algiers where enemy lines are constantly shifting. Every ‘Arab’ is a terrorist and collateral deaths occur frequently. Indeed, it takes only one spring–summer for him to witness up close his uncle’s and nine other executions. By the third one, when the army shoots an Algerian man in the back in broad daylight, Ali’s mood shifts from matter-of-fact disinterest, and fear, to political awareness. Charef brilliantly captures the transformation in one single, three-second shot of Ali’s face gazing through us without blinking. Ali is framed among men whose figures are blurred and/or faces shown only in part. Lit from the back, Ali gazes through us at a soldier (off-screen)

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closing in as he searches the men for bomb equipment and other weapons. Unlike previous close-ups of his face in similar situations, Ali’s gaze seems to be saying that a line has been crossed. And yet, one strength and raison d’être of Summer of 62 is that Charef allows Ali and his friends to carry on being children. For example, Ali’s interactions with Nico (who endlessly regurgitates his father’s bigoted thoughts) follow a fluctuating pattern: from mutual respect and affection, they escalate to harmless banter and full-blown rows but always return to innocent child play and escapism. Additionally, the two friends’ relationship is handled through evocative dialogue and three moments of tension. In the first, Nico argues that Ali’s dad is a ‘terrorist’; the second moment sees Nico predicting that mosques will be blown up as retaliation for the Algerians’ destruction of a Marianne statue or symbol of the French Republic; and the third, from which I quote the following dialogue, is fuelled by their mutual friend Gino’s (Tolga Cayir) imminent departure for France – which upsets both – as well as by the inevitable, looming Algerian Independence: Ali: Know what your home will become? Full of hens, even the ping-pong table, rabbits will eat your flowers. And sheep! They’ll slaughter them in your garage! Nico: Shut up! Ali: Pimentos and pelts will dry in your bedrooms! Nico: Beat it, creep! Amid these tense fluctuations, Ali is allowed moments, spaces of escape, such as the projection room of his local movie theatre whose projectionist is one of his father’s many friends. This space satisfies Ali’s visual pleasure, balances him emotionally while providing him with dreams of freedom. However, above all Ali is cine-literate and through him Charef puts Summer of 62 in dialogue with past and contemporary cinema history. For instance in one scene, in which he is alone in the theatre, Ali sets up and projects Los Olvidados/The Young and the Damned (Luis Bunuel, 1950), a movie focused on poor and disenfranchised youth in a violent and corrupt world similar to his own. Ali knows the dialogue by heart, especially young Pedro’s lines that he utters sobbing. Furthermore, I would argue that Charef and Summer of 62 trigger viewers’ own cine-literacy by invoking, at different levels, films as different as Halfaouine, l’enfant des terrasses/ Halfaouine, Boy of the Terraces (Férid Boughedir, 1990), Chocolat (Claire Denis, 1988), Salut cousin!/Hi, Cousin! (Merzak Allouache, 1996) and The Battle of Algiers (Gillo Pontecorvo, 1966). In the end, whatever one’s reading of Summer of 62 may be, it would be a mistake to approach it through the following inadequate, unthinkingly Eurocentric categories in use since the 1980s–1990s: cinéma beur or beur film-making. Both phrases (also film genres) remain derogatory because they condemn films and

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their makers to perpetual marginality. They can never account for how Summer of 62 questions national/continental cinemas – ‘Algerian’, ‘French’, ‘European’ or ‘African’.

Saër Maty Bâ

Daratt, Dry Season Daratt, saison sèche Countries of Origin:

Chad France Belgium Austria Studios:

Films GoiGoi Arte Languages:

French Chadian Arabic Director:

Mahamat-Saleh Haroun Production Companies:

Chinguitty Films Goï-Goï Productions Arte France Fonds Sud Cinéma Screenwriter:

Mahamat-Saleh Haroun Cinematographer:

Abraham Haile Biru Art Director:

Mahamat-Saleh Haroun Music:

Wasis Diop Editor:

Marie-Hélène Dozo Duration:

91 minutes Genre:

Drama

308 Reviews

Synopsis Daratt, Dry Season centres on Atim (Ali Bacha Barkaï) whose name means ‘The Orphan’. Against the background of poverty and reminders of terror, villagers hear over the radio that the government is granting general amnesty to all involved in the civil war. The grandfather immediately instructs his grandson to seek out and kill his son’s (Atim’s father’s) killer. This revenge is the grandfather’s condition for his grandson to become a man. Atim arrives in N’Djamena (Chad’s capital), and easily finds Nassara (Youssouf Djaoro), a reputed war criminal rehabilitated into a baker who leads a pious and generous Muslim’s life. Exasperated by Atim’s stalking, Nassara invites him to work in his bakery. Tension only recedes when Aïcha (Aziza Hisseine), heavy with child, diverts the two men’s animosity with her domestic chores. Signs of friendship between her and Atim, however, revive the baker’s violent impulses. The ageing baker then wants to adopt the orphan. Behind the closed doors of the bakery-cum-family home, numerous opportunities arise for the revenge killing. To the end, the spectators are kept guessing about the choices the young man will make to ‘become a man’.

Critique Unlike many African films and Haroun’s previous films, in particular Bye Bye Africa (1999), which seems to favour multiple narrative threads, Daratt is entirely focused on young Atim’s dilemma – to kill, as the tradition of a country at war for over forty years demands, or not to kill, in other words, to find another way. In order to foreground Atim’s inner struggle, the director opts for stylized mise-en-scène and symbolic narrative and cinematography. Small incidents unfold slowly yet tension between the baker and his apprentice is unrelenting. The two men sweat profusely while working around the oven in the heat of the desert. The mud-brick city blends with the sand, and the light ochre of the bare walls provides a favourable photographic backdrop: every nuance of hostility is visible on the faces of the two remarkable main actors who had never acted before. Watching and sniffing one another, Nassara and Atim turn around each other like the torero and his bull. The bullfight’s metaphor of the mise-en-scène gave the commissioned composer (Wasis Diop) the idea of a song entitled ‘The Bulls in the Arena’ (‘Les Taureaux dans l’arène’). The singer encourages the bulls to refuse to enter the arena only to be massacred. The song could be a warning to

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Daratt, Dry Season

Cast:

Ali Bacha Barkaï Youssouf Djaoro Aziza Hisseine Khayar Oumar Defallah Year:

2006

the orphan (vulnerable in his red T-shirt), who is being pushed into the arena of revenge by his grandfather and a society steeped in a culture of violence. In addition to displaying teenage uneasiness, Atim seems to carry the weight of Chad, a country destroyed by power struggles since independence. The general amnesty alluded to in Daratt could be the one that was granted in 1990 by Idriss Deby when he took power over Hissène Habré. France and the United States sided with the successive Chadian leaders against Colonel Gaddafi and his desire to annex the petrol-rich Aozou strip, on the border between Chad and Libya (see Arnold 2005: 699– 703). Atim is not allowed to live the life of a carefree youth. He only smiles on three occasions, as though freed from his deadly mission: when he wins a race with his unsolicited friend and protector, Moussa, another war orphan; when he mocks his boss with Aïcha,

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the baker’s girl-bride; finally, when for the first time and on his own, he successfully bakes a batch of bread. Despite painful circumstances, the youth gains training for a useful trade. The film offers no such hopes for young women who have no choice but to find an established old husband. The director’s indirect approach to war may explain the virtual absence of women in the film. Two young men’s respective mothers are never mentioned. Were they war casualties? The opening shot of the movie shows a stretch of sand littered with flip-flops and sandals; in the background, people are running and a youth (Atim) picks up some women’s shoes and throws them down again. ‘What happened to all these people who left their shoes behind’, muses Wasis Diop, the commissioned composer (Interview 2006). Much of the film’s narrative action is implied. First, several dramatic events such as the wife-beating and her ulterior miscarriage happen off-screen. Second, the film gains momentum with repeated sequences with a difference. There are at least two series of echoing scenes. The one of the bread spat out in turn by Atim and by his boss almost brings humour to their struggle of wills. Another is the distribution of bread rolls to the little beggars who can be as appreciative of the old baker as they are dismissive of Atim when he forgets to put the yeast into his dough. He eventually gains the respect of these little talibés (Koranic school students). As Atim masters the baker’s trade, while carefully avoiding Nassara’s questions about his origins, one may wonder whether he has forgotten why he came to N’Djamena. Some secondary threads could indeed seem to divert the viewer’s attention from the revenge mission yet they lead to the unexpected closure of the film. These include Atim’s attitude to weapons (handguns, police batons and even bare hands), the threats and blows he receives from men in uniforms and, in turn, the use he makes of these people’s weapons. Thus, the chance meetings with the trigger-happy soldier, who had scared Atim with a gun on the way to the capital and who, later on, appears drunk to oblivion and loses his gun to Atim, may point to an interpretation of the movie. Has Atim turned into a murderer himself? Does he shoot the wounded soldier he meets on a bridge late at night? The subtle cinematography requires careful viewing in order to understand his choices. Atim twice crosses the dunes that isolate the village from the world: first to find Nassara and second to bring him back (albeit unwillingly) to his grandfather for the ritual revenge. The film’s subtitle, Dry Season, invokes both Arthur Rimbaud’s Season in Hell and Lumumba’s own hell in Aimé Césaire’s A Season in the Congo. The title conveys the season of hatred that the youth and his generation have to survive and perhaps dispel. The last shot of the movie, which shows Atim resolutely taking his blind grandfather’s hand to drag him away from the revenge scene, proves that he has become a man on his own terms, albeit not according to his country’s tradition. Daratt, a film in which handguns and machine guns are household items, brings to the fore the world major political issue of disarmament.

Blandine Stefanson 310 Reviews

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Africa Seen by ‘Outsiders’: Invention, Idea, Method

a,

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The Last King of Scotland (Kevin MacDonald, UK, Germany, USA, 2006). Forest Whitaker as Idi Amin. Fox Searchlight/The Kobal Collection/Neil Davidson.

Between 1896 and 1902, the Lumière brothers commissioned films depicting the places and ways of life of ‘remote peoples’ (Baert 2006: 111). Since these commissions, a non-stop outsiders’ filmic gaze has been projected on Africa notably through western ethnographers, anthropologists and film-makers. That gaze dominated filmic western representations of Africa during the first half of the twentieth century. At the same time, to consider representations of Africa in postcolonial contemporary cinema through the strict binary ‘outsider’ equals ‘western’ and ‘insider’ equals ‘colonized African’/‘African’ may be tenuous, if not unsound. In this essay, ‘Outsider’ represents ‘European’ and ‘westerner’ – with the ‘West’ standing for Europe and the United States, and the outsider being either a writer in/of African cinema, or the maker of Africa-themed films in European or Hollywood cinemas. Thus, films mentioned or analysed below are all European- or North American-directed. Conversely, in this essay ‘insider’ film-makers are Africans who use filmic discourses that generally go beyond resisting the ‘outsiders’ in order to search for ‘interconnectedness of cinematic practices’ (Dennison and Lim 2006). The following may go beyond the limits of this essay, but bears mentioning. Outsiders can be from the inside/Africa: for example, African film-makers forcibly exiled from Africa, who have voluntarily migrated from Africa, or hold dual European/American and one or more African nationalities – such as, Abderrahmane Sissako. In this context, insiders can be from the outside too. A most obvious example is French ethnographer and film-maker Jean Rouch’s over five-decade presence in Niger and West Africa. This essay unpacks two ways in which outsiders see Africa: as invention and idea. It then turns to methodological tools useful for countering the outsiders’ view in order to argue that such tools are also valid for insiders’ films on Africa. Finally, the essay argues that outsiders’ filmic views of Africa must be taken seriously, irrespective of themes addressed, such as African history on-screen.

Africa as (European) invention and idea African history on-screen echoes Gayatri Spivak’s (1988) concept of ‘history as imperialism’ or ‘how an explanation and narrative of [African] reality was established as the normative one’. Indeed, history as imperialism is omnipresent in postcolonial readings of African screen history while outsiders still make films about Africa. And yet, as invention/idea, Africa and the processes used to capture/represent it on film have remained complex; the question is therefore, how did (European) outsiders invent Africa in the first place?

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European outsiders invented Africa by radically silencing/converting African discourses to western ones and, eventually, generating African dependence on a western epistemological order. For example, in French colonies, the 1934 Laval Decree forbade Africans from making films or radio programmes; it remained more or less unchanged until political independence 25 years later. Therefore, VY Mudimbe’s quest for an African gnosis (knowledge) may help us understand the outsiders’ filmic gaze on Africa. Mudimbe (1988: ix) asks if we can talk about African knowledge and, if so, how to do it; he also investigates African gnosis as part of a larger body of knowledge: ‘discourses on African societies, cultures, and peoples as signs of something else’. Mudimbe offers fluidity, continuity and perpetual questioning of knowledge through which these discourses reflect, embody or affect filmic approaches to Africa. This consideration necessitates in turn investigating examples of outsiders’ filmic invention of Africa. De Voortrekkers/Winning a Continent (Harold Shaw, 1916) tells the story of white Dutch refugees called Boers/Afrikaners searching for new lands in Southern Africa. Based on the Boers’ Great Trek, ‘[the] impetus for this migration was a desire to escape from British rule, which threatened the Boers’ slave economy. This historical background, however, is suppressed in the film’ (Davis 1996: 129). De Voortrekkers incarnates invention and history as imperialism, because, despite being an outsiders’ racist view of Africa, it was rated both an icon for celebrating a fictitious ‘Afrikaner nation’ and ‘South Africa’s national film’ (Maingard 2007: 17). De Voortrekkers also illustrates how to create an African dependence on a western epistemological order in ways including these facts: American director Shaw was attracted to colonial issues; scriptwriter and historian Gustav Preller promoted white nationalism and was anti-black/-Zulu; the Boers won a piece of land, not a continent; and the Zulu are erased from the film’s racist, invented or emasculated nation and history (Bâ 2010: 366–67). Nonetheless, beyond denouncing racism, we must transform the above problematic way of seeing Africa. The discourses embodied in films like De Voortrekkers or Zulu Dawn (D Hikok, 1979) need to be re-located in a mixed space showing their limitations: a space neither completely colonial nor entirely postcolonial. De Voortrekkers was and still is both a benchmark for a cinema of apartheid and a contribution to the demise of that system. Constructions and reproductions of white national identity were and are being undone in the post-apartheid era, and De Voortrekkers’s myths of nation-building and national cinema had to be and must be transformed for the sake of black participation. Furthermore, since Mandela left prison in 1990 – kick-starting the treacherous processes of atonement, truth and reconciliation – South Africa shows that the binary opposition apartheid/post-apartheid or white/black holds no viable solutions. In this regard, Norwegian director Bill Auguste’s Goodbye Bafana (2005), an exploration of Mandela’s relationship with white jailer James Gregory, must be emulated. Engaging the past and memory is then neither linear nor straightforward. Discourses may be denied but cannot be stopped. Moreover, ‘identity and alterity are always given to others, […] structured in multiple individual histories, and […] expressed or silenced according to personal desires’ (Mudimbe 1988: xi); it would be unconvincing to absolve African insiders’ view of Africa from this human, subjective flaw, as we shall see after exploring another example of outsiders’ invention of Africa. French film-maker Claire Denis’s Chocolat (1988), set in colonial French Cameroon where she had lived until the age of seven, examines how people relate within a racist society. Experienced from 7-year-old France’s perspective, Chocolat acknowledges that seven years of an African childhood could not prevent the adult France (or Denis) from becoming a tourist again in Africa. Differently put, Denis’s Africa is a form of invention in the process of being reinvented.

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Divided methods, common tools: Anteriors, interiors, exteriors A new structural framework will help us evaluate and illustrate theoretically and critically the Africa seen by outsiders. The framework, ‘Anteriors, Interiors, Exteriors,’ I propose is inspired by Molefi Kete Asante (1990). ‘My argument for ‘Anteriors’ is that when considering Africa, we need an overview of how Film History has written about the filmic images of Africa. How do these images come across in the history of film studies relating to Africa? Adopting this methodology means determining a starting point: 1896. However, before the first projector was used in Africa, the continent had already developed cultural practices that contemporary perceptions of filmic gazes could engage. African gnosis – from 6,000 bc to the twentyfirst century – has been conveyed through both oral and written traditions. Hence, two reasonable assumptions: film historians’ awareness of African traditions, and their agreement that acquiring/possessing knowledge means being cultured. Asante (1990: 118) argues that ‘culture refers to the shared values, attitudes, predispositions and behaviour patterns of a human group which can be transmitted. Thus, I consider world voices, world views, cosmogonies, institutions, ideas, myths, epics, and symbols as comprising culture’. If Asante is right, then outsiders’ filmic gazes on Africa are cultured; they emerge from within cultures that must be investigated. This is why in my analysis of Blood Diamond (Edward Zwick, 2006) I show that, as an outsider and Hollywood film-maker, Zwick nevertheless produces images of Africa that encourage viewing African film as a form of thought. Moreover, knowledge preservation must rely on retentive means like memory, writing, and film as well as on museums, libraries and archives. Thus, how to approach knowledge and culture becomes important while film historians’ writings on African cinema are vital to that approach. For example, in Black African Cinema (1994), Ukadike defines authentic African cinema ‘in terms of African oral traditions’, arguing that before colonialists and missionaries invaded Africa with image-making technologies, Africa already possessed mature communication systems and that, consequently, black African cinema embodies cinematic codes that are (at least partly) authentically African. However, Ukadike’s approach seems to overlook Africa’s writing tradition while not engaging with the problematic prebirth of African cinema (I do not mean ‘Africa and the Cinema’). Unsurprisingly, films like the racist A Zulu’s Heart (DW Griffiths, 1908) are not central to his definition. Yet, discourses cannot be erased and culture and history are inescapable; Africa’s mature systems must always be in dialogue with colonial and postcolonial censorship, and with outsiders’ filmic views of Africa. To date, interiorist methodology prevents such dialogism from flourishing, even though a film like Hotel Rwanda (Terry George, 2004), as I explain in my review below, shows that films about Africans and Africa will continue to be made by non-Africans and in some ways complement those made by Africans. The ‘Interiors’ part of my framework asks two questions: (1) from an African’s standpoint, have filmic images of Africa shaped a discipline called ‘African cinema’ whose constitutive elements we can examine? (2) If that discipline exists, where do outsiders’ filmic views of Africa fit beyond being racist or denouncing racism? Many critics would answer ‘yes’ to question one. Question two is more complex because insiders and outsiders interact. The ‘Interiors’ group is heterogeneous: for Paulin Vieyra (1972, 1969), African cinema is not determined by western critics’ approval. And yet Afrocentricity conceptualizes African cultural interiority restrictively, thus missing two important points that Haile Gerima’s Sankofa (1993), a film that indulges in racial, Afrocentric binaries and essentialisms, overlooks: first, any idea of Africa transcends geographical limits; and Africa crosspollinates with exilic, diasporic and outsiders’ cultures and histories. Second, outsiders’ filmic views of Africa constitute an African idea I would call an accented multi-sited consciousness, to borrow Hamid Naficy’s concepts (2010).

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Asante (1990: 115) writes that ‘African birth does not make one Afrocentric; Afrocentricity is a matter of intellectual discipline and must be learned and practiced’. Therefore, anyone can access interiors of an African idea and Afrocentricity is thus participatory. Furthermore, films such as The Battle of Algiers (Gillo Pontecorvo, 1966) and Cartouches Gauloises/Summer of 62 (Mehdi Charef, 2007), about Algerian Independence and analysed in this volume, are Afrocentric films. Similarly Mississippi Masala (Mira Nair, 1991), about the 1972 expulsion of South Asians from Uganda, is an accented multi-sited consciousness straddling two continents (Africa and America) and three cultures (Indian, African and American). In summary, ‘Anteriors’ and ‘Interiors’ seem always affected by ‘Exteriors’. The ‘Exteriors’ part of the framework focuses on critical (written, filmic) approaches to Africa. ‘Exteriorists’ believe that Africans must use cinema to reproduce their cultural differences. Writers like André Gardies and Pierre Haffner (1988) argue that African cinema is distinct from other cinemas but lacks ‘an inherent, authentic essence’. According to Teresa Hoefert de Turégano, these critics believe that African film-makers have failed to develop a school like the Italians, Russians or Indians because Europeans had introduced cinema to Africa. Therefore, Exteriorists always seem obsessed with a need to search for an African ‘Other’. Additionally, although exteriorist writers acknowledge African film-making’s many problems, these are attributed to the Africans who have not fully assimilated the medium while that film-making’s development is ascribed to the West (Hoefert 2004: 18). Conversely, ‘exteriorist’ films, made by non-Africans, belong outside of and undermine ‘Anteriors’ and ‘Interiors’ approaches. These problematic films must be part of filmic histories of Africa – even when addressing negative issues. Shooting Dogs (Michael Caton-Jones, 2005), about the 1994 Rwandan genocide and reviewed in this chapter, only tells viewers what to think of depicted events. It reveals western racism and dubious Chinese business ethics that share responsibility with African extremists in butchering 800,000 Rwandans. To expect more of Shooting Dogs, or Hotel Rwanda and J’ai serré la main du diable/Shake Hands with the Devil: The Journey of Roméo Dallaire (Peter Raymont, 2004) is to forget that their makers’ inventions of Africa are cultural, as per Asante’s definition of ‘culture’ mentioned above.

Taking the outsiders’ view of Africa seriously Foregrounding dialogue and avoiding methodological shortcomings means taking the ‘Africa seen by outsiders’ category seriously. Newly/differently perceived thinking tools and markers must be used because they inform the film reviews that follow this essay. The thinking tools signify re-mapping, re-naming, re-framing, but also implementing counter and non-binary approaches, and accenting aesthetics. Simultaneously, the markers signify a combination of historicity without rigidity, politicization, critical commitment and cultural specificity. Therefore, whether Africa is seen through history, music or migrations, these tools and markers perceive the outsiders’ view anew, as films like Youssou N’Dour, retour à Gorée/Youssou N’dour, Return to Gorée (Pierre-Yves Borgeaud, 2007) illustrate.

Saër Maty Bâ

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I, a Black Man Moi, un noir

Synopsis

Editors:

I, a Black Man is a modern, urban film with post-synchronized voiceover narration (i.e. no dialogue or other diegetic sound is heard) set in Africa during the last decade of French colonization. Shot on location, mostly in the Treichville ghetto of Abidjan (Ivory Coast), it focuses on young migrant workers from Niger, particularly Oumarou Ganda. These young migrants rename themselves after western cinema actors and characters and black boxing stars as a way of getting used to what Steven Ungar (2007: 112) has called a ‘“new” Africa’. Indeed, while forging make-believe identities and attempting to erase their real origins, Tarzan (Alassane Maïga), Dorothy Lamour (Gambi), Eddie Constantine, also known as US Federal Agent Lemmy Caution (Petit Touré) and Edward G Robinson, also known as boxer Sugar Ray Robinson (Oumarou Ganda), who fantasizes about being Lamour’s husband, recount their joys and pains. ‘Robinson’, who narrates the film, is its visual centrepiece and asks some of its most pertinent questions, such as why are they all in Ivory Coast? In short, I, a Black Man foregrounds role play and fantasy interwoven with the real, lived experiences of migration, poverty, xenophobia and disillusionment during the period when African nations were soon to gain independence.

Catherine Dourgnan Marie-Josèphe Yoyotte

Critique

Country of Origin:

France Language:

French Studio:

Les Films de la Pléiade Director:

Jean Rouch Producer:

Pierre Braunberger Screenwriter:

Jean Rouch Cinematographer:

Jean Rouch

Duration:

70 minutes Genres:

Biography Anthropology Documentary Cast:

Oumarou Ganda Petit Touré Alassane Maïga Karidjo Faoudou Gambi Year:

1958

I would suggest that I, a Black Man asks and answers the question ‘what is Africa in the 1950s?’ In so doing, it avoids rehearsing the 1920s–1950s preposterous old European models or metaphors for questioning Africa’s so-called social pathologies, abnormal conflicts and lack of history and achievements (Mudimbe 1988: 194). Instead, Rouch is a white French man and former employee of the French colonial administration who grasps that Africans’ numerous differences, problems and varied experiences transcend their commonalities and search for solidarity. Rouch’s awareness emerges from the foundations of his film-making method. These bases are: the first conventional documentary, and ethnographic film, Nanook of the North (1915); Soviet film-maker Dziga Vertov’s method (to edit a film as it is shot) and idea that the camera fuses with the film-maker to record non-objective reality; and Rouch’s contact with ‘various […] colonial projects’ and ‘Black art’ in the form of Louis Armstrong’s jazz or Josephine Baker’s dances (Bâ 2010: 229–30). Thus, to categorize Rouch or I, a Black Man is a complicated issue. For example, the late Ousmane Sembène, known for his opposition to colonial cinema and an African cinema made by non-Africans, but also for his scathing critiques of Rouch, liked and defended I, a Black Man nonetheless. Sembène’s complicated position has to do with how I, a Black Man critiques European colonization. For example, Oumarou Ganda (Edward G Robinson/ Sugar Ray Robinson), a French Army veteran of the Indochina war, is now reduced to abject poverty because of a lack of post-

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military-service care from the French state and his migrancy within a poor, economically unstable ‘French’ West Africa in transition. As a result, Ganda’s life has become contrapuntal to those of white French expatriates now living in Abidjan, and Rouch’s camera captures this discrepancy well when Ganda tells ‘Petit Jules’ (Karidjo Faoudou) about his army days and present condition while these expatriates are seen enjoying expensive nautical sports. Simultaneously, however, Rouch does not endorse or advocate political commitment. More to the point, his deliberate attempt to empower Ganda and the other protagonists of I, a Black Man is both a blessing and a curse. This is because in the 1950s I, a Black Man was a model that African film-makers could emulate but, as a film, it also raises two fundamental questions that the reader/ theorist/critic may want to explore: first, how much power could Rouch actually transfer to his protagonists, if at all? Second, how much freedom did Ganda and other protagonists actually have in I, a Black Man? One of I, a Black Man’s strengths is the way Rouch creates new metaphors for his characters in their context. For example, when Ganda (Edward G Robinson/Sugar Ray Robinson) asks ‘what the hell are we doing here in the Ivory Coast?’ or when he adopts a French Army veteran’s perspective vis-à-vis the Indochinese/ Vietnamese, one may wonder on whose behalf he is speaking and what about. Stated differently, Ganda’s essence is in his appearance as G Robinson/Ray Robinson/a French Army veteran which, simultaneously, intertwines with Ganda as a poor economic migrant from Niger in Treichville (Abidjan). In terms of characterization, it would also be useful to know that the screen and boxing icons whose names Rouch uses were metaphors already: actor Edward G’s real name was Emmanuel Goldenberg (a Romanian immigrant to America) while Sugar Ray’s was Walter Smith. Rouch’s deliberate attempt to empower the protagonists of I, a Black Man is also a curse: Ganda would make the follow-up Cabascabo (1969) because he had been unhappy with I, a Black Man. Ganda told author Pierre Haffner (1996) that from one day to the next, we [i.e. Rouch and Ganda] were working together, and then Rouch did the editing […] besides at first there was no question about making a film about the veteran of the war in Indochina; it was supposed to be a film about immigrants from Niger. Cabascabo portrays problems faced by a young man who, like Ganda, returns to Niger after fighting for France in the Indochina war, and therefore recounts nearly the same issues and events as Rouch’s film. However, there is a central difference between the two: with Cabascabo Ganda wanted to set the record straight, meaning to express those matters and events with adequate detail, accuracy and emotional complexity. In conclusion, I, a Black Man’s endorsement and advocacy of an African cinema for Africans must always be borne in mind. Ultimately, Oumarou Ganda, who also made Le Wazzou polygame

318 Reviews

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(1970) and Saïtane (1973) and other 1960s African film-makers who were or are now considered rightful elder statesmen in African cinema owe a debt to both I, a Black Man and Jean Rouch.

Saër Maty Bâ

The Last King of Scotland Countries of Origin:

UK Germany USA Languages:

English French German Swahili Studio:

Fox Searchlight Pictures Director:

Kevin MacDonald Producers:

Lisa Bryer Andrea Calderwood Charles Steel

Synopsis Adapted from a Giles Foden novel of the same name, and shot on location in Uganda, The Last King of Scotland tells the story of a young Scottish medical doctor (Nicholas Carrigan [James McAvoy], a fictitious character invented by Foden) who goes to Uganda in order to ‘make a difference’. As Carrigan arrives in the country, a successful coup takes place and General Idi Amin (Forest Whitaker) seizes power. Carrigan assists an English doctor and his wife in rural Uganda. One day, Amin’s motorcade races through the area and collides with a cow. Summoned to the scene, Carrigan impresses Amin who asks him to become his personal physician. He is provided with luxurious cars and lifestyle, and falls for Amin’s charisma and sense of humour to the point of ignoring warnings from the British High Commission that Amin is a paranoid, unpredictable and murdering dictator. However, seeing one of Amin’s wives’ mutilated body (Kay Amin played by Kerry Washington, with whom Carrigan slept) and noticing the disappearance of Amin’s closest advisers make Carrigan rethink his position. He tries to poison Amin but is caught and tortured. Released by a Ugandan colleague, Dr Junju (David Oyelowo) who is shot by Amin’s henchmen, Carrigan attempts to escape.

Screenwriters:

Critique

Peter Morgan Jeremy Brock

The film charts Nicholas Carrigan’s professional, emotional and personal relationship with the military ruler and his family. One would think that Amin’s love for Scotland and Scottish culture – visually and aurally presented in the film through, for example, his uniforms, his children’s names and his army’s Scottish bagpipe music – would bring them closer to one another, and it does to an extent. Simultaneously, however, The Last King of Scotland shows the chaotic situations Carrigan and Amin’s differences can generate. The film achieves this so well that, long after its unpredictable ending, the viewer may be left wondering if Carrigan has achieved anything other than scratch the surface of Amin’s emotionally complex character. Indeed, in a key scene of The Last King of Scotland they exchange the following words:

Cinematographer:

Anthony Dod Mantle Art Directors:

Mags Horsepool Joannah Stutchbury Editor:

Justine Wright Duration:

122 minutes Genres:

Biography Drama History

Amin: ‘You thought “I will go to Africa and I will play the white man with the natives”.’

Cast:

Carrigan: ‘You’re a child – that’s what makes you so fucking scary!’

Forest Whitaker

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James McAvoy Kerry Washington David Oyelowo Year:

2006

320 Reviews

Kevin MacDonald’s film-making (director of the award-winning docu-drama Touching the Void [2003]) is indeed ‘politically sensitive, imaginative [and] kinetic’ (MacDonald 2010: 6). Carrigan is an indefinite character who represents ‘colonial power and […] the privileged white interloper’ (MacDonald 2007: 35) because of his self-deluded ability to control Amin. Told through Carrigan, The Last King of Scotland emphasizes Ugandan–British connections and weaves together narrative threads involving Amin and Uganda but also, and crucially, the meaning of being ‘a young Scot going to Africa’ (MacDonald 2007: 35). And yet, in my view, The Last King of Scotland can hardly be dismissed as ‘a jungle safari’ providing us ‘with white guides to lead us through the black pain’ (Calhoun 2007: 34). This is because Carrigan is morally dubious, is more antihero than hero, and MacDonald does not use ‘the Third World as an exotic backdrop’ as some western critics may want us to believe. Stated differently, MacDonald makes Amin central to the film, preferring to pick apart the nature of his evil rather than paint Amin as one-dimensional. Not only is Amin a human being who ‘does not set out to be purely good or bad’ (MacDonald 2010: 7), he also makes fun of President Richard Nixon and Queen Elizabeth II. Additionally, Forest Whitaker raises his performance to emphasize Amin’s multidimensionality, not least because during shooting he was drawing heavily on Ugandan culture while at the same time being repeatedly told by those who had known Amin that there were good things about the man. Overall, The Last King of Scotland argues that Amin the monster is a colonial creation and that the British Army had licensed him to kill, promoted him and, eventually, Britain (and the United States and Israel) put him in power. The film astutely shows how Amin stands up to these powers, for example when he negotiates the release of hostages from an Israeli plane hijacked by Palestinians and landed at Entebbe airport. Prior to The Last King of Scotland, MacDonald had used reconstructions/dramatizations extensively in his documentaries. Unsurprisingly, The Last King of Scotland aptly engages issues of fiction versus reality. As cases in point, Amin is a real figure reinvented. Carrigan emerges from Foden’s book to become more arrogant and opportunistic in the film while MacDonald (2007: 35) felt comfortable with ‘doing something that has a basis in reality’ without pretending that ‘everything in the movie is real’. MacDonald’s approach makes The Last King of Scotland more challenging. Indeed, places (Uganda and Scotland) are fantasized and Carrigan, invented by Foden, connotes a metaphoric computer-generated figure, a non-existent person, with whom Amin interacts nonetheless. Therefore, The Last King of Scotland seems to address questions similar to filmosophy theory, i.e. ‘how film transfigures its subjects, how it communicates ideas, [...] how it mingles with our minds’ (Frampton 2005: 10). The film’s own filmosophy comes through the fictional Amin’s image, via Forest Whitaker. Consequently, as the fictional Amin connects with the viewer’s mind, the same Amin’s self-appointment as ‘the last king of Scotland’ – even if known to the viewer – must not burden his image, which is twice removed from reality. Stated differently, the fictional Amin is as fantastic-yet-plausible as his fondness for

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a ‘fantasy’ Scotland while both relate to the real Amin through difference. Furthermore, that an African American, Whitaker, embodies this fictional image removes it thrice from reality. Whitaker wears a metaphorical mask – i.e. portraying Amin, like any actor would – and a literal blackface-type one – a jet-black skin. Undoubtedly, Whitaker was chosen to portray the real Amin because he is an extremely talented black actor who resembles Amin physically. Simultaneously however, Whitaker’s light skin meant that he had to blacken up in order to really look like the real Amin (the viewer can easily notice this literal mask). The literal mask and Amin’s image show that ‘it is impossible not to see and hear the tension of black skin under black mask’ and that blackface ‘functions as an interruption of the discourse and symbolic power of the British empire’ (Chude-Sokei 2006: 141, 149–50). The Africa of both masks is imaginary and masqueraded. These masks seem to interrupt, on the one hand, real-life colonial caricatures of Amin and, on the other hand, The Last King of Scotland’s originally intended style (highly dramatized historical fiction) and meaning (as a binary political film: Scotland– Uganda). In other words, the masks seem to give the film a mind of its own that escaped and still escapes what MacDonald and his crew had set out to achieve.

Saër Maty Bâ

Hotel Rwanda

Synopsis

Screenwriters:

British director Terry George’s film is set during the Rwandan genocide of 1994, which saw extremist elements of the Hutu people kill 800,000 Tutsi people (and moderate Hutu). Based on the polite and charming Paul Rusesabagina’s true story, it shows how the manager at the sumptuous Belgian-owned Hôtel Mille Collines used his position and connections to attempt to save over 1,000 human beings from being literally chopped up with machetes and clubbed to death. Rusesabagina (Don Cheadle) is Hutu but married to Tutsi Tatiana (Sophie Okonedo), a ‘cockroach’ in racist extremist Hutu rhetoric, which makes them both and their children prime targets for slaughter. As the slaughter escalates, to the dismay and embarrassment of UN Colonel Olivier (Nick Nolte), the UN evacuates predominantly white foreign nationals. Though a daring and inspiring Rusesabagina outwits many military officers and militiamen, the recurrent uncertainty throughout the film is whether or not he will manage to prevent the death squads, and complicit Rwandan Army officers who have access to the hotel, from claiming some or all of the refugees under his protection.

Kier Pearson Terry George

Critique

Countries of Origin:

UK USA Italy South Africa Languages:

English French Studio:

United Artists Director:

Terry George Producers:

Sam Bhembe Terry George

Cinematographer:

Robert Fraisse

If Terry George and Hotel Rwanda are politically motivated, bear witness to injustices and/or assign blame, then historian Mohamed Africa Seen by ‘Outsiders’ 321

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Art Director:

Emma MacDevitt Editor:

Naomi Geraghty Duration:

121 minutes Genres:

Drama History Thriller Cast:

Don Cheadle Sophie Okonedo Nick Nolte Year:

2004

322 Reviews

Adhikari (in his article ‘Hotel Rwanda: Too much heroism, too little history – or horror?’) may be vindicated in identifying the following as weaknesses: Rusesabagina’s story seems disembodied from its complex context while his role is significantly overstated; Hotel Rwanda suggests, untenably and disingenuously, that Hutu and Tutsi identities are ‘arbitrary creations of Belgian colonialism’ and physically indistinguishable; and Hotel Rwanda’s depiction of ‘an all too orderly refugee camp with its all too ample medical facilities is a good example of the film’s tendency to underplay the wretchedness of the Rwandan situation’ (Adhikari 2007: 280–90). In this review, I borrow the following contrasted views of Robert Rosenstone and Mohamed Adhikari from the editors of Black + White in Colour: African History on Screen (Bickford-Smith and Mendelsohn 2007). I have used the words ‘may be vindicated’ above because, unlike Adhikari, I share film historian Robert Rosenstone’s position on the dramatic feature as history. In Visions of the Past: The Challenge of Film to our Idea of History (1995), Robert Rosenstone (cited by Bickford-Smith and Mendelsohn in their introduction) argues that accuracy (as in facts alone) is not the only criterion for good history: this type of film needs to tell us what to think about the facts. Therefore, Adhikari’s critique of Hotel Rwanda must be nuanced/ re-framed in order to appreciate the film at its strict value: Hotel Rwanda is an example of a dramatic feature as history. Rusesabagina’s heroic elevation was forcefully contested but we should not forget that as the saviour of hundreds of Rwandans he is witness. Additionally, the real Rusesabagina is accused, alongside other powerful figures residing outside Rwanda, of stirring up tensions and being committed to toppling the Rwandan government (see Roderick 2010: 216–17). These issues should warrant a new reading of Hotel Rwanda because, as a historical dramatic feature, it is different from, say, Raoul Peck’s Sometimes in April (2005), which is more emphatically concerned with post-genocide traumas, truth excavation, retribution, reconciliation and healing than with the event itself. Similarly, the survivor NGOs’ and Rwandan diasporas’ pillorying of Hotel Rwanda, as conventional and presenting events ‘as mass entertainment for a mass audience’ through ‘Hollywood narrative truncation and distortion’ (Roderick 2010: 218), is a legitimate grief but is inconsistent with what the film can and does achieve. Hotel Rwanda tells us what to think about ‘the facts’ of the genocide as represented in a dramatic feature. What is more, we should not forget that the film convincingly exposes the international community’s unwillingness and failure to stop the planned and wellorchestrated annihilation of Tutsis (and moderate Hutus) alongside the sickening UN-troops’ imposed stasis as they and Rwandans were being butchered. Nor should we overlook the thoroughness and clarity with which Hotel Rwanda portrays the crucial role of radio in the carrying out of the genocide, tapping into the fact that ‘airwaves were the most effective medium of mass communication’ (Adhikari 2007: 293) in Rwanda, and using radio as a motif throughout, either by showing actual radios and people listening to them or by making clear through bits of the soundtrack that we are listening to radio broadcasts.

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In final analysis, what Hotel Rwanda seems to demand then is for one to accept that film-makers/films/cinemas foreign to Africa will continue telling Africans’ stories and set them partly and wholly in Africa. Flawed, or problematic in other ways, such stories should be related to – not be compared with – those made by Africans, such as Testament (John Akomfrah, 1988), La Nuit de la vérité/The Night of Truth (Fanta Régina Nacro, 2004) or Ezra (Newton Aduaka, 2007), because identical comparative criteria would immediately expose critical and theoretical inconsistencies. Terry George, Don Cheadle and the real Rusesabagina, as well as Hotel Rwanda, deserve more credit.

Saër Maty Bâ

Blood Diamond Countries of Origin:

USA South Africa Languages:

English Mende Afrikaans Studio:

Warner Bros. Director:

Edward Zwick Producers:

Paula Wenstein Edward Zwick Marshall Herskovitz Graham King Gillian Gorfil Screenwriter:

Charles Leavitt Cinematographer:

Eduardo Serra Art Director:

Daran Fulham Editor:

Steven Rosenblum Duration:

143 minutes Genres:

Action

Synopsis Blood Diamond tracks the course of a big pink diamond found in 1990s civil-war-torn Sierra Leone, and hidden, by Solomon Vandy (Djimon Hounsou), a fisherman working as a captive in a rebelcontrolled mine. Following the rebels’ destruction of his village, Vandy tries to find his son, Dia (Kagisto Kuypers), whom they have kidnapped and brainwashed, and his wife and daughter who may have become refugees in a neighbouring country. Former mercenary and current illegal diamond trader Danny Archer (Leonardo DiCaprio) would help Vandy find his son if the latter leads him to the ‘big pink’. They enlist the help of independent and well-connected American investigative journalist Maddy Bowen (Jennifer Connelly) in Sierra Leone because she is determined to expose western firms’ involvement in the illegal blood-diamond (also known as conflict-diamond) trading. Then, both men embark on an epic journey, moving between city- and jungle-scapes where government army and rebel gangs are waging a bloody war.

Critique Once asked if African film-makers could ‘reappropriate the image of Africa by making films’, Abderrahmane Sissako responded: ‘I believe that life, the image, the continent [i.e. Africa] belongs to everyone. […] It is good that Africans make films here that they feel strongly about, that Europeans come here to make films that they feel strongly about too’ (Sissako 1995, cited in Thackway 2003: 199). Edward Zwick is an award-winning Hollywood film-maker whose acclaimed films include Glory (1989), set during the American Civil War. As a foreign (to Africa) film-maker though not ‘European’, Zwick fits Sissako’s description above of an ‘outsider’ making films he or she truly believes in. This also adds to the much-debated topic of ‘authentic’ African films. Films like Blood Diamond contribute greatly to producing images of Africa for they accent the need to engage the notion of African film as a form of thought, not

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Adventure Cast:

Leonardo DiCaprio Djimon Hounsou Jennifer Connelly Kagisto Kuypers Year:

2006

least because any film is 'a new reality that merely sometimes looks like our reality’ (Frampton 2005: 5). Furthermore, as we shall see, Daniel Frampton (2005: 7) posits two constructs that are useful to my critique of Blood Diamond: ‘the film-mind’ (‘the film itself’), and ‘film-thinking’ (‘a combination of idea, feeling and emotion’). Blood Diamond is notable for its attention to detail in the cinematography, character structure and narrative/story line. For example, Dia’s progressive transformation into a child soldier and Archer taking out a diamond hidden in his (false) tooth with a knife constitute less a quest for authenticity than the creation of a new reality: both processes look like, but do not reproduce, the reality from which they are drawn. Moreover, Hounsou’s Vandy is an intense, complex character conceived by Blood Diamond through what Robert Burgoyne (2010: 17) calls in another context ‘identity from across: the non-symmetrical relationship between white identity and black identity that defines points of tension […] that have little to do with the unifying rhetoric’ of race or its impact on the diamond-smuggling-fuelled civil war. Thus Vandy’s relation to DiCaprio’s Archer is crucial to the film, not least because both expose the following type of reading of Blood Diamond as preposterous: ‘emphasis is […] on connecting with the white character [i.e. Archer] in a probable attempt to appeal to a broader (i.e. white) audience’ (Korman 2007). Ultimately, declaring that Archer is similar to Indiana Jones or that Blood Diamond tells the story of ‘a white man in search of a hidden treasure in Africa’ (McNab 2007: 46) may miss the point. Geoffrey McNab overlooks a crucial aspect of Blood Diamond: Archer is South African, a (reformed?) racist but an African nonetheless with his traumas, points of tension (with women) and selfishness. Therefore, at home in (diegetic) Africa, Archer must be perceived through something approaching ‘the mutual reshaping and redefinition of identity from below and identity from above’ resulting in ‘a fluid crossing over of characteristics’ (Burgoyne 2010: 17, 20 Maddy Bowen is an intelligent and capable journalist, ready to ‘screw’ Archer if she gets her story. As their relationship develops, mutual respect begins to emerge. Simultaneously, however, their so-called romance remains in the background and is always interrupted. The film never shows them kissing, and leaves their having sex (or not) to the viewer’s imagination; Maddy and Danny’s mutual attraction is de-emphasized, something which counters Becky Korman’s (2007) argument that Maddy’s character’s being ‘and good deeds become a vehicle for that Hollywood constant: the love interest sub-plot’. Similarly, melodrama and exoticism do not interfere with Blood Diamond’s story because violence is graphic and constant but not glamorized while the film belies that Africa offers film-makers exoticism. In fact, Blood Diamond radically subverts films like Out of Africa (Sydney Pollack, 1985), with their attractive-Africa approach to Africans in the West taking viewers ‘to the Garden of Eden’, presenting Europeans as the masters of that continent and making ‘Western viewers identify with them and their view[s]’ (Gugler 2003: 23).

Saër Maty Bâ 324 Reviews

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Shooting Dogs Countries of Origin:

UK Germany Languages:

English French Studio:

CrossDay Productions, Ltd. Director:

Michael Caton-Jones Producers:

Richard Alwyn David Belton Screenwriter:

David Wolstencroft Cinematographer:

Ivan Strasburg Art Director:

Astrid Sieben Editor:

Christian Lonk Duration:

113minutes Genres:

Drama History Cast:

John Hurt Hugh Dancy Clare-Hope Ashitey Year:

2005

Synopsis Based on true events, Shooting Dogs recounts aspects of the 1994 Rwandan genocide. The viewer sees events unfold mainly through the eyes of priest and school headmaster Father Christopher (John Hurt) and his young idealistic but increasingly disillusioned teacher, Joe Connor (Hugh Dancy). Additionally, priest and teacher’s interactions with victims (such as Marie, played by Clare-Hope Ashitey) who have taken refuge at their school, UN soldiers and the Hutu extremists perpetrating the massacres help the viewer make sense of the film’s story. Shooting Dogs is explicit about how decades-old hatred, combined with western apathy, can lead to mass murder. As the film begins, it would seem that the president’s (a Hutu, the major ethnic group in Rwanda) plane has been shot down. The Hutu blame the Tutsi minority before beginning to slaughter them en masse. The only hope for those refugees who managed to take shelter in Father Christopher’s school, surrounded by extremists, are UN troops – themselves outnumbered, and unsure how long they can hold the raging mob at bay. As a result, the lives of everyone involved are at stake.

Critique The reader may wonder what the title Shooting Dogs means. The Rwandan genocide claimed 800,000 lives in 100 days. As the massacres escalated, hundreds of dead bodies littered rural and urban streets, alleyways, gutters, schools, churches, houses and, pretty much, wherever victims met their deaths (by machete and spiked clubs mostly, and firearm). As a result, many stray/wild dogs were feeding on hundreds of decaying human cadavers. Eventually, for sanitary reasons, UN soldiers started shooting them. Additionally, I would suggest, the title ‘Shooting Dogs’ plays on the fact that victims of the genocide too were killed – indeed, shot – like stray/wild dogs. As we shall see, Shooting Dogs is a complex film that posits, implicitly at least, the question for what audience it was made. Burkinabé film-maker Fanta Nacro (cited in Thackway 2003: 196) argues that African film audiences hold on to positive aspects of western culture and that, therefore, she does not see why western audiences should not see African films. With this line of thinking, Shooting Dogs, an Africa-themed film produced in the West, cannot be seen simplistically as one telling African stories to non-African audiences. Nor can the image(s) of Africa it offers be questioned along the same lines. This is because one cannot fault western films/film-makers for being subjective and/or inventing their own versions of Africa. Shooting Dogs is an answer/illustration of the above-mentioned issues. Beyond chronicling the genocide and finger-pointing the UN, Caton-Jones’s film seems to argue that Father Christopher’s and Joe’s respective gazes on the genocide are valid points of entry into it. Moreover, they do interact with both genocide victims, e.g. Marie, and perpetrators in ways that complicate the film’s message

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while deflecting the idea that Shooting Dogs writes ‘black suffering on white faces’. In other words, the issue is less one of black absence–white presence within a black-perpetrated (and suffered) traumatic event than one of collective endeavour to make sense of it all, within and beyond the gates of a Christian school. God is questioned, generations are in conflict and bodies chopped up with machetes or spiked clubs, and people (black and white) shot. At the same time, however, Shooting Dogs treats violence subtly, not evading its physical horror but preferring to accentuate the mental, psychic and spiritual manifestations of violence. I would suggest that the only way one can really do justice to interpreting the subtleties of this film is, again, to avoid bombastic, one-sided and inaccurate declarations about race, foreignness/African vs non-African, for the sake of hearing Shooting Dogs’s ‘documentary’ voice and thereby give it more credit while constructively questioning it; voice ‘can be summarized as […] the working out of an organizing logic for the film’ (Nichols 2001: 47), or its structure. That voice relies on a binary construct: Hutus as perpetrators and Tutsis as victims. Therefore, though Shooting Dogs represents the genocide in overwhelmingly accurate detail, it also chooses to erase forms of in-betweenness therein. For example, unlike Hotel Rwanda (Terry George, 2004) or J’ai serré la main du diable/Shake Hands with the Devil: The Journey of Roméo Dallaire (Peter Raymont, 2004), Shooting Dogs gives no diegetic space to moderate Hutus (who were also massacred) or mixed (Hutu-Tutsi) couples and their children caught literally and metaphorically in the middle of the genocide. Last but not least, Shooting Dogs’s documentary voice, which can be considered as unequivocally biased in favour of Tutsi victims, is audible behind the camera as well: all local staff hired to work on the film – whose pictures are shown during the film’s end credits – are Tutsis. With this line of thinking, below I suggest a sketch of a new reading of the film that can be pursued elsewhere. To explore how lived experiences, stories (individual and collective) and politics of genocide translate into film representation (or film ‘voice’) is important, not least because film remains a prominent audio-visual medium for portraying genocide-related experiences. A new reading of Shooting Dogs would therefore investigate the genocide’s ‘reality’ (i.e. the known facts and available data about it) through the film’s functional documentary voice, which is organized, logical and functioning in the film in the same way as an index does in relation to the ‘text’ of a book. The documentary voice has an indexical relation to the represented real event. Thus, while not overlooking its production practices, one would focus on how Shooting Dogs represents the genocide in itself. It follows that the selective nature of documentary voice in Shooting Dogs, standing for sites of memory, becomes as crucial as the film-makers’ archival excavations and work with the survivors’ memories at the time of filming.

Saër Maty Bâ

326 Reviews

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Shake Hands with the Devil: The Journey of Roméo Dallaire J’ai serré la main du diable Country of Origin:

Canada Languages:

English French Studio:

White Pine Pictures Director:

Peter Raymont Producers:

Peter Raymont Lindalee Tracey Screenwriter:

Roméo Dallaire (based on his book) Cinematographer:

John Westheuser Editor:

Michèle Hozer Duration:

91 minutes Genre:

Documentary Cast:

Roméo Dallaire (as himself) Year:

2004

Synopsis Shake Hands with the Devil: The Journey of Roméo Dallaire is a documentary that tells the story of the Canadian Lieutenant General’s command of the UN peacekeeping force in Rwanda during the 1994 genocide. It is not to be confused with Shake Hands with the Devil, Roger Spottiswoode’s 2007 Canadian dramatic feature that stars the highly popular Québécois actor Roy Dupuis as a younger Roméo Dallaire. Raymont’s documentary, which is reviewed here, shows Dallaire returning to Rwanda in 2004, focusing on his quest for answers, his tribute to genocide victims and his attempt to come to terms with his inability to purge Rwanda and the UN’s controversial mission from his life. Director Peter Raymont uses nonintrusive camerawork as Dallaire re-visits key places, people and events like the massacre of ten Belgian UN soldiers by extremist Hutu militias in 1994. Thus, the film records two simultaneous Dallaire journeys: one literal, linear and external (from Canada to Rwanda) and the other metaphorical, circular and internal.

Critique The documentary Shake Hands with the Devil: The Journey of Roméo Dallaire is particularly traumatic. It exposes the fragility of both Rwanda and Dallaire’s psyche. Simultaneously, the film asks implicitly if race, dogma and national self(ish)-interest can be radically replaced with conviviality. The UN New York headquarters, the international community and the Interahamwe extremist Hutu militias did not believe so and, as such, 800,000 people (Tutsi, and moderate Hutu) were systematically slaughtered within 100 days. The power of documentary, Nick James (2007: 22) argues, ‘resides not only in its veracity as record, but also in its persuasive vision’. Though one can justifiably debate if/to what extent this is true, James does identify foundational elements of documentary films and Shake Hands with the Devil: The Journey of Roméo Dallaire is a case in point. Visually and aurally, Peter Raymont’s film intersperses archival and contemporary images and sounds, as well as deferent camera work and a mellow editing style, in order to accompany Dallaire in his (post-)traumatic return to Rwanda. Shake Hands with the Devil does not claim to understand Dallaire, his own insecurities or the meaning of his journey back to a place where he had shaken hands with devil-incarnates (mainly representatives of Interahamwe extremists). Raymont’s documentary and Dallaire’s book (first published in 2003) – Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda –, on which the film is partly based, are littered with devil motifs. It is therefore worth emphasizing this much debated point, crucial to Dallaire’s return to Rwanda. Devilishness transcends the expected racial prejudice against the colour black. In this instance, the devil is emphatically black, the film predominantly male, and neither Raymont nor Dallaire could be accused of racism. Furthermore, throughout the film, Raymont ensures that Dallaire is framed, literally and metaphorically, amid

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survivors and their daily strivings (from President Paul Kagame to the hundred thousand Rwandan orphans), commemorations, rituals, burial places and bones and skulls – all given adequate space within Shake Hands with the Devil: The Journey of Roméo Dallaire. The film combines individual trauma (Dallaire’s) with collective trauma (Rwandans’) then in 1994 and now in 2004. In an introspective style, e.g. through shots held long enough to allow viewers to grasp, empathize with or share Dallaire’s depths of thought, his pensive, guilt-ridden or fleetingly joyful frames of mind, the film demands invoking trauma studies to help decipher its deeper meanings. Like Shake Hands with the Devil: The Journey of Roméo Dallaire, trauma studies prioritise ‘witnessing, remembering, articulating, and representing the traumatic experiences and affects of mass and individual human suffering’ (Broderick 2010: 221). As Dallaire puts it in the film, once a suicide attempt [i.e. his] was based on the fact that I realized that I could never get Rwanda out of my system […] that it will be there ad vitam aeternam. And it was so crushing that I could not see a future. Now, I’ve come to live with it. Shake Hands with the Devil: The Journey of Roméo Dallaire seems to argue that this state of mind, no matter how precarious and temporary, generates a lucid engagement in attempting to reconcile one’s inner self with the (past) traumatic event – even when one points an accusatory finger at culprits. In turn, such lucidity allows one to draw lessons and look out towards the future, like Dallaire on film and in writing: [I]n the future we [soldiers] must be prepared to move beyond national self-interest to spend our resources and spill our blood for humanity. We have lived through centuries of enlightenment, reason, revolution, industrialization, and globalization. No matter how idealistic the aim sounds, this century must become the Century of Humanity, when we as human beings rise above race, creed, colour, religion and national self-interest and put the good of humanity above the good of our own tribe. For the sake of the children and of our future. Allons-y! (Dallaire 2004 [2003]: 522) In final analysis, Shake Hands with the Devil: The Journey of Roméo Dallaire is an excellent film, generally very well received (inside and outside of Canada). However, it seems to deny (former) genocide perpetrators a voice. Resolution and reconciliation being major factors in post-trauma processes, these perpetrators need to be engaged for the sake of fulfilling the potential of documentary veracity and persuasiveness.

Saër Maty Bâ

328 Reviews

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Youssou N’Dour, Return to Gorée Youssou N’Dour, retour à Gorée Countries of Origin:

Switzerland Luxemburg Languages:

English French Studios:

CAB productions Dreampixies Iris Productions Télésparks Director:

Pierre-Yves Borgeaud

Synopsis Youssou N’Dour, famous Senegalese singer-songwriter, and Moncef Genoud, renowned Tunisian Swiss jazz pianist, are the driving forces in a film where N’Dour explores the musical legacy of the slave trade. From Africa to America, via Europe, N’Dour’s main focuses are on jazz, an American music informed and influenced by African as well as slave and European cultures. Thus, Borgeaud’s camera captures N’Dour’s travels from Dakar to Gorée, via Atlanta (home of the Gospel choir Harmony Harmoneers), New Orleans (drummer Idris Muhammad and bass player James Cammack), New York City (poet-activist Amiri Baraka and singer Pyeng Threadgill) and Luxemburg (trumpet player Ernie Hammes, among others). Throughout the journey, N’Dour uses his voice and texts to experiment with jazz compositions and, as he works with different musicians, new versions of his songs emerge. Thus, rather than a literal unearthing of the above legacy, Youssou N’Dour: Return to Gorée transforms it into something new. The aim is to put together a concert featuring N’Dour and these musicians on Gorée Island, off the coast of Senegal. Gorée was a processing centre of African slaves bound for the Americas. Its choice is therefore consistent with N’Dour’s intention to visit places that would provoke and reactivate memories of slavery.

Producers:

Critique

Jean-louis Porchet Gérard Ruet

With its mystic undertone reflecting N’Dour’s own Sufi Muslim religious affiliation, Youssou N’Dour: Return to Gorée (hereafter, Return to Gorée) is a circular road movie as much as a music documentary. Sufism is a very tolerant articulation of Islam that encourages artistic expression as a path to illumination and a way of communicating with God. N’Dour’s Sufism permeates his album Égypte (2004), which is a meditative-to-ecstatic homage to the Saints of Sufi Islam in Senegal. Return to Gorée also reflects the mixed (métissé) aspect of N’Dour’s music style and genre called M’balax, crafted and perfected through encounters between deeply rooted Senegalese musical traditions and European, American (North and South), black diasporic and Arab music and cultures. As a result, in Return to Gorée, N’Dour and his essentially urban music, which is sung mostly in Wolof but sometimes in English, French or other African languages, resonate well with a culturally and religiously métissé Senegalese audience that has been in cultural and spiritual dialogue with Arabs, black Africans and Europeans for centuries. This audience is indeed made of Animists, Muslims and Christians who know, hear of and/or listen to Gospel, jazz and the blues. As mentioned in the synopsis, Return to Gorée is built around a world-famous Senegalese singer/songwriter’s encounter with a renowned Tunisian Swiss jazz pianist; it pursues a musical experiment that N’Dour and Genoud had tried twice at the Montreux Jazz Festival: the ‘Youssou N’Dour Jazz Project’ (Arnaud 2008: 132). Signifying a crossroads, Return to Gorée is reluctant,

Screenwriters:

Pierre-Yves Borgeaud Emmanuel Gétaz Cinematographer:

Camille Cotagnou Music:

Moncef Genouf Youssou N'Dour Editor:

Daniel Gibel Duration:

110 minutes Genres:

Music documentary Cast:

Youssou N’Dour Moncef Genoud Boubacar Joseph Ndiaye Idris Muhammad James Cammack Pyeng Threadgill

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Grégoire Maret Ernie Hammes Wolfgang Muthspiel Year:

2007

330 Reviews

conceptually, to create a centre-periphery narrative structure. Since N’Dour refuses to be the centre of a participatory and dialogic project, Borgeaud’s direction and Genoud’s compositions follow suit, not least because N’Dour’s original compositions and voice work well with jazz and the blues. For example, the improvised jazz and original versions of the song ‘Fakastalu’ (‘To Trip’), (1998) sound extremely close while both watching Return to Gorée and my 25-year experience of listening to N’Dour’s music strengthen my conviction that he can invoke Bessie Smith or gospel and soul music within one song. Return to Gorée was conceived and produced through serendipity. Idriss Muhammad, Amiri Baraka and a number of musicians who play with N’Dour were found by chance, in real life as it happens in the film, and then they were encouraged to contribute ideas and perform their own music. Return to Gorée begins and ends at Gorée Island and in between features six different other places that are linked to musicians featured in the film. Thus, Return to Gorée explores the notion of return while investigating re-turns (i.e. turning again to another position/opinion/side), and Borgeaud’s intimate yet deferent camerawork plays an important role in these connected processes. On the one hand, he captures N’Dour’s uniqueness as a musical and cultural superstar who has never emigrated from his birth city, country or continent. On the other hand, Borgeaud shows N’Dour’s awareness of global issues, for example his belief in creating a more humane version of globalization. Therefore, in Return to Gorée, departure and the journeying are premised on N’Dour’s return home, as well as on his re-turns to the music and rhythms of the African diaspora. As the various nationalities, ethnicities and musicians featured in Return to Gorée demonstrate, re-turning is an unpredictable process. For example, in New Orleans N’Dour hears a style of percussive drumming called Assiko that he only finds in coastal urban settings of West Africa and concludes that, maybe, it was the slaves’ farewell music or ‘the last music’ played before big departures. Consequently, N’Dour believes, Assiko has memory and connects the African diaspora. Return to Gorée could be described as a crossroads of options due to the ways in which the transatlantic slave trade informs and influences it. The trade disrupted ways of life, murdered tens of millions and shares responsibility for Africa’s contemporary impoverishment. This is how Boubacar Joseph N’Diaye, curator of the Gorée dungeon called ‘House of Slaves’, historian and expert on the transatlantic slave trade, and respected elder, presents the slave trade to N’Dour early in the film. N’Dour came to Gorée to seek N’Diaye’s blessing for the project and journey he is about to undertake. The close-up of N’Diaye holding N’Dour’s hands across his office desk is a symbol of unbroken generational and African diasporic links. At this very moment, only the slave trade connects these two Africans. N’Dour is consistent in his views and work on slavery. Once he ended his decades-long intention to forget the slave trade, N’Dour embraced the act of actively remembering it. Thus, while Return to

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Gorée is a musical odyssey building on the success of the Youssou N’Dour Jazz Project it is also a re-turn to and continuation of the feature film Amazing Grace (Michael Apted, UK/USA, 2007), a costume drama about the transatlantic slave trade and the early days of Abolitionism. In addition to composing part of the film’s most haunting music score, N’Dour, an untrained actor then, portrayed Olaudah Equiano on-screen with an award-worthy performance. Equiano, captured in the Niger region and sold within Africa before being shipped to Barbados, was eventually bought and freed in London, and was a founding member of the African state of Sierra Leone. Equiano’s most amazing achievement – not lost to N’Dour – is being one of the first black persons to preserve the whole process of slavery in writing, as early as 1789. (Thus, Equiano’s eventful life could have been a template for Return to Gorée.) N’Dour’s decision to play Equiano in Amazing Grace is consistent with his interest in the slave trade, but also with both Equiano’s pioneering work as an abolitionist and N’Dour’s commitment to contemporary black freedom fighters like Nelson Mandela (for whose liberation N’Dour organized a concert in 1985). Therefore, one can understand why N’Dour deflected accusations of tokenism in order to take up this (small) Hollywood-production screen role that included voicing and displaying some graphic evidence of the horrors of slavery: ‘with these situations,’ he told journalist Peter Culshaw (2007), ‘I usually think it's better to do something than nothing. People think that because I'm well known I could have changed how a Hollywood film was made, but that's not true.’ In the end, Return to Gorée is, like the slave trade, shaped triangularly (Africa, Europe and America) while embracing Equiano’s circular life trajectory, although the Caribbean and its various musical styles are strangely absent from it. Thus, Return to Gorée differs from but is in dialogue with the linearly conceived series Jazz (Ken Burns, first broadcast on PBS, USA, 2000) and The Blues (Scorsese et al., first broadcast on PBS, USA, 2004). Jazz argues that jazz, though embodying non-American geo-cultural influences, could only be born in America while The Blues focuses overwhelmingly on the American South, though some episodes/ films involve Europe/Africa and musicians like the late Malian guitarist Ali Farka Touré (Mali). Return to Gorée also turns traumatic memories into musical-poetic celebration through N’Dour who is a peaceful militant and ambassador for UNICEF and FAO (The World Food Program).

Saër Maty Bâ

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Triage: Dr. James Orbinski’s Humanitarian Dilemma Country of Origin:

Canada Languages:

English, with some Somali and Kinyarwanda (subtitled) Studios:

White Pine Pictures Docurama Films National Film Board of Canada Director:

Patrick Reed Producers:

Peter Raymont Silva Basmajian Cinematographer:

John Westheuser Music:

Mark Korven Editor:

Michele Hozer Duration:

88 minutes Genre:

Documentary Cast:

James Orbinski Year:

2007

332 Reviews

Synopsis Triage follows Canadian physician James Orbinski as he revisits two African nations – Somalia and Rwanda – in search of details that might help him come to terms with and explain the human rights atrocities he witnessed as a member of Doctors Without Borders/ Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). In his early thirties, Dr Orbinski’s first tour of duty with MSF was in Baidoa, Somalia in the early 1990s, during a massive famine. The first half of this film follows Orbinski as he returns to Somalia after roughly fifteen years and tries to piece together the macabre episodes of pervasive starvation he witnessed. The film attempts to shed glimpses of light on the terrible past while simultaneously documenting Orbinski’s journey of return to the land where so many perished for want of food. The second half of the film finds Orbinski in the green hills of Rwanda as he reconnects with the people and places that changed his life. The film oscillates between past and present as it tries to communicate the horrors of the 100-day Tutsi genocide and Dr Orbinski’s frustrated efforts to understand the atrocity.

Critique Triage works on numerous levels as a destabilizing documentary, one which unsettles viewers through diverse methods. Dr James Orbinski’s return to both Somalia and Rwanda is presented at the film’s outset as an opportunity to honour the past, those who perished and those who survived. He explicitly states that his journey is neither a cathartic purging, nor a memorial pilgrimage. Indeed, for Orbinski it is important that this journey establish new situations meant to honour that which is past and embrace the present as it rests firmly planted on the shoulders of history. However, it is debatable whether or not the documentary itself communicates Orbinski’s laudable sentiment. Instead, the documentary focuses on Orbinski’s daunting task: adequately and appropriately expressing the horrors he witnessed including individual, national and international appreciations of why events unfolded as they did. The term Triage highlights the chaos of communicating the ineffable which Orbinski chose to tackle by writing a book later published under the title An Imperfect Offering: Humanitarian Action in the Twenty-First Century. While Dr Orbinski’s stated objectives are virtuous and clear, the film itself fails to echo his wishes. The film’s opening establishes Orbinski as an expert in his own right, with footage of him in his office and fundraising before television cameras. As Orbinski’s story unfolds, it becomes all too clear that the doctor desperately needs to communicate the reality of the situations he witnessed. Viewers watch as a brilliant and humbled man struggles to understand and communicate an amorphous, horrific reality. Orbinski’s language gradually degenerates into a greater use of cuss words and frustration. At times communication is lost entirely and voice-overs are used to express thoughts after they have been separated from the moment. Such techniques subsequently fail to present an authentic

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documentation of the doctor’s journey as the picture merges current images with future voices instead of simply capturing the very personal experience of silent contemplation. The documentary also relies heavily on stock photographs and archival film footage taken during the actual Somali famine and Tutsi genocide. These images are blended with contemporary shots of Orbinski. The mixing of past and present images encourages viewers to appreciate the horrors of the past, some of which the doctor witnessed. However, these glimpses of death, illness and violence present the Somali famine and Tutsi genocide as spectacles, in that the subjects pictured are unnamed and voiceless. These victims become objects of pity, denied human dignity as audience members see only skeletal bodies, vacant stares and corpses in pools of blood. As a result, these images defeat Dr Orbinski’s objective to honour the past and instead they turn tragedy into voyeurism. Furthermore, because Dr Orbinski’s voice dominates the narrating of events through this documentary, the film seems to try and convey that the incommunicability of these particular events is a dilemma experienced by Orbinski alone. Yet, Dr Orbinski indicates in the film that the inability to honour the Somali famine and the Tutsi genocide is a failure borne by all westerners. Music frames much of the film, guiding viewers to interpretations and conclusions. When in Somalia, the music is melodic and somewhat lethargic. This encourages viewers to associate the famine with lingering death. When Dr Orbinski remarks on the startling silence of the masses of starving people at the feeding camps, the documentary fills the shocking silence with voice-overs and music creating a different scenario for audience consumption. Similarly, the music that plays during the portion of the film covering Rwanda is aggressive and impassioned. This moves viewers to associate the images and stories of genocide with a sense of threat and danger. Instead of gunshots, screams and yelling, viewers are placated with music. Arguably, silence between gunshots and screams would more authentically heighten a viewer’s sense of imminent threat and better communicate the truth of the event depicted. Therefore, the use of music in this film fails to honour these past events and instead supports the use of stock photographs and archive footage which turn tragedy into spectacle. Although there is a disconnect between the honouring of past human rights atrocities and the presentation of historical events for consumption in this documentary, the disjunctions and resulting total package do reflect Dr James Orbinski’s communication dilemma in an extraordinary way. It is through the breakdown of honourable and truthful representation that viewers are able to understand the impossible task which burdens Orbinski. As this form of media fails, it mirrors Orbinski’s impossible undertaking of communicating the atrocities he has witnessed. Furthermore, as the film nears its end, there is a shift in focus as Orbinski abandons his narration of history and addresses the philosophical matter of humanitarianism. Here he finds footing, suggesting that humanitarianism is not about perfect or absolute ideals; instead, it is about the solidarity of humanity which results in the very

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personal experience of political events. This understanding of humanitarianism functions as an ideal springboard for his book which was published roughly a year after the documentary. Triage is a significant documentary for both its failures and its successes. It is a film that is well worth watching and studying as its lessons are plentiful. In conjunction with his aforementioned published text, Dr James Orbinski has offered persuasive arguments concerning a human dilemma that is not only his, but shared by all of humankind.

Naomi Scapinello

Chocolat Countries of Origin:

France Germany Cameroon Language:

French Director:

Claire Denis Producers:

Marin Karmitz Production Companies:

Caroline Productions La Sept FODIC MK2 Productions/TF1 Films Productions (France) WDR (West Deutscher Rundfunk)/Wim Wenders Produktion (Germany) Screenwriter:

Claire Denis Cinematographer:

Robert Alazraki Art Director:

Thierry Flamand Music:

Abdullah Ibrahim Editor:

Claudine Merlin Duration:

105 minutes.

334 Reviews

Synopsis A French woman called France (Mireille Perrier) meets a black man and his son in south Cameroon. The man introduces himself as an American in search of his origins and, as a way of farewell, comments on the strange scar that has left no lines on France’s palm. This remark triggers a huge flashback, almost the duration of the film, to France’s childhood in far north Cameroon, in the mid-1950s, in a former German colony which became a FrancoBritish protectorate in 1918. France’s father, Marc Dalens (François Cluzet), is the commandant de cercle and her mother Aimée (Giulia Boschi), is often left in the company of her 7 or 8-year-old daughter France (Cécile Ducasse) and their house-boy, Protée (Isaach de Bankolé). Visitors are welcome as they alleviate Aimée’s loneliness. An English neighbour and various adventurers stranded by a plane breakdown bring the mother and her daughter closer to Protée who has become their protector. Various incidents create psychological, erotic and political tension between the characters that have to choose their camp, the masters’ or the servants’ quarter. The question arises as to why a colonial background was chosen for such an understated, domestic conundrum.

Critique Chocolat, Claire Denis’s first feature film was awarded the César for the Best First Film in Cannes (1989) and attracted much attention. Critics mostly commented on the beautiful cinematography and the French colonial woman’s unspoken, unrequited desire for her handsome African servant. Because of its aestheticization, the film was read as ‘nostalgic memory’ of colonialism in Cameroon and therefore not valid as a historical film (Watson 2007: 193, 202). The short opening and closure of the film, set in the 1980s, are as important as the colonial flashback to provide clues to the enigmatic repetition of dialogues or actions in Claire Denis’s narrative of a colonial childhood. Before analysing some of these repeated sequences, we cannot ignore the challenging scene of the burnt hands. Protée, the male servant of the French administrator’s family, was relegated to the machinery shed for having humiliated

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Genre:

Colonial drama Cast:

Isaach de Bankolé Giulia Boschi Cécile Ducasse François Cluzet Mireille Perrier Jacques Denis Year:

1988

Aimée by rejecting her advances. France, Aimée’s daughter, misses her playmate and visits him in the generator room. When Protée grabs a hot-water pipe and encourages France to copy him, both the girl and the viewer are surprised at this blatant cruelty. Protée's hand appears more deeply burnt against the dark background than France's hand and tears are welling in his eyes. Whether this silent scene is a true or invented memory, how does it find its logical and meaningful place in the structure of the film? In the two scenes of exchange of food between Protée and France, the girl has the upper hand. When Protée gives her an ant sandwich in exchange for an apple (a fruit imported from France), she is fair play. In the second eating scene, however, when Protée offers her butterfly wings, she feeds him spoonfuls of soup, as though he were himself the child. In the third pair of parallel eating scenes, the roles are reversed. ‘Voilà ton picotin, ma cocotte!’ (‘Here are your oats, my fillie!’) – with these ambiguous words, Delpich, a racist coffee planter (played by Jacques Denis), expresses his affection to his ‘ménagère’, the housekeeper and African mistress he keeps in his bedroom away from his French hosts. Picotin is the portion of oats given to a horse or beast of burden, and cocotte, among many other meanings including ‘darling’, can refer to a prostitute and a horse. Delpich’s ‘fillie’ is lying on the floor when he brings her a plate of ‘oats’. The African servant, who has already proved his talent for languages as he speaks both French and English, overhears these words and repeats them to France while playing and eating with her in the shade under a truck. This brief parallel sequence, contained within one single shot, distinguishes itself by one of Protée's rare laughs. It seems that France does not even hear or comprehend Protée's condescension. Protée's attempt to make France endure his humiliations as a ‘boy’, signifies his estrangement from France the girl and perhaps the country. The next two pairs of repeated sequences foreground the divide between colonizer and colonized and eventually provide a glimpse of post-independence freedom. On the one hand, in the two scenes of a man using an open-air shower, Luc, the provocative French ex-priest, joyously exhibits his nudity to attract Aimée’s attention, whereas Protée curls up in distress and cries when he realizes that Aimée has returned from her gardening routine and, we presume, will summon him any time for some chore. He reacts like Diouana, in Sembène’s La Noire de…/Black Girl (1966), who could never escape her mistress’s orders, not even when she was in bed or in the bathroom. On the other hand, the last two repeated scenes distinctly set up colonial against independent Cameroon. Two scenes show the backs of men, first, in the 1950s, Protée and his master solemnly urinating into a ditch and, some 25 years later, three carefree African airport employees with their backs turned to the audience do likewise. Similarly, the departure of the repaired French plane in the 1950s is echoed by the departure of a Cameroonian jet. The second take is an endless, happy and messy scene of men having fun under the rain to the tune of bracing music specifically composed by Abdullah Ibrahim for Chocolat. The cinematic parallelism helps define the dialectics of the director. There is a progressive argumentation for the colony's Africa Seen by ‘Outsiders’ 335

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emancipation. The childhood appears to be reconstructed to act as a sort of catharsis for the film-maker and to demonstrate to her viewers that colonialism is a dead end. I contend that Chocolat, far from being nostalgic for colonialism, qualifies as a historical film, not for staging armed conflicts – there is only one shot of Protée brandishing a gun in an ironic dream of rebellion – but for the representation of the impossibility of a constructive relationship between colonizer and colonized. The historical event in Chocolat is a European film-maker’s appropriation of Frantz Fanon’s repeated and expanded concept of revolution in The Damned of the Earth – a total break-up with the colonizer as the only way of overcoming colonial exploitation. (Some viewers argue that colonial plundering goes on because African artefacts are seen on the conveyor belt loading a plane bound for France, but we hope these artefacts are not stolen but paid for.)

Blandine Stefanson

336 Reviews

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Africa Seen by ‘Outsiders’ 337

SURREAL

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Cover Sia, the Dream of the Python/ Sia, le rêve du python (Dani Kouyaté, Burkina-Faso, 2001). Sahelis Production/ The Kobal Collection.

The chapter ‘Surreal’ covers a mixture of film genres (drama, fable, documentary, comedy) that belong in such unrelated fields as myth, ethnography or science fiction yet share unrealistic narrative elements (the characters’ metamorphoses and ubiquity, anthropomorphic fauna and flora, magical objects) as well as special effects. Based partly or entirely on supernatural events and characters endowed with divining power, various African films of the late 1980s and early 1990s (at least in the francophone regions) displaced the social realist and anti-colonial protest narratives directed by the generation of Ousmane Sembène and Med Hondo. Magic was interpreted as an assertive marker of African cultural identity. Férid Boughedir’s film classification into ‘tendencies’ rather than genres is informative, but his approach to the ‘cultural tendency’(resorting to magic) rests on a facetious hypothesis – trying to outdo each other, African film-makers increase the use of magic to lure European audiences with touristy escape (Boughedir 2000: 120–21). This view is restrictive because, first, it subordinates the African production to European consumption and, second, it denies some filmmakers’ genuine implication in a spiritual heritage that they present as specifically African. Likewise, Kobena Mercer considers that by depicting violence among Africans in a mythical context, ‘the aesthetics of magic realism’ of some African films and novels absolves the western ‘share of responsibility in shaping Africa’s violent history’ (Mercer 2000: 146). Attractive and subtle though it may be, this view is historically misleading because it suggests that African history started with colonization. Souleymane Cissé’s Yeelen, Yeelen/La Lumière/Brightness, (Mali, 1987) on the contrary bypassed the colonial period to show that brutality existed in Africa for centuries before western interference, thus giving a more philosophical dimension to his film. Cissé’s foray into mythic times is more optimistic than an obsessive incrimination of colonization because it presents scope for self-reflection and change. The question this chapter poses is whether the presence of magic as a fundamental element of a narrative creates an

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obsolete cultural image of Africa or on the contrary holds transformative power relevant to contemporary audiences. The historical context of the use of magic in African cinema sheds light on this elusive and controversial topic. Magic or supernatural elements, as sources of creative inspiration in African narratives fared better in literature than cinema. The first generations of African writers using European languages in the early twentieth century were usually closer to village culture and oral tradition than contemporary filmmakers. Indeed, much of the early African literature consisted of adapted oral tales full of unreal events. As Xavier Garnier (1999: 159) explains in his book on magic in the African novel, the village was close to the forest where the communication between the visible world and the invisible spirits was taking place. The eruption of the invisible world in a narrative is an explanation offered by a magician or diviner, in other words, a remedy to a social or personal dysfunction perceived as chaos: ‘In the magic-religious thought system, to explain consists in complementing the visible part of the world with its corresponding invisible part in which the causes of daily events are to be found’ [‘Expliquer, pour la pensée magico-religieuse, c’est élargir le réel en adjoignant à sa partie visible une partie invisible dans laquelle on trouvera les causes des événements quotidiens’] (Garnier 1999: 20, my translation). Cinema, because of its elliptical possibilities, in particular its easy manipulation of time and space, would appear to be the designated medium for magic. Right from the beginnings of cinema as an invention, imagination was the way chosen by Georges Méliès as opposed to reality, which was promoted by the Lumière brothers. In the early twentieth century, the surrealist movement that transformed poetry, theatre and film in France coincided with the interest in ethnography as a science. Young intellectuals, according to Jean Rouch’s outline of his career as an ethnographer, were enthralled by the description of cosmogonies based on forces that are released by the invisible world yet are completely separate from the Christian education of the French establishment (Rouch 1995). In Rouch’s career, the ethnographic vogue culminated in his famous/infamous documentary Les Maîtres fous (1955). To represent traditional cults on the screen runs the risk of inducing uninformed audiences to interpret the indigenous beliefs and practices as superstition. Rouch’s footage of a ritual of rebellion performed by some inhabitants of Abidjan against their white masters – as originators of the colonial chaos – triggered embarrassment and anger among Africans. This documentary, which includes a ritual of eating dog flesh, was shot before the advent of synchronization, and prompted outrage at the inaugural screening at Musée de l’Homme in Paris, when Rouch volunteered his live voice-over to explain the images. Years later, Rouch made a montage of the silent footage with an elaborately reconstituted soundtrack for the mysterious action on the screen (Rouch 1995: 426–27). Nevertheless, instead of legitimizing the belief in supernatural forces, this documentary reputedly conveys the uncomfortable feeling that Rouch speaks on behalf of Africans and exhibits their customs as though they were savages or ‘insects’, as Sembène famously complained. This experiment demonstrates the challenge of showing beliefs without inciting judgment. Unlike Greek mythology that depicts the lives of the gods or the revealed religions that promise paradise, no indigenous-inspired African film, to my knowledge, has attempted to give a direct portrayal of the invisible world. African novels and films, however, do project the people’s beliefs in a world of supernatural forces. The power of magic can be granted, denied or misused. A first bracket of four films reviewed for this chapter genuinely suggests the existence of transcendental forces that remain benevolent as long as human beings acknowledge these forces. Cissé’s Yeelen and Appoline Traoré’s Kounandi (Burkina Faso, 2003) both display cases of effective magic – resorting to the spirits

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to overcome visible evil. The young sorcerer of Yeelen is protected by his mother’s rituals and a magical crystal as well as by his good twin uncle’s knowledge and complementary magical objects. Kounandi, according to the reviewer, equates the role of magic to that of the camera, for its identification of evils and transformative powers of disadvantaged members of society. Yet the potential bipolar use of magic, as a weapon rather than a remedy, is also underlying these narratives. In Sembène’s Emitaï (Senegal, 1972) and Cissé’s Finye/Le Vent/The Wind (1982), there are two similar sequences taking place in a sacred wood, in which the gods no longer respond to humans requesting help against insurmountable chaos – colonial recruitment in Emitaï and neo-colonial corruption in Finye. I described elsewhere the devious use of a rooster sacrifice in Yeelen, when the father sorcerer Soma conjures the invisible powers to destroy rather than celebrate his son’s talents and in turn, young Nianankoro resorts to light (fire) to save his Fulani host only to betray this generous king and later to confront his own father with the annihilating power of light (Stefanson 2009b). In the magical film genre, if the supernatural is to make an impact on viewers, it appears to need to be suggested rather than represented. The reviewer of Mystery Mountain (Villant Ndasowa, Malawi, 2007) is critical of the use of the docu-drama genre to denounce superstition and dislikes the idea of embodying the spirits into choreography. This reservation is a good argument against the graphic representation of beliefs in supernatural powers or beings. In this film, lack of respect for the belief in the mountain’s magical power is a bad omen. Only in children’s films does magic remain mostly effective in a positive manner because it is not questioned by those who benefit from it, as happens with little Fallous in Sabbat El Aïd/My Shoes (Anis Lassoued, Tunisia, 2012). Many other films could figure here for an ingenuous treatment of magic, in particular Assane Kouyaté’s tale of a young man who seeks the necessary magical power to help a Mande village overcome drought (Kabala, Mali, 2002) and Mansour Sora Wade’s drama of power over the tempest and ensuing jealousy, Le Prix du pardon/Ndeyssan/The Price of Forgiveness (Senegal, 2001). Sankofa (Haile Gerima, USA/Ghana/Burkina Faso, 1993) (reviewed in Chapter 7 on ‘History and Film’) and Maangamizi, the Ancient One (Martin Mhando and Phil Mulvihill, Tanzania, 2000) – a Swahili title that loosely means ‘destruction’ but also refers to an African ancient female intercessor – are films that testify to the mysterious communication and spiritual exchanges between African Americans and their African ancestors. Unfortunately, there are probably more films that endorse the abuse rather than the benefit of the belief in the supernatural. In such cases, witchcraft and/or the parody of magic transform the magical films into social drama and even farce. Both Quand les étoiles rencontrent la mer/When the Stars Meet the Sea (Raymond Rajaonarivelo, Madagascar, 1996) and Sia, le rêve du python/Sia, the Dream of the Python (Dani Kouyaté, Burkina Faso, 2001) uncover the contemporary application of the ancient practice of human sacrifices, which were performed to obtain the betterment or survival of a particular society. Quand les étoiles may be a comment on anachronistic observance but Sia broaches upfront deviousness among the cult performers. In the Algerian context of the political division on the ground of religion in Le Démon au féminin/And They Said … the Devil is a Woman (Hafsa Zinaï-Koudil, Algeria, 1993), the imagery of moral and social imprisonment is particularly indicting. Of note in this bracket of reviews is the fact that the film-makers expose the respective religious leaders rather than the religions themselves. Moussa Touré’s Toubab Bi (Senegal, 1991), not reviewed in this edition for lack of space, takes the disparagement of magic to the level of farce, which has displeased some critics yet the comedic approach restores some power to the protagonist who brandishes his fetishes to frighten off his racist aggressors during his stay in Paris.

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The last three reviews of this chapter make compelling reading about a relatively new trend in African cinema: science fiction. As a disguise for political protest or social comment, sci-fi may be today more accessible than the literary works that denounced various dictatorships in the previous decade. The movement of magic realism in literature from Congo-Brazzaville, for example in Sony Labou Tansi’s novels as they are analysed by Xavier Garnier (1999) in his chapter ‘The political stakes of the world of magic’, did not incite any equivalent paroxysmal tendency in the development of African cinema. The graphic transposition of metaphoric representations of ruthless dictators, including a monstrous hernia and bodily secretions, did not find its way into some African gore, as a film genre. Too much blood on the screen might have deflated the political denunciation that was intended in the bookish exaggeration of such titles as Tansi’s L’État honteux/The Shameless State (1981). Jean-Pierre Bekolo’s Les Saignantes/The Bloodettes (Cameroon, 2005) may have been motivated by the need to elude censorship but it makes a strong case for the transformative power of magic in the field of feminist politics. By stepping into the mechanical order of an imaginary metallic world, the surreal approach to political protest in Neill Blomkamp’s District 9 (South Africa, 2009) goes even further from the human race than Tansi’s novels only to engage in crude racism, displaying a metaphoric vision of immigrants that prompted much criticism in the media. Lastly, the poetic and sci-fi fable of Pumzi (2009, Kenya), by Wanuri Kahiu, a woman film-maker interested in literary adaptation, provides a refreshing conclusion to this chapter with the preservation of natural resources, a theme that has been foregrounded in the documentary genre by Samba Felix Ndiaye, master of what Moussa Sow (2013) called ‘ecocinema’. No doubt that, apart from the strong interest bestowed upon Senegalese Djibril Diop Mambéty for his poetic films, magic, as a fecund vein of African filmmaking, has tended to be overshadowed by social realist criticism. This chapter should offer guidelines to audiences interested in unusual genres that facilitate dynamic cultural representations of Africa on the screen.

Blandine Stefanson

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Yeelen, Brightness Yeelen, la lumière Countries of Origin:

Mali Burkina Faso France West Germany Languages:

Bambara Fula, with English subtitles Studio:

Cissé Films Director:

Souleymane Cissé Producer:

Souleymane Cissé Kossa Mody Keita Screenwriter:

Souleymane Cissé Cinematographers:

Jean-Noël Ferragut Jean-Michel Humeau Music:

Salif Keita Michel Portal

Synopsis Some ten centuries ago, a young sorcerer of the Bambara people, Nianankoro (Issiaka Kane), sets out on a quest to find and confront his father, Soma (Niamanto Sanogo), a powerful and corrupt sorcerer belonging to the Komo, an initiation society that transmits knowledge and practises magic. Fearing Nianankoro’s power, Soma and his accomplices search the countryside for the initiate so they can kill him. (Bafing is one such vociferous sorcerer, played by Ismaïla Sarr in a short scene before the famous actor, who was cast as Soma, died in the early stage of the shoot.) While adventuring in Fuladougou, Nianankoro is confused for a thief and taken before the Fulani king, Rouma Boll (Balla Moussa Keita). Nianankaro displays his magical abilities and helps the Fulani win a war. Rouma then asks him to cure his infertile youngest wife, Attou (Aoua Sangaré). Nianankoro tries to cure her, and in so doing, makes love to her. Nianankoro confesses his actions to Rouma and asks for death, but the Fulani king instead allows Nianankoro to leave with Attou. Nianankoro and his wife then purify themselves in a bottomless spring, and visit his blind but prophetic uncle, Djigui (Soma’s twin brother, also played by Niamanto Sanogo), who has been exiled from the Komo Djigui tells Nianankoro of their people’s future, and that Attou is with child. Djigui also prepares Nianankoro for battle by giving him the Wing of the Kore, which holds all levels of knowledge for the Bambara. Nianankoro’s mother (Soumba Traoré) had given her son the crystal that would activate this weapon. Nianankoro goes out to meet his father Soma and they battle. Both are transformed first into animals and then, supposedly into ostrich eggs when Nianankoro uses the Wing of the Kore. After an ellipsis, Nianankoro’s son collects one egg, takes up the Wing of the Kore and wanders off.

Editors:

Critique

Dounamba Coulibaly Andrée Davanture

As an adaptation of a traditional Malian oral myth, Yeelen is a seminal film in the return-to-the-sources genre that Cissé helped pioneer. The return-to-the-sources genre has pedagogical and preservation functions, offering alternative historical narratives to those written by the West during Africa’s colonial period and suggesting pre-colonial solutions to contemporary social problems through stories that have allegorical bearing on the modern moment. Yeelen uses the filmic form as a contemporary analogue for traditional oral storytelling, which preserved narratives such as the one on which Yeelen is based over centuries without being acknowledged as a valid form of history by western powers during the Atlantic slave trade and colonization. Cissé’s film demonstrates that civilization did exist in Africa long before Europeans arrived, with its own systems of knowledge translated here through the filmic medium. Cissé devotes significant amounts of screen time to depicting Bambara rituals and practices, to the point where even the act of washing takes on anthropological significance. Moreover, Djigui’s prophecy foretells

Duration:

105 minutes Genres:

Drama Fantasy adventure Cast:

Issiaka Kane Aoua Sangaré Niamanto Sanogo Balla Moussa Keita Soumba Traoré Koke Sangaré Ismaïla Sarr Year:

1987

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the coming of other peoples who will bring centuries of oppression to the continent. Through this prophecy, Cissé is able to engage with the centuries-long history of African oppression, while maintaining hope for the future. Djigui is confident in his prediction that the era of African suffering will also pass, and is serene in the Bambara belief that ‘life and death are like scales laid on top of one another’. It is Nianankoro’s duty, then, to combat oppression in his own time, using the skills available to him. Attou, then, raises Nianankoro’s child to live by his father’s ideals, ensuring stability in the future. Since Nianankoro was also raised by his mother, motherhood, as a social value, is of extreme importance to this narrative. The Komo, which has been corrupted by Soma and his ilk, represents abuse of the land’s people by some sorcerers who want to sustain their power. The Komo is not a direct stand-in for the western powers that exploit Africa, but rather an archetypal portrayal of patriarchal tyranny, which is convincingly acted by Koke Sangaré as Chief of Komo. Yeelen is a mythic film that has been compared to Oedipus Rex. As such, the film is surprisingly accessible to audiences outside of Africa, earning a nomination for the Palme d’Or upon its premiere and receiving the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 1987. The film is successful despite subject matter that might prove challenging for some viewers. Cissé explains Bambara mysticism through a series of opening titles and icons that engross the audience into a diegesis that blends history and fantastical myth. Like some Fespaco films of the 1980s, Yeelen is languidly paced, but that only makes its average run-time play out to epic proportions. The film also makes the most of a meagre special-effects budget to represent the story’s magical happenings, never failing to deliver spectacle. Yet the primary spectacle is the landscape itself, along with its people and their customs, all of which Cissé films with the utmost reverence. Yeelen is a paean to the African continent’s unspoiled reaches as well as the Malian people’s history of survival. The film is essential viewing for any exploration of the African film canon.

Stefan Sereda

Kounandi Country of Origin:

Burkina Faso Language:

Jula (Diola), with English subtitles Studios:

Les Films Slemon Director:

Apolline Traoré

344 Reviews

Synopsis A strange woman arrives in a mythical village and dies giving birth. She leaves behind a baby girl and a strange cake pan. Unable to have children of their own, Miriam (Olga Toe) and Moussa (Adama Kone) adopt the newborn, who grows up to be a dwarf, named Kounandi (Coty Deborah). Unsatisfied with her loveless marriage, Miriam begins an affair with another man. When Moussa finds out, he shoots Miriam dead, and throws Kounandi to the streets. A kind young man, Karim (Noufou Ouédraogo) takes pity on Kounandi, and builds her a small hut behind his own. She repays him by cooking scrumptious cakes from her mother’s cake pan, which she also sells at market. Though Kounandi has fallen in love with Karim,

Directory of World Cinema

Producers: 

Nicolas Cand Idrissa Ouédraogo Screenwriter:

Appoline Traoré Cinematographer:

Daniel Bareau Art Director:

Emmanuel Sanou Music:

Manu Dibango Editor:

Nicholas Barachin Duration:

50 minutes Genres:

Drama Folktale Cast:

Coty Deborah Noufou Ouédraogo Aminata Dao Olga Toe Adama Koné Year:

2003

Karim is married to Awa (Aminata Dao), who returns to the village after an extended illness. Awa and Kounandi clash. Yet, as Awa gets sicker and sicker, Kounandi watches Karim become sadder and sadder. The rival women ultimately confront each other in a magical encounter under a large baobab. In the final scene, we learn that, strangely, Awa can cook Kounandi’s scrumptious cakes to perfection. What supernatural transformation took place under the baobab?

Critique Kounandi is one of the few Burkinabé films written and directed by a woman: Apolline Traoré, who also directed Sous la clarté de la lune/Under the Moonlight (2004). Though it is set in a village of the mythic past and resembles a traditional folktale, Kounandi clearly comments on contemporary social issues, especially those related to women, disability and otherness. Traoré’s film clearly condemns violence against women, and deliberates the choices that women have in traditional Burkinabé society. The film opens with Moussa beating Miriam because she refuses to remain in her hut while he tends to the fields. At the tribe meeting that ensues, it is revealed that Moussa is an impotent alcoholic, and that Miriam is trapped in a loveless marriage. Later, a drunken Moussa shoots Miriam, when he learns of her interest in another man. He also kicks out his adopted daughter, Kounandi, leaving her to fend for herself. However, Traoré’s film makes it clear that men are not the sole perpetrators of violence against women. The women in the village are just as responsible for Miriam’s death and for Kounandi’s ostracism as is Moussa, the alcoholic. These women’s gossip and criticism poisons Moussa and Miriam’s relationship, and informs Moussa of Miriam’s infidelity. These women similarly show no mercy to Kounandi who is left abandoned. On the contrary, only another male, Karim, shows kindness towards Kounandi. At the end of the film, despite her own jealous love, Kounandi’s final actions demonstrate the type of mercy, sacrifice and unconditional love that the village women are lacking. Kounandi also offers important commentary on the role of disabled persons in Burkinabé society. It is a theme Traoré also explores in Under the Moonlight, which features a mute girl. In this case, a newborn is named ‘Kounandi’ by the village chief, which means ‘one who brings luck’. Ironically, Kounandi turns out to be a dwarf and in traditional Burkinabé culture, dwarves are viewed as bad luck. This Kounandi is, however, associated with powerful, transformative magic, as are disabled figures in other mythic stories, such as Sogolon or Sundiata in the Manding epic, Sundiata. More prosaically, as a disabled person, Kounandi would have no means of supporting herself, if she were not able to produce magically delicious cakes. The film also suggests that as a dwarf, Kounandi cannot expect to find a mate; only when transformed into a normative-looking female can she access requited love. Foreigners, or ‘others’, are similarly treated with suspicion in this cinematic folktale. Yet they also represent agents of transformative

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change, as is seen in the figure of Kounandi’s birthmother, who wanders into the village from a foreign place. At the end of the film, the viewers intuit that Kounandi/Awa will similarly eventually wander off to another distant village to give birth to a strange baby, so as to continue this supernatural cycle. A final thematic in this film is the role of magic, which is also viewed as a means of positive, if not redemptive, change. Its role in many ways resembles that of the camera: it functions to showcase social ills and remedy them, offering possibilities for transformation to disenfranchised members of Burkinabé society.

Madelaine Hron

Mystery Mountain Country of Origin:

Malawi Language:

English Studio:

Firstwave Pictures Director:

Villant Ndasowa Producer:

Villant Ndasowa Screenwriter:

Mwai Kasamale Cinematographer:

Yamie Lozi Art Director:

Peter Mazunda Editor:

Mwai Kasamale Duration:

30 minutes Genre:

Docu-drama Cast:

Melissa Eveleigh Kubwalo Mwabvi Hussein Gopole Jamews Penny

346 Reviews

Synopsis Mystery Mountain is a docu-drama about strange disappearances of people on Mount Mulanje, towering over 3,000 metres above sea level in Southern Africa, Malawi. Mulanje Mountain is one of the most remarkable tourist attractions in Malawi with a diversity of endemic plant and animal resources. This highest peak on the massif, Sapitwa, literally meaning no go area, has claimed many lives. The story follows Linda Pronk, a Dutch lab technician working at Mulanje Hospital who decides to ascend the peak alone at about 9 a.m. on 12 September 2003, after ignoring advice from friends and guides. She does not return. From the dawn of 14 September, guides and villagers search for her despite the foggy and windy weather. Her brother in the Netherlands is informed and a search team with professional sniffer dogs is flown in but there is no trace of Linda. In 1943 and 1992 Patrick Phewa and Kubwalo Mwabvi from the surrounding Mulanje communities, respectively disappeared mysteriously but were dumb upon return to their homes a few months later, making investigations on what transpires up the Sapitwa end in wild guesses.

Critique The docu-drama Mystery Mountain, released in 2007, is a breakthrough in the exposure of the secret tales about sacred places associated with taboo, witchcraft, sorcery and magic. The director, Villant Ndasowa, is a young Malawian woman, born and bred in Mulanje and determined to pave her professional path in cinema by challenging the shroud around the very mountain area in which she grew up. The parties involved in the search for the Dutch expatriate concentrate on two contrasting views to find a logical explanation to her disappearance. A psychiatric nurse, Immaculate Chamangwana, and a local villager, Fainess, are interviewed. The local Lomwe and Mang’anja natives explain the disappearance as supernatural. Linda (Melissa Eveleigh) has

Directory of World Cinema

Jaffali Mussa Felix Kalozwa Raphael Namondwe Year:

2007

trespassed into the realm of spirits. A sacrifice is offered: pouring libation while reciting incantations should appease the vexed ancestral spirits who, albeit seldom, might release the missing person. In Linda’s case, nothing can be done. The intrusion of the sacred grove by Dutch search dogs and a rumbling helicopter is sacrilege of the highest magnitude to the spirits’ eternal abode. The scholars’ scientific version suggests that Linda might have strayed to other parts of the mountain in the chronic bad weather where the cloud descends to obscure visibility for extended periods. A laboratory experiment displays that temperatures can indeed be very low. This same scholarly finding also justifies the presence of fresh food, contradicting the traditional belief that spirits leave the food there as a bait to catch trespassers. The docu-drama is a fair representation of the beliefs of the people around the mountain and that of people who share a different view. It impartially, and without offence, lays facts and opinions as suggested without taking sides but leaving the crucial decision to the audience. The songs and music played in the documentary complement the audience’s picture of what a spiritual realm looks like. The narrator’s voice commands attention as it changes tone, to create a concrete mood for the feature. The involvement of the viewers in the story by letting them interpret events for themselves makes it a believable adventure rather than a myth so that one day, if the need to climb the peak arises, people must first seek permission from the spirits or suffer a mysterious fate. That people disappear on the mountain is no longer a mystery. The mystery is what kind of fate awaits them. Although the documentary has succeeded in a number of ways, it also has shortfalls. The angle through which the plot unfolds limits the explanation of exact tales. For example, the story is told through Melissa Eveleigh who is not a Malawian. Her role as the protagonist in the docu-drama limits the scriptwriter and producer, Villant Ndasowa, from emphasizing the truth about the existence of the spirits. She ceases to be the Malawian who truly believes in the myths of the land but takes a neutral position. This leaves the audience in suspense. The arrangement of evidence is not chronological. The offering of food sacrifices to the spirits is presented in two resembling scenes. In addition, the dramatization of mountain spirits by young dancing actors diminishes the seriousness with which the spirit concept is conceived. The central idea of this docu-drama could be construed as superstition. This is evidenced by Villant’s use of more than one story to emphasize the local people’s beliefs and only one to portray the scientific view. The apparent trust in the scientific explanation undermines the notion that the sacrifices offered to the spirits give to the victims’ families the hope of seeing again any lost kin or member of the society.

Peter Mitunda

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My Shoes Sabbat El Aïd Country of Origin:

Tunisia Language:

Arabic Studios:

Rives Productions Director:

Anis Lassoued Producer:

Nejib Ayed Screenwriters:

Anis Lassoued Ahmed Bouamoud Cinematographer:

Sofiane El Feni Art Director:

Raouf Helioui Music:

Rabii Zamouri Editor:

Kahena Attia Duration:

30 minutes Genres:

Short fiction Drama Cast:

Nader Tlili Farhat Jedid Chema Ben Chaabene Arbi Khemiri Ali Tlili Year:

2012

348 Reviews

Synopsis Nader is a little boy who lives in the mountains of rural Tunisia with his parents, brother and sister. Nicknamed ‘Fallous’ (‘chick’), he loves running and does so at every opportunity. It is five days to Aïd, the day that celebrates the end of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, and as is tradition, new clothes and shoes are bought for children to be worn that day. Fallous and his siblings go to the local town with their father, where he hopes to buy them what they need from the market. However, enticed away from his family by a street peddler, Fallous comes to a shoe shop where a pair of trainers with wings has caught his attention. The inviting shopkeeper declares that it is his very last pair. His father’s modest means are not enough to pay for the shoes, but Fallous is determined to acquire them.

Critique Based in Nabeul, Tunisia, Anis Lassoued is a director whose filmography includes both documentaries and short fiction films. Saba Flouss/The Magic Crop (2006), his first fiction, tells the story of a 6-year-old who receives coins from a stranger who invites him to sow them, so that a money tree will grow. It delves into the magical world of children and the ease with which they are able to navigate both their imaginary realm and reality. Summer in Sidi Bouzekri/Un été à Sidi Bouzekri (2009) and Girl Boy (2011) followed, two television documentaries respectively examining the daily lives of a young boy during holidays on his family farm in Tunisia, and a Yemeni girl in Sanaa striving to become a teacher despite the obstacles she faces. My Shoes is a perceptive and tender portrayal of a child’s experience, revisiting the theme of their wonderful and inspiring ability to bring their dream and reality refreshingly convergent, in spite of the odds against them. Unlike all the children around him, the dreamy yet spirited Fallous (Nader Tlili) runs whenever he can. He is encouraged by his friend Bazdig (Arbi Khemiri), a street seller. Bazdig calls him ‘Champ’ and both of them perform a ritual race after school on the merchant’s three-wheeler. As they speed down the tracks, Bazdig gives a running commentary on an imaginary race with Morocco’s Aouita and El Gerrouj, as well as Tunisia’s Gammoudi, three Olympic running champions. As their ride accelerates on the downhill path, Bazdig’s ebullience is echoed by Fallous’s winning hysteria as he ‘beats’ the Olympic champions. Arriving at school one morning, the supervisor reprimands Fallous for his constant running, and Bazdig defends him from outside the gate. In his documentaries, Lassoued emphasizes the importance of the social, intellectual and emotional development of children, articulating the benefits of their selfawareness and self-confidence to themselves and to society. This stance is subtly renewed here, through the recognition of Fallous’s ability as a runner, and the encouragement of its betterment by the old man. Fallous’s obsession with the winged trainers has two consequences: it is all he thinks about during his waking and sleeping states,

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heightening his already fertile and vivid imagination; second, his frustration towards his father’s inability to buy them incites him to become despondent, then insolent towards him. One afternoon, whilst watching over his father’s sheep from a tree, he slips from daydreaming to sleep again. The winged horse from his drawings is flying through the tree and its branches and as it reaches for the clouds, it drops off the trainers. In a sweat again, Fallous awakens and immediately looks for them on all the branches. Realizing with horror that the sheep have gone, he searches for them. Failing to find them, he runs away. Hours later, his father (Farhat Jedid) finds him by the shoe shop, devastated at the fact that the shoes are no longer on display and thus have been sold. Buying new clothes for Aïd is an important occasion, and for those with limited means, that pair of shoes may be the only one received that year. Both his parents and Fallous are aware of this, which makes the boy’s quest all the more desperate. One of the most poignant moments is perhaps when the father and children are returning from the market. A close-up shows Fallous crying, and as the camera pans upwards, a close-up of his father shows him in the same state of despair. The pain of the child at not obtaining what he wishes for is echoed by the pain of the father, unable to provide it. Lassoued captures Fallous’s world and deftly presents motivations for his (changing) behaviour that are plausible and illuminating, and young actor Nader Tlili rises to the challenge. My Shoes won the Poulain d’Or for Best Short Film, whilst Nader Tlili (Fallous) was awarded the Best Young Talent Prize at the 2013 FESPACO. Celebrating the imagination and boundless joy of children, their force and sheer boldness in the face of adversity, My Shoes is a reminder that their ability to dream can sometimes permeate the world of adults, making possible what seemed unattainable. The shoes were indeed sold, but to Fallous’s father. As the film concludes, it is a proud and ecstatic little Fallous that sprints on the hills and flies off, lifted to the skies by his beautiful new winged trainers.

Rosa Abidi

When the Stars Meet the Sea Quand les étoiles rencontrent la mer Country of Origin:

Madagascar Languages:

Malagasy French

Synopsis When the Stars Meet the Sea is a colour film which opens with a Malagasy tradition, according to which a child born on the day of an eclipse is given a strength which might be dangerous for the community in which he or she lives. In the village of Ambohimanao, in the south of Madagascar, Kapila is born on the day of an eclipse, and, as tradition dictates, his father puts him in the zebu pen. However, a young woman sees this and saves Kapila. She takes him far away from the village and raises him as her own son. He is nevertheless scarred by his time in the pen; he has a limp, and his classmates make fun of him because of his disability. Once he is an adult, Kapila stays in the capital, Antananarivo, with his adoptive mother, who makes ‘lamba’ (pieces of fabric), while he collects Surreal 349

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Studio:

JLA Audiovisuel La Sept Cinema Director:

Raymond Rajaonarivelo Producer:

Jacques Le Glou Screenwriters:

Raymond Rajaonarivelo Santiago Amigorena Cinematographer:

Bruno Privat Music:

Manu Katche Editor:

Nathalie Hubert Duration:

80 minutes Genres:

Fiction Drama Cast:

Jean Rabenjamina Barbara Razanajao Joseph Ranizafilahy Aimée Razatindrataranoa Louis Vahandanitra Rondro Rasoanaivo Year:

1996

350 Reviews

empty bottles to resell at the market. One day, Kapila meets an old blind woman who tells him the truth about the day of his birth. He decides to return to his village to seek his vengeance.

Critique When the Stars Meet the Sea is Raymond Rajaonarivelo’s second feature film and the last Malagasy film made in 35 mm. It was selected for the International Film Festival in San Sebastian (Spain) in 1996 and the International Film Festival in Cairo (Egypt) the same year. Influenced by the poetic atmosphere of the films of Akira Kurosawa and Wong Kar Wai, Raymond Rajaonarivelo presents his interest in nature and childhood in his works of fiction. In that regard he is similar to other African film-makers such as Ousmane Sembène, Djibril Diop Mambéty or Idrissa Ouédraogo. Nevertheless, like many other African directors who have migrated to Europe, Raymond Rajaonarivelo sees his native country from the perspective of someone with mixed heritage. When the Stars Meet the Sea was written in collaboration with Santiago Amigorena, financed by French producers, and the music was composed by Manu Katche, a French musician originally from Côte d’Ivoire and Haiti. Although Rajaonarivelo has been living on the outskirts of Paris for many years, he returns to Madagascar for filming. This dual culture is reflected notably in his feature films. In When the Stars Meet the Sea, his vision of his native country is more modern than in Tabataba (1988), even though it deals with an ancestral tradition. Raymond Rajaonarivelo defends the idea that, in order to evolve and develop, a country must adapt and leave behind certain aspects of its culture, such as the cruel fate of babies born on the day of an eclipse. Through the character of Kapila (Jean Rabenjamina), this film evokes the journey of the Malagasy youth who is torn between tradition and modernity. Young people have moral responsibilities towards the whole community in order to maintain social cohesion, otherwise they would be marginalized. This is what happened to Kapila who, according to tradition, should have died in the zebu pen. Kapila’s journey is an initiatory one because he is looking for his own identity. His instability is underlined in the dialogues. In this film, French and Malagasy are used alternatively. Kapila can use either language, depending on the situation. He speaks French with his adoptive mother (Barbara Razanajao) but he speaks Malagasy when he returns to his village. The name of the character, Kapila, means ‘limp’ and symbolizes not only his handicap resulting from his captivity in the pen, but also his chaotic life without knowing his roots. In order to understand who he is and who he wants to become, Kapila has to leave his adoptive mother and go back to his father (Louis Vahandanitra). This is not a peaceful journey because he has to deal with his desire to find his father and take revenge, and his anger which may provoke storms and disaster. However, some characters guide him: the blind woman (Aimée Razatindrataranoa) who is a metaphor of his conscience and the film-maker himself who appears once in the

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middle of the film to point him in the right direction. Travelling is also alluded to through images of trains. The poetry of the title refers to the discussion between Kapila and his friend, the thief (Joseph Ranizafilahy). They share the dream of seeing the sea and wonder what will happen if they do. However, the thief dies before they go. Kapila is so angry that, as though proving his alleged supernatural powers, he seems to provoke a storm that kills his friend’s murderers. Then, Kapila undertakes his journey alone, not to the ocean but to his native village, to confront the mystery surrounding his birth.

Karine Blanchon

Sia, the Dream of the Python Sia, le rêve du python Countries of Origin:

France Burkina Faso Language:

Bambara Studios:

DCA Studio Capitale Studio des 3 Arts Neyrac Les Productions de la Lanterne Sahélis Productions

Synopsis In agreement with Emperor Kaya Maghan (Kardigué Laïco Traoré), whose power is on the wane, the priests decide to offer the most beautiful girl in the community to the Python-God in order to save the population from destitution. Chosen by the priests, Sia (Fatoumata Diawara) refuses her fate of victim and finds refuge with the fool who vows to protect her until her fiancé, a lieutenant serving in the army, returns from war. The beautiful betrothed is taken prisoner by the Emperor’s soldiers and Kerfa, the fool (Hamadoun Kassogué), is killed by order of the commander-in-chief who thus hopes to rouse the people against Maya Maghan’s reign of terror. When Sia’s fiancé, Mamadi (Ibrahim Baba Cissé), arrives in the wood where the sacrifice takes place, he finds that Sia has been raped by the priests. Tempted by the promise of power made to him by the commander-in-chief, his uncle, Mamadi accepts to keep to himself the truth about the hoax of the Python-God. With the help of the griot, Balla (Habib Dembélé), the Emperor is demoted and replaced by the valiant fiancé. Sia, however, refuses her new fate as empress, which stems from tricks and lies.

Director:

Dani Kouyaté

Critique

Producers:

With its variations on time and repetitions, mystery and power, Sia, the Dream of the Python, is based on the legend of the Wagadu that comes from a seventh-century Soninke myth. This second film, directed by Dani Kouyaté from Burkina Faso, is adapted from La légende du Wagadu vue par Sia Yatabéré/ The Legend of Wagadu, According to Sia Yatabéré (1994), a play in three acts by Moussa Diagana from Mauritania. In the opening shot, a man whose face is hidden under the hood of a black cassock, places a straw crown at the feet of each of his companions assembled in the woods at sunset. The seven priests place their crown on a tree branch, sealing a unanimous vote. Simultaneously, a voice-over, probably that of the local griot, gives the narrative a timeless aura by inscribing it in the realm of legend and myth:

Claude Gilaizeau Elizabeth Lopez Sylvie Maigne Sékou Traoré Screenwriter:

Dani Kouyaté, adapted from a play by Moussa Diagana Cinematographer:

Robert Millié Art Director:

Papa Kouyaté

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Music:

Daniel Rousseau Fantani Touré Editor:

Zoé Durouchoux Duration:

96 minutes Genre:

Drama Cast:

Fatoumata Diawara Sotigui Kouyaté Habib Dembélé Hamadoun Kassogué Ibrahim Baba Cissé Kardigué Laïco Traoré Year:

2001

352 Reviews

The legend tells us that at one time, the empire offered its most beautiful girls to the Python-God in return for prosperity. But where does our story unfold today? In what era? Jean Cocteau said: ‘Legends have the privilege of being ageless. So, it is as you please.’ A few years earlier, the daughter of the commander-in-chief Wakhané (Sotigui Kouyaté), had been sacrificed to the Python-God. It is now Sia’s turn to satisfy the Emperor’s will and authority. Fearing that neglecting the ancestors’ customs might make him lose his status, the emperor endorses the request that the oracle dictates in the name of tradition. Whereas Sia’s father submits to the emperor’s command, others reject it, such as the fool who hides Sia after her escape, the hairdresser who is accused of calling subversive meetings, and Penda who volunteers for the supreme sacrifice to let Sia marry her warrior fiancé. Kerfa’s prophetic speech also contributes to the narrative’s development by using the past tense to recount the events that are about to happen, as though they have already happened and as they will be narrated to the children of the country. The resolution of the prophecy prompts Sia’s courage as Kerfa continues: ‘Her fiancé hastened to save Sia, but she refused to flee. In the name of all sacrificed girls, she preferred death.’ Other devices reinforce the narrative tension, for example, the repeated warnings by the Empress, the griot’s comings and goings between the two camps, the progressive revelation of the commander-in-chief’s plans, as well as the succession of unexpected concluding events. The director resorts to the sort of time warps already used in his first movie, Keita!, l’héritage du griot/ Keita! Voice of the Griot (1994). In Sia, the Dream of the Python, the suspense is more compelling because not only is the story about a girl who is to be handed over to a monster but a universal and mythic dimension is also manifest right from the start. Finally, as predicted by the fool, Sia is recaptured by the soldiers. Made up and dressed in white like a young bride, she is delivered to the priests who will take her to the Python-God. While Sia serenely walks to her fate, a political spiral of treason and self-preservation leads to a pact between Wakhané, the commander-in-chief, and his nephew Mamadi who plan to fight the python and halt the terror. The trickery of the priests’ lusting for a young virgin is unmasked when, as he enters the lair of the python, instead of a monster, Sia’s fiancé only finds the previous victims’ skeletons. Found alive near the priests’ hideout, the girl regrets the death she would have preferred to the shame of rape. The mythic narrative of the betrothed who will rescue his beloved from the monster suddenly morphs into a political fable. Rather than denouncing the trickery, the young man accepts the title of hero and embraces the ensuing lie. By usurping his predecessor’s power and killing the commander-in-chief, who, apart from Sia, is the last witness of the priests’ lie that has led him to glory, Mamadi, the new emperor, perpetuates the frequent historical development that director Kouyaté wants to expose:

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I study closely the reasons for the internecine quarrels that trigger bloodshed in Africa and I look for their causes without stopping at slavery or colonisation. I go much further by scrutinizing our foundation myths. These myths, often pervaded by some insidious totalitarianism, have their share of responsibility. (Kouyaté 2004) The techniques of film adaptation from a play are occasionally noticeable, in particular in the scenes set in the throne hall, in which the curtains and upholstered walls emphasize the enclosed atmosphere while the lighting artificially juxtaposes brightness and shadow. Nevertheless, the acting and the gradual unfolding of the myth hold viewers spellbound to the last shot, in which Sia, a victim of madness, transcends history and space by making her way in the traffic in Ouagadougou. Donning Kerfa’s cape and singing his refrain – ‘Misery, misery! He who sows misery reaps but penury!’ – Sia testifies to the fool’s everlasting words of truth for they are words spoken by a non-conformist. Indeed, as Kouyaté (2002) comments in his interviews about his film, madness is a form of nonconformity that helps combat ancestral corruption. Like the fool at the beginning of the movie, she urges the people of Koumbi to wake up and react against the perpetuation of lies, abuses and tall tales. Inspired by a universal legend, Kouyaté finishes his film in the same way as he started it, by introducing a new cycle heralded by a character who, possessed with truth, stands between dream and reality and wanders freely through time. (This review was translated from French by Blandine Stefanson.)

Marie-Magdeleine Chirol

And They Said… the Devil is a Woman Le Démon au féminin Country of Origin:

Algeria Language:

Arabic Studio:

Radiodiffusion Télévision Algérienne (RTA) Entreprise Nationale de

Synopsis Salima and Ali are a non-practising Muslim couple living in a large house with their son Habib, and their two young daughters. Salima (Djamila Haddadi) is an emancipated schoolteacher, who walks unveiled in the public space, her hair dyed blonde. Ali (Ahmed Benaïssa) is an irascible though rational project manager for the construction of housing projects. Having suffered from mental health problems as a teenager, Ali again faces ill health. His unstable mental state brought about by recurrent hallucinations and frightening dreams of a woman wishing him ill and attacking him, plunges him into despair. He becomes convinced that his wife is possessed by a demon and has put a spell on him. Unemployed, Habib spends the majority of his time at the newly built local mosque, not only performing his five daily prayers, but also attending classes on Islam and taking part in social activities. Rejecting the medical attention Salima encourages, Ali accepts their son Habib’s invitation to the mosque, where they hope Ali will find solace and serenity. Both adhering to religiosity for Surreal 353

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Director:

different motives, father and son are easily persuaded by their mosque’s preachers to conduct an exorcism on Salima, with tragic consequences.

Hafsa Zinaï-Koudil (sometimes listed as Hafsa Koudil Zinai)

Critique

Production Audiovisuelle (ENPA) (Algeria)

Screenwriter:

Hafsa Zinaï-Koudil Cinematographer:

Ahmed Messad Art Director:

Kamar-Eddine Krim Music:

Safy Boutella Editor: Duration:

85 minutes Genre:

Drama Cast:

Ahmed Benaïssa Djamila Haddadi Said Amrane Year:

1993

354 Reviews

Shot on Super 16 mm film and completed in 1993 by novelist Hafsa Zinaï-Koudil, And They Said … the Devil is a Woman is inspired by real life events. It is the first Algerian fiction film directed by a woman, and the first to address the effects of Muslim extremism on Algerian society before Merzak Allouache’s Bab El Oued City in 1994. Giving a public voice to the hitherto silent and silenced through active participation by women in the development of Algerian society, Zinaï-Koudil’s narrative-feature introduces the conceptualization of women’s plight from a woman’s perspective. In particular, it recounts the shocking implosion and disintegration of a well-educated middle-class family, denouncing the appropriation of Islam as a tool to perpetuate gender inequality and oppression. When Ali demands that Salima wear the hijab, she refuses, and visits her mother in the hope to gain her support. Her mother – herself wearing a headscarf – is of the view that Salima’s choices should be subsumed to her husband’s will. By contrast, her elderly neighbours provide a refreshingly lucid assessment of the situation, expressed when Salima asks Uncle Mourad for help and support. Their exchange is a succinct yet powerful counterpoint to the preachers’ as well as Ali and Habib’s position. Uncle Mourad remarks that the preachers divert religion from its true message, deploring the fact that [women] ‘are always given responsibility for all ills’. During the sequestration which will leave her wheelchairbound, it is him and his wife who come to Salima’s rescue on hearing her agonizing screams whilst Ali and Habib stand inactive. Uncle Mourad’s progressive viewpoint as a Muslim scholar presents us with an engaging alternative to that of the preachers. His is an attitude of understanding, moderation and mediation. Ali’s character development is punctuated with images and concepts reflecting his fragility, such as the scene during which he puts a live cockroach into a transparent model of a labyrinth, covering it with a black cloth. In an earlier scene, he is praying at home and as he stands up at the end of the prayer, his rug is enclosed in glass walls, confining him within. Uncovering the black cloth several scenes later, Ali finds the cockroach dead. This type of mise en abyme can be interpreted as a function of characterization, reflecting the protagonist’s disposition and circumstances, and on two levels. First, it could point to Ali’s own restrictive choices in life, including his refusal to seek medical help; second, it could also illustrate Ali’s prospect of a dead-end awaiting him. This is further intimated through his being trapped on the prayer rug: his embracement of religion will not lead to release and peace. These interpretations are reinforced by the fact that ultimately, Ali’s condition and despair will lead to his suicide. At no point do the religious leaders or Ali himself, envisage the possibility that the cause of Ali’s illness emanates from his own psyche; that it is a part of himself, perhaps a characteristically

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feminine part as manifested by the recurrent apparition of the ghoula, which he is unable to recognize and honour. Indeed, the physical attributes of the woman who haunts him, are reminiscent of the common character of the ghoula (feminine for ghoul), the witch or ogress who devours people in the Algerian folktales. Ali’s endorsement of the preachers’ viewpoint is thus an expression of his inability to find an egress from the fear and panic caused by his volatile mental health. Zinaï-Koudil makes an explicit teleological link between what the preachers advocate in their sermons, and the increasingly antagonistic stance taken by Ali towards his wife. Through a distortion of reality, the statement made in one of the sermons, that ‘woman is an easy prey to the Devil’, becomes actualized. However, Ali’s psychological imbalance on the one hand, and Habib’s economic vulnerability and moral disorientation on the other, could equally be construed as their being an easy prey to the proselytizing of the preachers. Using the locus of a family unit for the depiction of contrasting attitudes, and using techniques that impart metaphorical and symbolic meaning, Zinaï-Koudil bravely exposes the dangers of blindly following religious preachers and questionable practices in the rise of religious extremism. However, this point is somewhat undermined by the choice of an inherently vulnerable character with unsound mental health and faculties. Nonetheless, by proposing the reasons and incentives of some of their supporters, And They Said … the Devil is a Woman provides valuable material relating to Algerian religious movements, including women’s resistance against some of their precepts, contributing to a better understanding of the social context of their rise and popularity.

Rosa Abidi

The Bloodettes Les Saignantes Country of Origin:

Cameroon Language:

French Studio:

Quartier Mozart Films Director:

Jean-Pierre Bekolo Obama Producers:

Jean-Pierre Bekolo Obama Andre Bennett Lisa Crosato

Synopsis The Bloodettes is an experimental hybrid mixture of science-fictionhorror, erotica and action, as well as a satire on the state of politics in Africa. The movie, set in Cameroon circa 2025, is a dramatic and idiosyncratic reading of the internal mechanisms of predatory patriarchy in Cameroon, bringing out its poisonous cocktail of money, corruption, sex and prostitution all mixed together with the grotesque and the macabre. Amidst this medley, two irresistible and mischievous young girls forced into prostitution, Majolie and Chouchou, rebel and turn into feminist avengers determined to blow up the place in order to save it. Within that context, the movie brings out universal questions about the relationship between money, the body, power, desire and alienation.

Critique The movie opens with Majolie (Adele Ado) in a trapeze sling, entertaining ‘SGCC’, a powerful boss in the Cameroonian

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Jim Fink Michelle Gue Pascal Obolo Adrienne Silvey Screenwriter:

Jean-Pierre Bekolo Obama Cinematographer:

Robert Humphreys Music:

Joelle Esso Adam Zanders Editor:

Jean-Pierre Bekolo Obama Duration:

92 minutes Genres:

Science fiction Political protest Cast:

Dorylia Calmel Adele Ado Balthazar Amandangoleda Year:

2005

356 Reviews

government (played by Balthazar Amandangoleda) with gravitydefying dances in order for her to win his favour and land a big government contract. Bekolo claims that the movie was inspired by personal experience. He was forced to rely on similar young prostitutes with special links to high-ranking bureaucrats to help him on a movie project. He then discovered a gigantic network of prostitutes selling themselves to powerful politicians in order to curry favour, which led him to reflect on teenage prostitution and the future of the country. In the same vein, his next film might be on male prostitution since the Cameroonian press just released a list of powerful homosexual politicians in the country who use their power to have sex with young boys. In The Bloodettes, after a lengthy montage sequence of jumpcuts, erotic dance and surreal sex, the boss dies of a heart attack because his weak heart, when put to the test, could not survive Majolie’s gyrating, potent, virile hips. The rest of the film involves Majolie and Chouchou (Dorylia Calmel) attempting to deal with this crisis, the first question of which is how to dispose of the body and hide the incident. For this, Majolie contacts Chouchou, a fellow Saignante or Bloodette, for help. The movie spins in mystifying turns as the women go underground to claim the power of a matriarchal secret society called Mevungu, a powerful women’s secret society built around the ‘Evu cult’, a life-force entity located in women’s bellies, which, when activated, gives women the magical power to create life as well as to end it. Thus, in the Mevungu, women are real goddesses, symbols of fertility but also agents of destruction. This is to show that good and evil for the Mevungu women are not necessarily oppositional entities. They embody both types of energy, which suggests that social responsibility ultimately rests on women’s power. Thus, according to Bekolo, the real problem for men in power in Cameroon is how to relegate these women to the realm of invisibility. Now they are coming back to collect their dues and to enshrine the knowledge that the primordial human energy is female. Thus, Bekolo is after the carnal knowledge that if politics is the province of powerful men, women are not simply idle bystanders to their own oppression. Instead, Cameroonian women take charge by harnessing these anarchic male desires into an agenda of political transgressions and consciousness of exploitation, which ultimately lead to empowerment and gender equality in the film. Within that context, it is important to know that the movie’s local premiere, initially scheduled for 1 January 2006, was cancelled and faced a ban from the Cameroonian regime which objected to the film’s sexual depictions. The real motivation was not the sex scenes but the politics of the film involving raising powerful questions with Godardian-like titles such as ‘How can one make an anticipation movie in a country that has no future?’ or ‘How can one make a movie about love when love is impossible?’ Bekolo indicated to me that the movie was about to receive an NC-17 rating by the Cameroon Film Commission because it has been classified as pornographic, even though he argued that the ‘pornographic’ aspect of the movie is the day-to-day experience of young Cameroonian women who are forced

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to prostitute themselves to get what they want. Thus, facing worldwide pressure and driven by Bekolo’s campaign to have his film released, the government withdrew the threat and allowed the movie to be screened in the country uncut and uncensored, backing up the point that Cameroonian film-makers are opening up zones of permissiveness, free speech and artistic creativity that even dictatorships like Cameroon cannot close down. Within that process, Bekolo gives the public a demonstration of how cinematic rhetoric is leaping from the screen to actual physical protest against the state in order to promote the values of speech and artistic freedom. This is a great victory for the Bloodettes, which means the ones who will bleed the corrupt patriarchal regime to death. (Conversation with Bekolo in Austin, Texas, 24–25 February 2006.)

Jean Olivier Tchouaffé

District 9 Countries:

USA New Zealand South Africa Languages:

English Afrikaans Nyanja Studio:

Sony Pictures Director:

Neill Blomkamp Producers:

Peter Jackson Coralynne Cunningham Screenwriters:

Neill Blomkamp Terri Tatchell Cinematographer:

Trent Opaloch Art Director:

Emilia Roux Music:

Clinton Shorter Editor:

Synopsis An alien ship breaks down in the sky above Johannesburg, South Africa. The aliens, seemingly low-level workers, disembark and settle in District 9, in the township of Soweto. The existing human residents and the aliens compete for scarce resources. Nigerian smugglers take advantage of the situation and exploit humans and aliens alike. A trade in alien weaponry develops, but the weapons can only be activated by alien DNA, and therefore cannot be operated by humans. The Nigerian crime boss consults a witch doctor and is told that eating alien flesh will allow him to gain alien power. As conflict in District 9 escalates, ‘Multinational United’ (MNU) – presumably a comment on the current trend of privatization of law enforcement and military action – is tasked with evicting the aliens (or ‘prawns’ as they are scathingly referred to by those who do not approve of their presence) from District 9 and move them to a refugee camp, District 10. Wikus van de Merwe (Sharlto Copley) is unexpectedly chosen to lead the mission into District 9. He clearly discriminates against aliens, yet is committed to a peaceful eviction. Even before they leave their base it is clear that military-trained Koobus (David James) has little patience for the pencil-pushing, boss’s son-in-law Wikus. On the first day of the evictions, Wikus is exposed to an alien fluid that mysteriously starts changing his DNA. Once MNU discover this, they quickly realize that he could be the key to human use of alien technology. After being subjected to medical experiments, Wikus, who seems to grow stronger as he transforms into an alien, escapes and finds refuge in District 9. Here he meets the leader of the aliens, incongruously named Christopher Johnson. Together they attack MNU headquarters.

Julian Clarke

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Duration:

112 minutes Genres:

Sci-fi Thriller Action Drama Cast:

Sharlto Copley David James Year:

2009

358 Reviews

Critique District 9 is much more than a science fiction action thriller. It is also an intricately crafted mockumentary (fiction film that makes use of documentary film devices) that hides social commentary under a veil of fast-paced, high velocity sci-fi action with faultless visual effects. And, in its ability to compete internationally both in terms of quality and popularity, it is a first for South African film. Recent local successes include Mr Bones (Gray Hofmeyr, 2001), which was a top earner at the South African box office but had limited international appeal and the critically acclaimed Tsotsi (Gavin Hood, 2005) that hardly made its budget back despite winning a Best Foreign Language Film Oscar in 2006. District 9, on the other hand, easily outperformed American-produced action films like GI Joe: The Rise of the Cobra (Stephen Sommers, 2009) at the box office, making its $30 million budget (and more) back in its opening weekend in the United States. When the Academy Award nominations were announced in February 2010 District 9 appeared on the list four times, nominated for Best Picture, Best Visual Effects, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Film Editing. Much of District 9’s popularity is due to the unexpected, and often comical, placement of the American big-budget action film convention – an alien spaceship – within the African context. In Hollywood science fiction films, spaceships land in New York or Los Angeles from where aliens of superior intelligence try to take over the world. In District 9, the ship runs out of fuel over Johannesburg and the aliens who emerge are drones that scavenge for their survival. Apart from the original concept, the film also benefits from high production values. The computer-generated spaceship hovers convincingly above the smoggy city and aliens integrate seamlessly into the gritty township (shanty town) they inhabit. A combination of different digital formats was used to capture the action, multiple cameras rolling simultaneously for many of the scenes. The different formats work together successfully in large part because the use of documentary conventions lends both humour and authenticity to the on-screen action. As in a compilation documentary film there are cuts from news footage to sit-down interviews to cinemavérité style coverage. Instead of being overwhelming, the variety is stimulating. The film is postmodern not only in its combination of different modes of production, but also in its intertextual references to other science fiction films. Wikus’s metamorphosis is eerily reminiscent of David Cronenberg’s The Fly (USA, 1986), and the protective alien exoskeleton he dons to face his arch-nemesis Koobus looks very much like something from Michael Bay’s Transformers (USA, 2007). South African born director Neill Blomkamp grew up in Canada and the biggest name attached to the film is Lord of the Rings (2001) director Peter Jackson, who took on the role of producer for District 9. What you see on-screen, however, is 100 per cent South African, from the urban chaos of the titular settlement to the Afrikaans profanity and bigotry that flow from main character Wikus van de Merwe’s moustachioed mouth. ‘Get your fokkin’ tentacle out

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of my face!’ has become part of popular South African parlance. Though District 9 starts in a humorous vein, hamming up South African English accents and cultural stereotypes, it soon takes a serious turn as sociopolitical questions are raised. The film originated from a short, Alive in Joburg, that Blomkamp made in 2005, and even from this early work’s overtly anti-xenophobia message, it is clear that the film-maker is interested not only in entertainment but also in social commentary. The District 9 settlement seems very typical of the worst parts of a South African township – rife with crime and violence. To South African viewers the Multinational United (MNU) evictions of non-humans are all too reminiscent of the forced removals that so called ‘non-whites’ were subjected to by the apartheid government from the 1950s onwards. And international audiences are bound to associate them with contemporary removals around the world of refugees to tented camps. The use of ‘prawns’ to refer to the aliens immediately invokes terms used by racists of all nationalities. And the fear of non-humans taking over human settlements, women and jobs seems uncomfortably familiar to a society that saw its own people burning refugees alive during xenophobic attacks a mere year before the release of District 9. The biggest criticism of the film has been the depiction of Africans in general and Nigerians in particular. They are shown almost exclusively as gangsters, prostitutes or cannibals. The characterization of the main antagonists – as is typical of many Hollywood action films – is exaggerated and superficial. Many viewers find these depictions disturbing, even shocking and offensive. Nigerian information minister, Dora Akunyili, was so outraged at the negative stereotyping that she responded by instructing her capital’s theatres to cease public screenings (GaneMcCalla 2009). To most African viewers it is clear that the actors are not Nigerian, but – like the languages they use in the film – are from various South African and other African groups. Even their witch doctor seems to be a Zulu sangoma (herbal healer and counsellor). They are called ‘Nigerian’ by other characters in the film, but never identify themselves as such. These gangsters are so unrealistic one wonders whether this choice was made purposely to comment on xenophobic responses of South Africans to emigrants from other African countries. These ‘Nigerians’ are arguably more a caricature of South Africans’ fear and stereotyping of their neighbours than an attempt at creating real characters. If this is the case, the flaw of the film might be that it is not clear enough that the very nature of the representation is in fact a social comment.

Liani Maasdorp

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Pumzi Countries of Origin:

Kenya South Africa Language:

English Studio:

Inspired Minority Pictures Director:

Wanuri Kahiu Producers:

Simon Hansen Hannah Slezacek Co-Producer:

Amira Quinlan Executive Producer:

Steven Markovitz Screenwriter:

Wanuri Kahiu Cinematographer:

Grant Appleton Art Director:

Jim Raubenheimer Composer:

Siddhartha Barnhoom Sound:

Reza Williams Editor:

Dean Leslie Visual Effects:

Simon Hansen Duration:

21 minutes Genres:

Science fiction Short Video-format Cast:

Kudzani Moswela Chantelle Burger Nicole Bailey Year:

2009

360 Reviews

Synopsis Pumzi is a dystopian fiction set some 35 years after a global war over water supplies has rendered the earth’s surface uninhabitable. Somewhere in Africa, survivors live underground in a totalitarian state where dreams are considered illegal and controlled by mandatory drugs, and water is so precious that any liquid waste, including urine and perspiration, is recycled for drinking. One morning, Asha, a curator at the ‘Virtual Natural History Museum’, awakens after a night of strange dreams about a large tree growing in a desert – dreams that are apparently not blocked by her medication. At work, she opens a package of soil that arrived with no accompanying documentation, only the geographical coordinates of the source written on its side. She tests the soil, discovering that it has a high water content and is not radioactive – an impossibility, she knows. She sniffs it and falls into a dream of swimming in water. When she regains consciousness, she plants a seed in the soil, and it immediately germinates. Asha asks the Maitu Council, which controls the complex, for permission to go outside to search for the source of the soil. Instead, they use an electronic scan to find evidence of her dreams, and security officers are sent to arrest her. Asha hides the seedling just before she is taken away, but she leaves an antique compass behind. A janitor, whom Asha had treated kindly earlier that morning, brings her the compass, and Asha escapes to the surface. She walks through the desert until she reaches the source of the soil, where she finds a dead forest. With her last remaining strength, she plants the seed, waters it, and shelters it with her body. It grows into a large, healthy tree after her apparent death.

Critique Made on a tiny budget of $35,000 (funding was provided by the Goethe Institut, the Changamoto Arts Fund and Focus Features’ Africa First short-film program), Pumzi is director Wanuri Kahiu’s second film. This short science fiction film premiered at the 2009 Kenya International Film Festival before screening at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival, where it received positive reviews. Pumzi went on to win Best Short at the Cannes Independent Film Festival, the Special Jury Prize at the Zanzibar International Film Festival, and the Silver Prize for Best Short at the Carthage Film Festival in Tunisia, garnering attention for its director, who hopes to turn it into a feature film. Pumzi (the film’s title is a Kiswahili word for ‘breath’) has been described as the first Kenyan science fiction film; by coincidence, it appeared the same year as the South African feature District 9 (Neill Blomkamp). A visually striking film which recalls science fiction classics like Logan’s Run (Michael Anderson, 1976) or THX 1138 (George Lucas, 1971), Pumzi’s generic affiliations are perhaps a surprise for audiences expecting something more stereotypically ‘African’. In fact, at the Kenya International Film Festival, Kahiu was criticized for making a film that wasn’t explicitly ‘Kenyan’. However,

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Kahiu rejects such criticism. Noting that the film was partly shot on location in what is now Southern Sudan and that its star, Kudzani Moswela, is from Botswana, Kahiu describes Pumzi as a ‘panAfrican’ film, and suggests that making a film about characters living in the future inevitably leads to working within the conventions of science fiction. Along with its visual style and its generic novelty, Pumzi is noteworthy for Moswela’s restrained performance; its themes of repression and control, juxtaposed against the strange chaos of dreams; the epic sweep of the desert scenes; and its lack of narrative closure. The silence of the characters, who only speak through their computers, is also interesting; Kahiu’s future is one where electronic communication has taken the place of speech. The contrast between the dead earth – at one point we see a newspaper clipping announcing the death of the planet’s last tree – and the living plant is particularly striking; ironically, this new life leads to Asha (Kudzani Moswela)’s arrest and, possibly, her death. The scene where Asha escapes from the complex is also ironic, but in a different way: despite the ecological disaster, the complex still dumps its garbage outside, and the hatch through which Asha escapes is surrounded by bags of refuse. Humanity, it seems, never learns.

Ken Wilson

Surreal 361

(Home) Video films from Nigeria and Ghana

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Soul Diaspora (Odera Osoka, USA/Nigeria, 2009)

Often known as ‘Nollywood’, the cinema production in Nigeria began to find its place on the world stage as early as 1992 with Chris Obi Rapu’s Living in Bondage 1, although video technology had certainly been used earlier. As the largest producer of ‘African’ cinema, ‘Nollywood’ is often held up as the banner for studying traditions of this art form in the continent. However, as much as the catch-all phrase ‘African cinema’ is used, the films within that category should also be considered in a more specific context. Although they do, to some extent, demonstrate an ‘African’ sensibility of common colonialist history, the works that are created in the distinct regions and countries that make up Africa are also influenced by regional and historical marks that cannot be unilaterally applied to the entire continent. However, it is also problematic to isolate these films as purely Nigerian, since they draw from western traditions of film-making, as well as the ways in which film-makers from other African countries have worked. The films produced out of many countries in Africa are hybrid works – postmodern compilations of regional, national, continental and global histories and practices. Interestingly, like Nigeria, film-makers from other countries in Africa have also turned to the digital video model for a variety of reasons. For example, Ghana is often cited as the forerunner to Nollywood with the productions foregrounding similar topics, such as the pitfalls of get-rich-quick schemes (A Sting in a Tale, Shirley Frimpong-Manso, 2009), excessive ambition (My Mother’s Heart 1&2, Ifeanyi Onyeabor, 2005). In Burkina Faso, former journalist Boubakar Diallo has embraced digital technology to explore genre video style Code Phenix/Phenix Code [2005] and /L’or des Younga/Younga’s Gold [2006]) and in Egypt, Yousry Nasrallah uses the technology to explore new aesthetics or production models (Tamantashar Yom/Eighteen Days [2011]; Baad el Mawkeaa/After the Battle [2012]). This transnational approach, however, does not serve to homogenize the content. Rather, transnationalism has simply made it easier to produce and distribute local stories which have historically been overwhelmed by western ones. As is evidenced in Ben Addelman and Samir Mallal’s documentary, Nollywood Babylon (2008), by using the easily accessible tools and techniques provided by western cinema, Nigerian artists are able to make space for their own narratives, told in ways which engage their communities in popular entertainment. These films offer the chance for Nigerians to see Nigerian stories and to contemplate their identities within

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a larger world of historical colonialism, current globalism as well as issues of migration, (dis)placement, diaspora and community. Generally manifesting as narrative dramas, these films draw from the cinematographic styles, dramatic and comedic beats, visual and sound editing and set design that are found in high-end American film and television productions. In early iterations of Nigerian home-made video-films, one can see stylistic cinematographic and acting choices drawn straight out of 1980s soap operas. Within the film Living in Bondage 1, opening glamour shots act as character introductions and melodramatic confrontations between actors echo the soap opera format. In more contemporary works like Kunle Afolayan’s Araromire/ The Figurine (2009), colour-timing and other cinematographic choices decidedly reference modern Hollywood feature films with their saturated colours and slick visuals. Over the last two decades, one can see a definite interest in applying the production value of western productions to these narratives, however, this drive also comes hand in hand with a confidence in Nigerian stories, and a push towards including contemporary issues like loss of language and culture, corruption, politics, public health and safety, as well as morality. Beyond the influence of Hollywood, these films also demonstrate a connection to Nigerian theatrical traditions. The tradition of Yoruba travelling theatre existed long before cinema, and much as western theatrical traditions influenced western cinema, we can see the same effect in Nigeria. Travelling theatre traditions worldwide have always stemmed from a public need to participate in dialogue, using satire as political subversion and a distraction from the hardships of daily life. More than any other theatrical form, it is populist, drawing from issues that affect the common people, and boasting a low production value in order to reduce costs and maintain mobility. It is a type of theatre that can often go where more formal practices (which might require a full theatre, sound system and high-paid cast and crew) cannot. It can be set up on someone’s patio, a church or a field and go from village to village quickly and easily. One of the benefits of this type of mobility, both within theatrical and cinematic traditions, is that it creates a vehicle for important local discussions. Medieval theatre in Europe often spread the gospel, with later iterations becoming secularized to incorporate issues around politics, disease and other informative topics in their presentations to uneducated, usually illiterate audiences. In Nigerian cinema, one might pinpoint these same issues, with many of the films stimulating discussion around HIV/AIDS, the health effects of smoking, the morality of corruption and lustfulness, as well as polygamy. As a popular and easily distributable vehicle for morality and other community messages, many of the films blatantly deal with these topics. Polygamy is regularly demonstrated in situations where the husband is corrupt, cheating and misogynistic, and the wives live in turmoil with one another. Women’s issues are brought to light by illustrating acts of subservience and sacrifice, as well as the ways in which they engage with one another as a battle over men. Although one could read it as a negative depiction of women in constant, shallow struggles over men, there are also signs of friction and social change. One of the early scenes of Living in Bondage 1 depicts the multiple wives of Chief Omego in a vicious catfight. They all want their fair turn with him, but he has recently wed a lovely new bride and spends all his time with her. Feeling displaced, they turn on one another until finally the first wife steps in to mediate. Speaking to the Chief and the other wives she notes that ‘it’s only after you’ve wrecked your home yourself that you remember me, as a peace-maker. I’ve now become a rag to be used by whomever it pleases’. The same wife also takes ownership of her own sexuality, saying that she and the other wives enjoy sex as well. These statements

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announce a self-awareness of their unfair situation, and of how they are not only used and oppressed by their men, but also by one another as a community of women by maintaining the status-quo. It suggests a possibility for action and change. In addition to interpersonal issues, many Nigerian films also deal with health and wellness issues. Films like Izu Ojukwu’s Nnenda (2009) and Tunde Kelani’s Arugba (2010) follow female characters as they operate like one-womanNGOs, rescuing sick babies, starting orphanages, lecturing on smoking and helping friends deal with HIV, all while also maintaining identities of independent, creative, well-educated, modern women. Although the films sometimes cross the line between entertainment and preaching, it is clear that the works are often intended to operate beyond pure pleasure. Some of the more subtle examples of this pleasurably wind morality into narrative. This is certainly the case in the video-films of Tunde Kelani, perhaps the most well-known of Nollywood video-film-makers. Kelani’s The Narrow Path (2006) foregrounds women’s control over their bodies and sexuality within traditional society. Another work that seamlessly blends morality and entertainment – one of the strongest examples of recent Nigerian cinema – is the film The Figurine, directed by Kunle Afolayan. The film begins with a voice-over narration of an old folktale about the Goddess Araromire, who brings seven years of abundance, then seven years of disaster to her worshippers. It then picks up with a modern-day love triangle which proceeds to play out the story. The work has high production value and excellent storytelling, and it aims to combine the universal themes of love, betrayal and tragedy with local culture and issues in a way that is Shakespearean. The film draws on the friction between modern and traditional engaging issues of cultural stories and history, and how modern youth relate to them. It highlights the conflict of superstition as related to education, and also shows how easily people are drawn back into old beliefs no matter how educated they think they are. Finally, it leaves the line between truth, mythology and fiction blurred, raising questions without answers. In addition to highlighting shifting cultural traditions, the film also pays attention to shifting language conventions. Much of the film is in English (as are many of the other ‘Nollywood’ productions). This film, like others, directly addresses the loss of language by depicting children trying to learn Yoruba, Igbo or other languages, as well as the role that their parents and elders must take in teaching these languages to them. This displacement between tradition and global identity is key to many of the more recent films that deal with the Nigerian diaspora. As more first- and second-generation immigrants end up in places like Canada, the United States and Europe, those artists are also making films about their experiences. However, with their identity no longer solely rooted in their homeland, these films tend to describe this displacement rather than attempt to capture an exclusively Nigerian story. Films like Odera Ozoka’s Soul Diaspora (2009), Rahman Oladigbolu’s Soul Sisters (2010), and more recently, Chinonye Chukwu’s Alaskaland (2012) all work from the first person perspective of immigrants. Since many of the other ‘Nollywood’ films often take up multiple storylines, this new trend is seemingly more in line with American narrative styles, where only one person and narrative is followed. Often, since the films involve more interaction with a large, foreign, white community, there is also more attention paid to racism, violence, gangrelated activity, drugs. This focus on the identity of the individual and his or her role in the world parallels some of the morality films based in Nigeria, by noting the importance of community, history and taking ownership of one’s own behaviour. However, it also often includes elements of displacement both from the native country and from the adopted one simultaneously.

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Although it is easy to focus on the low-budget nature of Nigerian video-films as a drawback, in many ways it has offered a boon to local productions, as it requires little resources. There is no foreign producer holding purse-strings and dictating what stories can be told. The money is made back directly, through a novel system of pirated and online-distribution, which subsidizes the next production. Unlike Hollywood, there are no millions to be made off box office revenue, but also unlike it, there is a freedom to do and say what the artists wish. As technology shifts, making it cheaper and easier to attain high production values, the works will likely shift too. With an increase in foreign attention to ‘Africa’, although many will remain locally known, there lies a strong chance that more Nigerian video-films will be seen at foreign festivals and other screenings. ‘Nollywood’ is making great strides in its foreign profile, and this in turn offers western audiences the chance to experience Nigerian stories as told by Nigerians, as opposed to the tradition of African stories told by Hollywood. The reviews below are placed in loose chronological order of production and show a thematic shift from traditional cultural inspiration (social issues as well as indigenous religion and legends) to a global context in recent diaspora films.

Melanie Wilmink

366 Africa

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Living in Bondage 1 Country of Origin:

Nigeria Languages:

Igbo English Director:

Chris Obi Rapu Producer:

Kenneth Nnebue Screenwriters:

Kenneth Nnebue Okey Ogunjiofor Duration:

163 minutes Genre:

Thriller Cast:

Kenneth Okonkwo Nnenna Nwabueze Okechukwu Ogunjiofor Francis Agu Kanayo O Kanayo Grace Ayozie Ngozi Nwaneto Daniel Oluigbo Year:

1992

Synopsis This dramatic thriller stars Kenneth Okonkwo as Andy, an eager young man struggling to support himself and his lovely wife, Merit (Nnenna Nwabueze). Although Andy works hard, he doesn’t make enough money to acquire all the beautiful things that he believes would make his life worthwhile – a fancy car, house and nice things for Merit. His luck takes a turn when he bumps into his old friend, Paul (Okechukwu Ogunjiofor), who connects him with a satanic cult promising him wealth and happiness. Despite Merit’s protestations that she only needs his love, Andy involves himself with the cult and begins to turn his life around, but his success comes at a cost. As Andy slides further into greed, lust and degradation, Merit struggles with their relationship as well as sexual propositions from her boss, Ichi Million (Francis Agu) and Chief Omego (Kanayo O Kanayo), both of whom are also high-ranking members of the cult. Within a variety of subplots, Ichi Million, Chief Omego and Paul all demonstrate their own lack of morality in their relationships with their wives and business dealings, and proceed to draw Andy deeper into their corruption.

Critique Renowned as one of the first examples of a Nollywood blockbuster (Krahe 2010), Living in Bondage 1 is the first half of a two-part thriller which explores morality, corruption and gender relationships in a Nigerian context. The scene is set quickly, as we are introduced to the main characters Andy and Merit in their simple living room. The set is sparse and clearly pulled together with easily attainable props, likely from the homes of the cast and crew. As this production was shot on portable video-recording equipment onto VHS tapes, the quality of sound and image are rough, but the acting and storytelling are engaging (despite being a long film which often drags the narrative unnecessarily). The production is not slick, but it demonstrates the power of these homemade films in their ability to portray Nigerian culture and stories. As a mixture of Igbo and English dialogue, the film depicts Nigerians in relationships with one another, as well as the ways in which their modern lives are affected by western influences (Andy and Paul scheme to import English goods and sell them for profit, and are regularly impressed by foreign imports like cars and wine) and traditional Nigerian ones (community relationships with family and politics, ceremonies, dances and superstitions). Although the trope of the story is based on fantastical elements like cult worship, human sacrifice and the supernatural, the strength of the film is its study of humanity. Of key interest in the narrative is Andy’s rapid slide from a well-meaning and sweet man, into someone that is greedy, corrupt and ruthless. The stage is set with Andy’s monologue about his lack of success, and envy for people that have nice things. He blames God for his failure, even though he has made the choice to quit four successive jobs and rely on

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high-risk investments. Merit’s voice of reason notes the evil nature of get-rich-quick schemes and points out that man makes his own choices. She comforts him, saying that money isn’t everything and her preference is for happiness over money. This scene is the beginning of several instances throughout the film where corrupt characters justify their actions by displacing blame from themselves onto others. They blame God or fate for unhappiness, Satan for their success and the system for allowing the way they behave – and therefore justifying it. When Andy begins to doubt the cult’s morality, the Chief soothes his worries by saying that even though they have wronged God with their actions, he will forgive them. Instead of treating it as something that they have to earn, forgiveness, like success, money or women, is simply expected as a (God-)given right. In the end, it is always someone else that pays the price for their advancement. As a two-part film, Living in Bondage 1 has no definite conclusion, rather just a resting point before the next edition. The film ends with previews for the next edition, much like the continuation on a soap opera or other television program.

Melanie Wilmink

Living in Bondage 2 Country of Origin:

Nigeria Languages:

Igbo English Studio:

Nek Video Links

Synopsis This film is the continuation of the narrative from the classic Living in Bondage 1, often noted as one of the first Blockbuster Nollywood films. In Part Two, Andy (Kenneth Okonkwo) has joined a Satanic cult and sacrificed his beloved wife, Merit (Nnena Nwabueze), to attain wealth, status and success. Furious at his betrayal, Merit continues to haunt Andy after her death, stunting his social status, attempts at romance and business success. As the world around him becomes aware of his slide into corruption, Andy desperately tries to maintain his newfound success.

Director:

Critique

Chris Obi Rapu

After the initial set-up from Living in Bondage 1, the sequel continues the story after Merit’s death and Andy’s subsequent remarriage to his mistress Ego (Ngozi Nwosu). After Merit appears to Andy at the wedding, he collapses and Part Two begins with Andy recovering in the hospital. After returning home he discovers Ego has left him and stolen his money, at which point he immediately replaces her with a new mistress, Chinyere (Jennifer Okere). Chinyere’s role seems primarily to play nursemaid and housekeeper while sating Andy’s sexual desires. Having already sacrificed his beloved wife, Andy now has no qualms about emotional attachment with his new mistress, and continues to acquire other lovers throughout the film. The ghost of Merit appears to Andy at any occasion where he might make progress – he faints at the ceremony where he is to be anointed Chief, he is frightened out of his lover’s hotel room, she scares Chinyere away from the house,

Producer:

Kenneth Nnebue Screenwriter:

Kenneth Nnebue Runtime:

120 minutes Genre:

Thriller Cast:

Kenneth Okonkwo Nnenna Nwabueze Okechukwu Ogunjiofor

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Jennifer Okere Ngozi Nwaneto Ngozi Nwosu Daniel Oluigbo Grace Ayozie Chizoba Bosah Year:

1993

and she ruins a business deal – eventually driving him mad. In the meantime, Andy’s family also accuses him of doing something to Merit, his friend Paul (Okechukwu Ogunjiofor) is murdered, Chinyere plots to run away with his money, and the cult threatens him. Sub-characters such as Chinyere and Caro (Ngozi Nwaneto) also go through their own retribution plots, where they receive the comeuppance they deserve. Much like the first film, the corrupt characters in Living in Bondage 2 have no sense that they have done anything to deserve their fate. They continue living their lives, expecting good things to come to them, and do terrible things to ensure it. However, unlike the first film, which served mainly to establish characters and focus on Andy’s introduction into the cult, this one reaps their karma. Although death is the reward for several of the corrupt characters, Andy is dealt a kinder fate. After he finally can take no more, Andy loses his sanity and runs away to live under a bridge. After some time, he is found by his Aunty (Chizoba Bosah), who takes him to a priest to exorcise the demons and return him to God. Meanwhile, Andy’s mother also visits Merit’s grave to beg her forgiveness. Merit consents and disappears, and Andy recovers. The final scene indicates Andy has found religion; however, it seems like there has been no real progress in his character development. Instead of taking responsibility for his actions, he was simply saved by God (or Merit) due to the intercession of his female relatives. The women have once again cleaned up the mess and put him on a noble path. Even within the exorcism ritual, the male priest demands that God save Andy, chanting that he ‘will allow you no rest until you cure Andy Okeke’. Rather than asking or begging God’s forgiveness, the priest assumes that it is Andy’s right to be cured. Instead of a higher power, God is wielded here as a tool to shape the world around them, much like Satan was used by the cult, and how shamanistic religions often wield spirits or spells to make changes in the universe. As a narrative arc for the character, it is a mixed message, with very little resolution. This may be a sign of popular storytelling, but also makes for interesting discussion about human selfishness and our reluctance to learn from our mistakes.

Melanie Wilmink

The Narrow Path Country of Origin:

Nigeria Languages:

English Yoruba, with English subtitles

Synopsis In the film, Awero (Sola Asedeko), a young woman from the African village of Orita, is coming to the age when men begin to pursue her as a wife. Awero must meet the demands of her culture while also struggling to understand her maturing sexuality. Three men play a part in this stage of Awero’s life. Two men named Odejimi (Seyi Fasuyi) and Lapade (Ayo Badmus) are competing to marry Awero. A third man named Dauda (Segun Adefila) is from the city and buys Awero gifts expecting her to give herself to him as a (Home) Video Films 369

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Studio:

Mainframe Film and Television Productions Director:

Tunde Kelani Producer:

Tunde Kelani Screenwriter:

Niji Akanni Cinematographers:

Lukaan Abdulrahman Tunde Kelani Art Director:

Kehinde Oyedepo Editors:

Frank Anore Mumin Wale Kelani Duration:

93 minutes Genre:

Drama Cast:

Sola Asedeko Seyi Fasuyi Ayo Badmus Segun Adefila Year:

2006

370 Reviews

result. When Awero does not, Dauda rapes her. This event causes Awero to suffer as her cultural traditions require her to be a virgin on her wedding night. Subsequently, Awero’s marriage to Odejimi is an event shrouded in shame and misery. Odejimi blames Lapade for the sabotage of his marriage to Awero leading to violence between the two men’s villages. In the end, a war between two villages is fought over Awero in which the role of a woman in the culture of the African village comes into play.

Critique The Narrow Path is a film about the cultural traditions and politics of villages in Africa and how they govern the identity of a woman by controlling her agency over her own sexuality. The issue of a woman’s place in African culture is depicted largely through the presentation of a woman’s understanding of herself and her role in society. This theme is presented right from the beginning of the film. In the opening scenes, Awero and her friends are in a river and one of her friends is bathing nude as young boys watch. This demonstrates the role of the woman as a source of male viewing pleasure. In one of the next scenes, Awero is arguing with her mother over the Kolese hairstyle that her mother is applying to her. Her mother argues that this hairstyle will make Awero look different than other girls and will help her attract the attention of men. Again, this suggests that a woman’s purpose is to look good for men. Further evidence of this understanding of the role of women is seen when Dauda gives Awero a mirror as a gift. This signifies the importance of a woman’s looks in order to attract men. In another part of the film, Odejimi dreams of Awero performing a provocative dance. He describes his dream to his friend as being about a beautiful antelope he must kill and bring to his village. This shows that in the culture of these African villages women are equated to objects of possession that should be hunted by men and mastered like animals. The control of women in the culture of the African village as seen in the film demonstrates the power of patriarchy in these societies. Before Awero’s marriage, her mother tells her she must love her husband most in the world. This showcases the dominance of males and their interests within the cultural traditions of an African village. The entire competition between Odejimi and Lapade for Awero’s hand in marriage and how they must pay a ‘bride price’ to her father for her also demonstrates the control of patriarchy in the village. Odejimi even shoots Lapade as a result of their rivalry. It is as if the two are fighting not over a woman but over an object that they can possess. The most poignant example of the injustice done to women as a result of their marginalized statuses is when Awero is raped by Dauda. She is literally treated like a sex-object for a man’s pleasure to the detriment of her own physical, psychological and emotional well-being, as well as her status in her culture. In the culture of the African village, on a woman’s wedding night there is a ‘virginity celebration’. As Awero is no longer a virgin as a result of her rape, she is looked down on and shamed. She is what is referred to as a ‘broken pot’ in her culture as she has had

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sex before marriage and therefore is not worthy of a husband. Awero contemplates suicide because of this. In a dream, Dauda appears to Awero in her mirror and blames her for the rape saying she asked for it. This is typical of a patriarchal-based society as it blames women for events such as rape as men have the power to decide matters of innocence, guilt and how women should perceive their own worth. By dealing with such issues as the role of women in African culture, the politics of marriage and the horror of rape, The Narrow Path illustrates the complexities of the cultural traditions of African villages and how much injustice is committed against women as a result of male domination. However, the film offers a positive message in that women are shown to be integral to African communities and as such should be respected. Tunde Kelani’s films have epitomized what Nollywood has come to stand for in that they are shot on a low-budget in minimal time and are extremely popular with African audiences as they represent social and political issues in contemporary African culture. The Narrow Path is an excellent example of this as Kelani shot it on a moderate budget and the film expresses an important political message. As the beginning of the end credits states, the film is dedicated to all the African women who, though often marginalized, play essential roles in African communities.

Brett AB Robinson

My Mother’s Heart 1 & 2 Country of Origin:

Ghana Language:

English Director:

Ifeanyi Onyeabor Producer:

Abdul Salam Mumuni Screenwriter:

Pastor Kingsley Obed Cinematographer:

Uzezi Apata Genres:

Legend Political fable

Synopsis The story of My Mother’s Heart 1&2 (a two-part digital video-film) is about Nana Yaa (Akofa Asiedu), a young pretty woman who loses both of her parents when her village is ravaged by war. She finds refuge with a newfound family in the Kingdom of Apemso. Word gets to King Agyemang (Samuel Odoi Mensa) that there is a stranger in the kingdom. The king summons Nana Yaa and her adopted father (Owusu) to the palace. After she explains her plight, the King puts her in the care of his brother Boakye (Kofi Ajorlolo). Nana Yaa presents to the King a heart-shaped golden locket handed down to her by her mother in appreciation for the King’s kindness. Boakye tries without success to win Nana Yaa’s love and eventually rapes her in the bushes when she goes to collect water. By this act, Boakye has abused the trust of his brother and the gods of the land. Boakye, suspecting an amorous relationship between the king and Nana Yaa, abuses her further which results in a miscarriage. Boakye is expelled from Apemso. King Agyemang later marries Nana Yaa, but their union is not blessed with an heir to the throne. King Agyemang is critically ill and learns of the happy news he has longed for; that Nana Yaa is pregnant by him.

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Cast:

Samuel Odoi Mensa Akofa Asiedu Kofi Ajorlolo Suzzy Williams Year:

2006

While in exile, Boakye marshals support and returns to claim the throne from the ailing King Agyemang. The new king, who had longed for Nana Yaa before, derides and intimidates her so she can give in to his advances. Though pregnant and buoyed by the challenge to survive, Nana Yaa once again flees in search of safety. The gods reveal to the elders that the land has been desecrated, and order will only be restored when the heiress apparent is found. Boakye disregards the gods and plans to murder the chief priest. The battle lines are drawn when Boakye learns there is an heiress to the Apemso throne. Four valiant women, sent to find the heiress Yaa Asentewaa (Suzzy Williams), find her at the riverside wearing the heart-shaped locket that her dying mother left for her upkeep. The people of Apemso can no longer put up with Boakye’s dictatorial reign and team up with Yaa Asantewaa to overthrow the oppressive regime.

Critique My Mother’s Heart 1 & 2 is a personal experience narrative film or what Esi Sutherland-Addy (2000: 272) calls ‘the mythic legend’ made by a Ghanaian cast and a combination of Ghanaian and Nigerian crew. The film treats issues such as excessive ambition and the place of women in society, as well as the inherent values of traditions and customs in the African setting. The director introduces Nana Yaa as a woman in danger. In a tracking shot, we see her run for her life. It is only when she is invited to the palace to explain her mission in Apemso that we get to know the reasons for her fleeing. The plight of the protagonist highlights the negative effects of war on the vulnerable in society, especially women. A contemporary and historical reading of My Mother’s Heart 1 & 2 positions the film as an allegory of the political situation in many African nations. Like Boakye coming back to oust his ailing brother, legitimate governments are forced out of office and members of the deposed regime come under constant threat, like the chief priest(s), Nana Yaa, and the council of elders in the film. Analysing the film within the context of the political history of Ghana and Nigeria, the war in Adukrom and Apemso parodies the military takeovers between 1966 and 1997 in both countries, driving officials of the ousted regimes into exile. In the narrative, King Agyemang is characterized as an agent for constructive dialogue. In My Mother’s Heart 1, we see him in many sequences with his council of elders. He discusses and seeks their views before he takes any decision. He ensures his decisions are in the interest of his subjects. His role within the context of modern democratic practices is representative of elected officials while the vicious and power obsessed Boakye epitomizes despotic military adventurers such as Lt Gen. Ignatius Kutu Acheampong (Amamoo 2007) of Ghana; Sani Abacha of Nigeria (Obituary, Kirk-Greene, The Independent, 10 June 1998); and Capt. Blaise Compaoré of Burkina Faso (R Cynique, Journal de Jeudi, No 429, 9–15 December 1999). It is worth noting that even before Agyemang dies, Boakye assumes power and compels the king makers to install him. 372 Reviews

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My Mother’s Heart 1&2 challenges the established worldview of the African woman in films. Women are often cast as obedient and unable to contribute to society’s good. On the contrary, the director casts women as major players of progress in the kingdom. Nana Yaa confronts the unknown future head-on and challenges Boakye who is part of the establishment. She tells Ama and Akosua, her stepsisters, that it is the challenge to survive that brought her to Apemso. With her talent as a jeweller, King Agyemang recognizes her usefulness to the kingdom. The plot hinges on the actions of women. For instance, when Nana Yaa meets the two sisters, their decision to offer her refuge sustains the story. The tension of the impending conflict is heightened when Ama informs Boakye that the former queen was pregnant. Again, the task of restoring normalcy to Apemso is initiated by four women sent to look for the heiress to the throne. Finally, the heiress Yaa Asantewaa has a duty to defend the oppressed. Nana Yaa uses the possessive pronoun in ‘My Mother’s Heart’ to justify and establish the connection between her resolute and industrious nature, artistry and strength in the face of adversity, as qualities acquired directly from her mother. The use of ‘my’, both by Nana Yaa and Yaa Asantewaa, and succession of the locket evoke the spirit of continuity and taking ownership of the progressive elements of life. Nana Yaa reminisces about her past and says to her adopted sisters: ‘My mother! She was such a strong woman.’ The golden locket is a metaphor for the treasured values, qualities and skills that must endure. The reference to goodness, strength, craftsmanship, steadfastness and progress in the narrative are made manifest by the locket, and invariably become a representation of the faceless ‘my mother’. Nana Yaa refers to it as a ‘treasure for the upkeep’ of Yaa Asantewaa who symbolizes a progressive future for Apemso. Like Nana Yaa, the locket emboldens Yaa Asantewaa to take her destiny into her own hands instead of having her fostermother being her protective shield each time she ventures out. The succession of the locket from mother to daughter emphasizes the need for continuity in the good practices of culture and tradition just as Ghana, for the second consecutive time, successfully inaugurated the second term of an elected government in 2005. Thus, the commercial success by way of sale of VCDs and DVDs locally and abroad can be linked to the above democratic feat. My Mother’s Heart 1&2 was entered for the Africa Movies Academy Awards (AMAA) in Nigeria in 2006 in eight categories but came home with the ‘Best Make-Up’ award. The film sold in excess of 40,000 copies of VCDs and DVDs, according to a sales executive at Kumasi Market in London (Unit 3A Canterbury Industrial Estate, Ilderton Rd), a retail outfit where African video-films and music are sold.

Samuel Benagr

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A Sting in a Tale Country of Origin:

Ghana Language:

English Studio:

Sparrow Productions Director:

Shirley Frimpong-Manso Producer:

Ken Attoh Screenwriter:

Shirley Frimpong-Manso Cinematographer:

John Passah Editor:

Nana Akua Manso Duration:

115 minutes Genres:

Video-film Drama Cast:

Adjetey Anang Lydia Forson Majid Michel Doris Sackitey Abeiku Acquah David Oscar Year:

2009

374 Reviews

Synopsis Two unemployed MBA graduates set out on a journey to get their dream jobs. Kuuku (Adjetey Anang), one of the two graduates, is obsessed about getting a job, but frustration sets in as his applications and job interviews are turned down because of lack of experience. Kuuku lives on the benevolence of his future motherin-law, who supports his girlfriend, Frema. This situation aggravates Kuuku’s sense of failure. To redeem his honour as a responsible fiancé to Frema (Lydia Forson), Kuuku will try anything in order to turn the tides in his favour. Nii Aryee (Majid Michel) is Kuuku’s close confidant, and is more optimistic about their prospects. Despite the persistent rejection letters from employers, Nii Aryee’s mantra is that there are no quick fixes to success. However, when he is faced with overdue rent payments, it is time for the two friends to confront the threat of poverty head-on. In their search for solutions, they become prey to survival tricks and scams. In this rather weird narrative about youth and unemployment, where the unpredictable lies in wait, we could not be stung any better in the somewhat creepy but comical ending of the tale.

Critique A Sting in a Tale is Shirley Frimpong-Manso’s fourth feature video-film in a relatively young directorial career which began in 2007. Given that the video-film industry in Ghana is male dominated, it is no mean achievement. Like some of her earlier films (Life and Living It and Scorned), the director uses a simple plotline to expose the frustrations associated with graduate unemployment as well as the consequences of seeking quick fixes to riches in contemporary Ghana. The opening sequence offers a metaphor for the road to success. The bus ride experience of the protagonists, Kuuku and his sidekick, Nii Aryee, offers an insight into the life of new graduates looking for work. With the unemployment rate around 20 per cent in 2008 according to the Daily Guide newspaper, it takes more than a university degree to find work. The film-maker evokes immediately the need to understand how the system functions in order to find one’s way through the labyrinth of ‘opportunities’ in the job market. The foregoing is made more poignant through the other passengers who, accustomed to the system, are able to catch up with the bus and go, leaving the dejected pair covered in a plume of dust. Through characterization and setting, the film-maker catalogues the scams used by so called ‘connection men’ on naive graduates like Kuuku and Nii Aryee. In Rocker Fella (Abeiku Acquah) we see the industrious Ghanaian youth, who will venture into various businesses, albeit dodgy ones, in order to make ‘fast’ money. On the other hand, when he proposes to Kuuku and Nii Aryee to make counterfeit currency, a crime punishable by jail term, we see the dark side to the wealth of some youth in Ghana. In the video as in contemporary Ghana, James #1 (David Oscar), the visa contractor, epitomizes a successful graduate. Chauffeur-driven and wielding

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sophisticated mobile phones, his activities have consequences for his gullible victims and society. People end up with fake travel documents, which worsens their plight if they get to their destinations. It is this false hope James #1 gives Kuuku and Nii Aryee only to defraud them later, using a lighter version of Sakawa (a popular Ghanaian phenomenon that involves the process by which one gets rich quickly). With government’s inability to create jobs, blood-thirsty occultists operate under the pretext of helping the jobless. They lure their prey in and use them to appease their occults so they continue to be perceived as rich and powerful in society. Hence, the sequence at the money lender’s office is significant for two reasons. First, we are reminded that the old practice of Sikaduro – an illicit spiritual means of getting rich quicker – is still present, albeit in a modern setting. Second, there is a painful and regrettable price to pay for associating with occultism, contrary to Nii Aryee’s naive view that the money lender doles out money in good will. This is graphically illustrated with a man’s finger being cut in return for financial support. Frimpong-Manso counters the negative goings-on in the city with the calm and welcoming village life where help comes without conditions. As the city fails Kuuku in his bid to raise money to pay for his ‘dream’ visa to America, he turns to his uncle in the village. The old man offers Kuuku one of his finest goats to go and sell to raise part of the money needed. The extended family system and values in the Ghanaian society are thus highlighted. At this point the video connects with works of older Ghanaian film-makers such as Kwaw Ansah (the winner of the Yennenga Golden Stallion at FESPACO 1989 for Heritage Africa,1989) who often stressed the importance of tradition for development. This contrasts sharply with Tamara’s help to Kuuku via Frema, which comes with strings. Frema must do her mother’s bidding by going for an abortion which leads to her death. Thus, Kuuku’s characterization gives us one of the cardinal messages of the film: that it is better to wait for one’s opportune time. This point is emphasized via an intertextual reference on Kuuku’s door; EGO BI ONE DAY (a local Ghanaian slang for ‘it shall be fine one day’). Although Kuuku eventually gets a job in a bank, he soon realizes that the thought of indulging in Sikaduro or Sakawa alone can come back to haunt a genuinely earned success. The fact that Nii Aryee questions Kuuku whether his sudden success is linked to carrying out a ritual both of them had earlier contemplated shows how entrenched these practices are among the youth. And as the film ends tragically for both Kuuku and Nii Aryee, an ironic twist provides the ‘sting in the tale’. They are delighted in not having to worry about job hunting. The disturbing aspect is that if government and society do not tackle the issue of youth unemployment, talents will end up in graves thus blighting the development prospects of the State.

Samuel Benagr

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The Figurine Araromire Country of Origin:

Nigeria Languages:

English Yoruba Studio:

Golden Effects Director:

Kunle Afolayan Producer:

Kunle Afolayan Screenwriter:

Kemi Adesoye Cinematographer:

Yinka Edward Art Director:

Pat Nebo Editors:

Kayode Adeleke Steve Sodiya Duration:

120 minutes Genre:

Thriller Cast:

Kunle Afolayan Ramsey Nouah Omoni Oboli Muraina Oyelami Funlola Aofiyebi Tosin Sido David J Oserwe Year:

2009

376 Reviews

Synopsis The Figurine is a dark thriller that blurs the line between mythology and modern life. The story follows a love triangle between three young people, Sola (Kunle Afolayan), Femi (Ramsey Nouah) and Mona (Omoni Oboli), who are recruited into a military training camp. Femi and Sola find a shrine to the Goddess Araromire, who brings anyone who touches her idol seven years of good luck, followed by seven years of bad. On a whim, Sola steals the idol and smuggles it home. Seven years later, all three have found success. When Femi returns from abroad, their luck seems to turn and disaster strikes in all aspects of their lives. Fighting fear and madness, the trio must discover the forces behind this turn of fate in order to save themselves.

Critique Compared to other Nigerian video-films, this work has a production value that is much more in line with Hollywood than home-movies. Shot on HD video, the cinematography is gorgeous and artistic, utilizing creative and effective camera techniques. The introduction to the Yoruba Araromire Goddess mythology is black and white, with fire elements in saturated colour. With subtle acting and a primarily English dialogue (although the film has subtitles and sections in Yoruba), this film seems designed with a Hollywood sensibility in mind. In fact, after premiering at the International Film Festival Rotterdam in February 2010, the film continued onto the international film festival circuit, screening at events such as the New York African Film Festival and the Tokyo African Film Festival (Folch 2010). Although it holds to a western standard of production value, the film intends to tell a Nigerian story. The characters have believable backgrounds with Nigeria-specific elements, including their military training at the National Youth Service Corps. The film also directly references the problematics of language loss in an English-dominated world by depicting Sola teaching his young son Yoruba. By casting Chief Muraina Oyelami as a cultural teacher (‘Anthropology Professor’), the film underscores the value placed on Nigerian culture within the film. Chief Oyelami is renowned as a visual artist as well as being a respected member of the community, and in addition to his casting the film seems to use his paintings as set decoration throughout the film (McCain 2011). It is a subtle, but strong support of the local within the larger context of the film. By combining these Nigeria-specific elements with western aesthetics and a universal narrative of love and tragedy, director Kunle Afolayan manages to make a film which appeals to a large, global audience without making concessions to generalization. The universality of the love triangle and the tragedy that befalls them is entirely Shakespearean. Like Shakespeare, the director merges mythology with realism to create a story that has depth and resonance over time and cultures. The film is particularly reminiscent of Othello, which focuses heavily on one-on-one character dynamics.

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Within The Figurine, the three main characters have obviously built a long-lasting relationship of trust, but Femi’s obvious love for Mona puts a kink in the relationship. When the characters reunite, they are briefly brought together by the tragedies that befall them, but which ultimately destroy their external relationships with one another and internalize the characters within their own traumas. The final turn reveals a twist which sheds doubt on the supernatural origins of the tragedy, and brings the film to an exciting close as it once again draws attention to the tension between the modern world and tradition, education and superstition, the western world and Nigeria, as well as the universality of human relationships, no matter where they take place.

Melanie Wilmink

Arugba Country of Origin:

Nigeria Language:

Yoruba Studio:

Mainframe Film and Television Productions Director:

Tunde Kelani Producer:

Synopsis In the dramatic film Arugba, Bukola Awoyemi plays Adetutu, a young university student struggling to balance her duties between two worlds. A modern woman, she does everything – school, job, volunteering, singing – all while also maintaining her respected status as her community’s Arugba, or the virginal votary maiden, in the annual festival. As she attempts to juggle the demands on her time she meets Makinwa (Segun Adefila), a handsome young actor and musician, who pushes her to participate in his upcoming production and to spend time with him. As Adetutu and Makinwa grow closer, Adetutu’s responsibilities begin to overwhelm her and she must prove that she can hold it all together.

Tunde Kelani

Critique

Screenwriters:

As a more recent production, this film takes advantage of higherquality digital video equipment. The cinematography is competent and the film begins with a short creative dream sequence which serves to both establish the identity of the main character, Adetutu, and give us insight into her internal life. She is obviously a modern woman rooted in tradition, and she takes her conduct very seriously. Throughout the narrative, her seriousness and responsibility is heavily underlined, which unfortunately sometimes leads to a sense of over-seriousness. Following the introductory dream-sequence, the film opens with two women preaching about the promise of God’s love and berating the guilty and corrupt. It is the first of many scenes where the film overtly discusses social problems and it sets up an expectation that the film will teach the audience something about morality. There are many elements that emphasize righteousness or ‘proper way of life’; whether it is Adetutu juggling her many responsibilities, her equal valuation of traditional and contemporary life, or teaching her friend about re-hydrating sick children and HIV testing, the film sets itself up to not only entertain, but also to

Tunde Kelani Ade Adeniji Cinematographers:

Tunde Kelani Lukman AbdulRahman Editors:

Frank Efe Patrick as Frank Anore Hakeem Olowookere Wale Kelani Duration:

95 minutes Genre:

Drama Cast:

Bukola Awoyemi

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Segun Adefila Peter Badejo Kareem Adepoju Lere Paimo Year:

2010

educate in subtle (and sometimes unsubtle) ways. In one sequence, the film even goes so far as to insert an actual lesson into the narrative, teaching the viewers about Nigerian geography and languages. Adetutu’s ability to consume modern culture and knowledge, and mediate it for less educated people, becomes a metaphor for the film itself. It attempts to fill entertainment and educational roles at the same time, a tricky balance which doesn’t always succeed. By pursuing her well-meaning activities as well as her personal dreams, Adetutu is able to have everything; she is the ultimate modern woman, who is independent, but loved, creative but clever, cutting edge and traditional simultaneously. However, it is in this ideal of perfection that Adetutu is arguably most flawed. Her ability to manage all of her responsibilities and still come out on top is superhuman and unrealistic. Even without explicit preaching, by depicting her as such an ideal figure, the film takes on a tone of morality that borders on preaching. She is the figure of salvation – rescuing her girlfriends from sexual harassment, saving kidnapped children and taking vengeance against the kidnappers and wouldbe rapists – all while maintaining her purity as votary maiden for the traditional festival. In addition, Adetutu is presented against a coterie of imperfect characters. At the mildest end of the spectrum, her childhood friend is uneducated and blind to reality, watching her child die of dehydration and refusing HIV testing. At the worst end, the local King (Peter Badejo) is the figurehead of a corrupt community of chiefs. Every one of them looks for an advantage and pay day, and they do whatever they can to undermine one another and rig the game in their favour. Instead of working for the good, like Adetutu, they work against it, siphoning NGO funding for HIV seminars and training. The illusion of Adetutu’s perfection, however, does not make the intent behind the educational portion of the film any less valuable. In the end, it is an earnest work, with an engaging story, and as such, it manages to simultaneously teach and entertain, something which is likely a fantastic tool to reach audiences who may not regularly access educational information directly.

Melanie Wilmink

Alaskaland Country of Origin:

USA Languages:

English Igbo Studio:

Where’s the Fire Filmworks

378 Reviews

Synopsis Set in Fairbanks, Alaska, this diasporic drama focuses on the lives of a young Nigerian immigrant, Chukwuma (Alex Ubokudom) and his family. An outsider in both the local American and Nigerian immigrant communities, Chukwuma struggles to find his place and falls in with the wrong crowd. After tragedy befalls his family, he is separated from his young sister Chidinma (Chioma Dunkley), who returns to live with family in Nigeria. Distraught and angry, he continues on a troubled path. Two years later, his sister returns and he must find a way to cross the new cultural divide between them.

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Director:

Chinonye Chukwu First Assistant Director:

Davis Northern Producers:

Maya Salganek Jamila Capitman Screenwriter:

Chinonye Chukwu Cinematographer:

Dave Selle Editor:

W Scott Calvert Duration:

75 minutes Genre:

Drama Cast:

Alex Ubokudom Chioma Dunkley Chijike Nwoga Leeland Martin Corey Campbell Year:

2012

In order to do so, he must grow up, take responsibility for his own actions, and redefine himself by piecing together the fragments of dualistic cultural identity.

Critique This film deliberately and emphatically rests between two worlds. Since the film was created by a Nigerian immigrant in Alaska, I would not necessarily categorize Alaskaland the same as native Nigerian films, however it is also important to recognize that this film is not quite the same as American films either. Straddling a transnational line, Alaskaland draws attention to the immigrant experience as a no-man’s land where the immigrant never fits comfortably (alaskalandmovie.com). As soon as he or she leaves home behind, it moves on without them; things and people change, and the immigrant changes as well. The protagonist, Chukwuma, has obviously lived in Alaska for a long time. He no longer has an accent like his parents, he doesn’t speak Igbo, and he can’t cook Nigerian meals. For that, members of the Nigerian community mock him. Since he is not Nigerian enough, he tries to fit in with the American community in Fairbanks. However, despite being as American as any of his African American friends (Leeland Martin, Corey Campbell), they also tease him for his cultural heritage. This discomfort leads Chukwuma to rebel in school, become involved with drugs and argue with his parents. One day, after a terrible fight with his father over the phone, his parents drive out to search for Chukwuma and become the victims of a terrible car accident. Suddenly orphaned, his younger sister is sent to live with family in Nigeria. Feeling guilt over his role in the accident, and accepting his uncomfortable place in American culture, he protects himself with an angry emotional distance. Two years later, when his sister Chidinma and Uncle (Chijike Nwoga) return from Nigeria, he is shocked to discover that she has drifted away as well. While in Nigeria, she has reunited with family, taken up cooking, Nigerian dress, customs and language. All of these things place her on the other side of the cultural wall, and both siblings are clearly distressed by their inability to come together. However, as they find common ground, Chidinma opens up about her own immigrant experiences, this time as a Nigerian Alaskan immigrant returning to her ‘homeland’. Instead of sliding comfortably into life there, she is also teased about language and customs. Chidinma also brutally discovers that she no longer belongs in Alaska either; after a late-night party, she attempts to walk home and quickly collapses with hypothermia, no longer able to withstand the cold as she could before she left. This tragic physical reminder of displacement graphically underlines the multiple identities that necessarily develop within the immigrant experience. As Chukwuma decides to change the path he is on and return to Nigeria with his sister, his acquaintances tell him to ‘enjoy home’. It obviously refers to Nigeria as his cultural ‘homeland’, which is odd since everything happening in the movie indicates that ‘home’ is unstable. Although there are many moments throughout the film

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where Nigeria is held up as an ideal – there is nostalgia attached to food, singing, dancing and stories of family – Chidinma’s stories offer a word of warning which dispels the idea that everything would just magically get better once they return to Nigeria. It will still be work to fit in, just as it was to fit in in Alaska, and even then, they will reside in a liminal state of belonging.

Melanie Wilmink

Soul Diaspora

Synopsis

Producers:

In this drama about diaspora and cultural frictions, we follow the story of Saidu (Sadiq Abu), who has migrated from Nigeria to America. Living in a run-down apartment by himself, he is isolated from the world both by his cultural background and the trauma he has buried within. As he attempts to make a place for himself by finding a job as a mechanic and socializing at a local strip club, he begins to meet people that draw him out of his shell. His employer Ziman (Donald Ajluni) and his son Reza (Kristian Steel) connect with him as fellow immigrants, and exotic dancer Latisha (Mimi Vasser) draws his romantic interest with her beauty and intelligence. As Saidu builds his new life, obstacles arise to remind him of his past trauma, and he must deal with them in order to come to terms with the guilt of his past.

Odera Ozoka Clotilde Delavennat

Critique

Country of Origin:

USA Nigeria Languages:

English Igbo Director:

Odera Ozoka First Assistant Director:

James Peterson

Screenwriter:

Odera Ozoka Cinematographer:

Edwin Kim Editor:

Richard Schachter Duration:

106 minutes Genre:

Drama Cast:

Sadiq Abu Donald Ajluni Serge Eustache Kristian Steel Mimi Vasser Brendan Jackson Maggie Maki Year:

2009

380 Reviews

Unlike most of the other films recently produced by Nigerian and diaspora film-makers, this work is not shot on video. Rather, it is produced on Super 16 mm, a format which serves to give the film a distinct look and feel. Like the rough VHS video of Living in Bondage (Chris Obi Rapu, 1992–93), the stylistic nature of the minimally retouched Super 16, dates the work, giving it a feeling of being set in the late 1980s and 1990s. This feeling is emphasized by the lack of contextual information surrounding the film’s setting. We know that it is set in America, sometime in the last few decades, but until the narrative reveals footage of the September 11th World Trade Centre attacks, there is very little other information which specifically locates the film in space and time. The choice of film as opposed to video is extremely deliberate in this day and age, especially when we see examples of Nigerian works like Alaskaland (Chinonye Chukwu, 2012) and Araromire/The Figurine (Kunle Afolayan, 2009), which produce very slick digital cinema without the hassles attached to film. Less accessible than digital video, film costs money to attain, shoot and process, as well as a very specific skill-set to control focus and exposure. Many young film-makers only shoot on film as part of their film-school training, and usually apply faux-film filters to digital footage when a film effect is necessary. Although there are many aspects of this particular film that deserve attention – immigrant issues, sexuality,

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isolation, trauma and violence – what distinctly sets this film apart from other diasporic Nigerian narratives is this choice of medium. As the work of a first-time film-maker, it draws immediate comparisons to other film school works. By coming out of an American film school background, Soul Diaspora distinguishes itself from early Nigerian productions where the film-makers were self trained. Film school itself imparts a certain style to its students, and this work has developed itself within the American independent film genre. However, this film school training has also nurtured an academic understanding of directorial choices, and Ozoka demonstrates this awareness, noting that ‘the film takes its cue from the kind of 1970s “blaxploitation” genre-pictures, dealing with similar gritty themes’ (souldiasporamovie.com). This intent to reference blaxploitation clarifies the choice of medium as an intentional nod and attempt to recreate the style of a historic genre. Through this allusion, the film offers a

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consideration of the thematic similarities between those films and that of contemporary diasporic narratives. It draws on films that have a complicated and contradictory history of both giving voice to black American film-makers and exploiting stereotypes for entertainment. I would suggest that while Soul Diaspora may draw on some elements of blaxploitation, it does not wholeheartedly embrace the violent kitsch that the genre entails. It is a serious film – albeit flawed in a film-school-too-serious-way – that attempts to explore tragic and emotional issues surrounding immigration and displacement in a thoughtful and sincere manner.

Melanie Wilmink

382 Reviews

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(Home) Video Films 383

recommen reading The references include both the quoted sources and some other recommended titles. Unless quoted in this volume, works published before 1995 are not included.

Adhikari, Mohamed (2007) ‘Hotel Rwanda: Too much heroism, too little history – or horror?’, in Vivian Bickford-Smith and Richard Mendelsohn (eds), Black + White in Colour: African History on Screen, Oxford: James Currey, pp. 279–99. Adeoti, Gbemisola (2009) ‘Home video film and the democratic imperative in contemporary Nigeria’, in Blandine Stefanson (ed.), Journal of African Cinemas, 1: 1, pp. 35–56. Adesdokan, Akin (2012) ‘Nollywood and the idea of the Nigerian cinema’, Journal of African Cinemas, 4: 1, pp. 81–98. Alaskalandmovie.com (n.d.) www.alaskalandmovie.com. Accessed 22 July 2013. Amamoo, Joseph Godson (2007) Ghana: 50 Years of Independence, Accra: Jafint Ent. Andrew, Dudley (2000 [1984]) ‘Adaptation’, in James Naremore (ed.), Film Adaptation, London: Athlone Press, pp. 28–37 [First published in Andrew Dudley, Concepts of Film Theory, Oxford: OUP, 1984]. Anyinefa, Koffi (2005) ‘L’enfant noir, du roman au film’ [Annexe], Cahier d’Études Africaines, 177, pp. 240–255, http://www.cairn.info/revuecahiers-d-etudes-africaines-2005-1-page-240.htm. Accessed 16 August 2012. Appadurai, Arjun (1990) ‘Disjuncture and difference in the global Cultural economy’, Theory, Culture & Society, (SAGE, London, Newbury Park and New Delhi), 7, pp. 295-310.

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ended Armes, Roy (2008) Dictionary of African Filmmakers, Bloomington: Indiana University Press [Translated into French: Dictionnaire des cinéastes africains de long métrage, Paris: Karthala, 2008]. —— (2006) African Filmmaking: North and South of the Sahara, Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Arnaud, Gerald (2008) Youssou N’Dour: le griot planétaire, Paris: Éditions Demi-Lune. Arnold, Guy (2005) Africa: A Modern History, London: Atlantic Books. Asante, Molefi Kete (1990) Kemet, Afrocentricity and Knowledge, Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press. Ashbury, Roy, Helsby, Wendy and O’Brien, Maureen (1998) Teaching African Cinema, London: British Film Institute. Ashcroft, Bill (2001) Post-colonial Transformation, London: Routledge. ATM (Association des Trois Mondes) (2000) Le cinéma d’Afrique: Dictionnaire, Paris: Karthala and ATM. Augé, Marc (1995) Non-places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity, New York/London: Verso. Bâ, Saër Maty (2010) ‘On the transformation of the spirit-possession film: Towards Rouch as “emergent method”’, in Bettina Schmidt and Lucy Huskinson (eds), Spirit Possession and Trance: New Interdisciplinary Perspectives, London: Continuum, pp. 223-239. Baert, Xavier (2006) Catalogue de la cinémathèque de la danse, Paris: Cinémathèque de la danse. Bakari, Imruh (2000) ‘Introduction: African cinema and the emergent cinema’, in June Givanni (ed.), Symbolic Narratives: African Cinema: Audiences, Theory and the Moving Image, London: British Film Institute, pp. 3–24. Balseiro, Isabel and Masilela, Ntongela (eds) (2003) To Change Reels: Film and Film Culture in South Africa, Detroit: Wayne State University Press. Barlet, Olivier (2012) Les cinémas d’Afrique des années 2000 : Perspectives critiques, Paris: L’Harmattan. Recommended Reading 385

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—— (2011) ‘18 jours, La révolution égyptienne en dix chapitres’, Africultures, 20 August, http://www.africultures.com/php/index.php?nav=article&no=10361. Accessed 8 May 2013. —— (2003) ‘Interview with Didier Ouenangaré’, Africultures.com, 28 May, Accessed 10 August 2012. —— (2002) ‘Cinéma, l’exception africaine’, Africultures, 45, Paris: L’Harmattan. —— (2000 [1996]) Les cinémas d’Afrique noire, le regard en question/African Cinemas: Decolonizing the Gaze (trans. C Turner), London/New York: Zed Books. —— (1996) Les cinémas d’Afrique noire, le regard en question, Paris: L’Harmattan. Barnes, Teresa (2007) ‘Flame and armed struggle in Zimbabwe’, in Vivian Bickford-Smith and Richard Mendelsohn (eds), Black + White in Colour: African History on Screen, Oxford: James Currey, pp. 240–55. Berrian, Brenda F (2004) ‘Manu Dibango and Ceddo’s transatlantic soundscape’, in Françoise Pfaff (ed.), Focus on African Films, Bloomington/Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, pp. 89–107. Bickford-Smith, Vivian and Mendelsohn, Richard (eds) (2007) Black + White in Colour: African History on Screen, Oxford: James Currey. Blanchon, Karine (2009) Les Cinémas de Madagascar (1937–2007), Paris : L’Harmattan. Bordwell, David and Thompson, Kristin (1997) Film Art: An Introduction, 5th edn, Boston: McGraw-Hill. Botha, Martin (2012) South African Cinema (1896–2010), Bristol: Intellect. Boughedir, Férid (2005) ‘Du rêve Sud-Sud à la défense de la diversité culturelle’, in Catherine Ruelle, Clément Tapsoba and Alessandra Speciale (eds), Afriques 50: Singularités d’un cinéma pluriel, Paris: L’Harmattan, pp. 161–71. —— (2000) ‘African cinema and ideology: Tendencies and evolution’, in June Givanni (ed.), Symbolic Narratives: African Cinema: Audiences, Theory and the Moving Image, London: British Film Institute, pp. 109–21. Bradshaw, Peter (2009) ‘Disgrace’, The Guardian, 4 December. http://www.theguardian. com/film/2009/dec/04/disgrace-film-review. Accessed 11 June 2011. Breitman, George (ed.) (1970) ‘Malcolm X: OAAU Founding Rally’, in By Any Means Necessary, New York: Pathfinder Press. Brenner, Louis (ed.) (1993) Muslim Identity and Social Change in Sub-Saharan Africa, London: Hurst & Company, pp. 59–78. Broderick, Mick (2010) ‘Mediating genocide: Producing digital survivor testimony in Rwanda’, in B Sarkar and J Walker (eds), Documentary Testimonies: Global Archives of Suffering, New York/London: Routledge, pp. 215–44.

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Brown, William, Iordanova, Dina and Leshu Torchin (2010) Moving People, Moving Images: Cinema and Trafficking in the New Europe. St. Andrews: St. Andrews Film Studies. Burgoyne, Robert (2010) Film Nation: Hollywood Looks at U.S. History, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Burns, James (2002) Flickering Shadows: Cinema and Identity in Colonial Zimbabwe, Athens: Ohio University Press. Calhoun, Dave (2007) ‘African cinema: White guides, black pain’, Sight & Sound, 17: 2, pp. 32–35. Cham, Mbye (2005) ‘Oral traditions, literature, and cinema in Africa’, in Robert Stam and Alessandra Raengo (eds), Literature and Film: A Guide to the Theory and Practice of Film Adaptation, USA/MA: Malden; UK/Oxford and Australia/Carlton: Blackwell, pp. 295-312. —— (1998) ‘African cinema in the nineties’, African Studies Quarterly, 2: 1, http:// www.africa.ufl.edu/asq/v2/v2i1a4.htm. Accessed 17 August 2011. —— (1982) ‘Ousmane Sembène and the aesthetics of African oral tradition’, Africana Journal, 13: 1–4, pp. 27–40. Charry, Eric (2000) Mande Music: Traditional and Modern Music of the Maninka and Mandinka of Western Africa, Chicago: UCP. Chilcoat, Michelle and Ndiaye, Cheikh (2009) ‘Entretien avec Osvalde Lewat, jeune réalisatrice d’origine camerounaise’, French Review, 83: 2, pp. 388–96. Chude-Sokei, Louis (2006) The Last ‘Darky’: Bert Williams, Black-on-Black Minstrelsy, and the African Diaspora, Durham: Duke University Press. Cissé, Youssouf Tata and Kamissoko, Wa (1989) La grande geste du Mali, Paris: Karthala. Cousins, Mark (2007) ‘Invisible Classics’, Sight & Sound, February, pp. 26–30. Culshaw, Peter (2007) ‘Youssou N’Dour: Caught in the Middle’, http://www.telegraph. co.uk/culture/3669013/Youssou-NDour-caught-in-the-middle.html. Accessed 11 October 2010. Dallaire, Roméo (2004 [2003]) Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda, New York: Carroll & Graf. Davis, Peter (1996) In Darkest Hollywood: Exploring the Jungles of Cinema’s South Africa, Randburg: Ravan. Dennison, Stephanie and Lim, Song Hwee (eds) (2006) Remapping World Cinema: Identity, Culture and Politics in Film, London: Wallflower. De Waal, Shaun (2005) ‘Woman on the verge’, Mail and Guardian, 11 August.

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Diawara, Manthia (2010) African Film: New Forms of Aesthetics and Politics, Munich/ Berlin/London/New York: Prestel Verlag. —— (1992) African Cinema, Politics & Culture, Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Diop, Samba (2004) African Francophone Cinema, New Orleans: University Press of the South. Diop, Wasis (­2006) Interview, Daratt [DVD], Paris: Pyramide Vidéo. Dovey, Lindiwe (2009) African Film and Literature: Adapting Violence to the Screen, New York: Columbia University Press. Dubois, Régis (2012) Les noirs dans le cinéma français, Paris: The Book Edition. Dupré, Colin (2012) Le Fespaco, une affaire d’État(s): Festival Panafricain de Cinéma et de télévision de Ouagadougou1969–2009, Paris: L’Harmattan. Dwyer, Kevin (2004a) Beyond Casablanca. M. A. Tazi and the Adventure of Moroccan Cinema, Bloomington: Indiana University Press. —— (2004b) ‘Un pays, une décennie, deux comédies’, in Michel Serceau (ed.), ‘Cinémas du Maghreb’, CinémAction, 111, pp. 86–91. Edmunds, Gayle (2006) ‘A dialogue about home’, City Press, 29 October. Ellerson, Beti (2005) ‘Visualizing homosexualities in Africa: Dakan: An interview with filmmaker Mohamed Camara’, in Lahoucine Ouzgane and Robert Morrell (eds), African Masculinities: Men in Africa from the Late Nineteenth Century to the Present, New York/Scottsville: Palgrave Macmillan/University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, pp. 61–73. Evuleocha, Stevina U (2008) ‘Nollywood and the home video revolution: Implications for marketing videofilm in Africa’, International Journal of Emerging Markets, 3: 4, pp. 407–17. Fanon, Frantz (1961) Les Damnés de la terre/The Wretched of the Earth, Paris: Éditions Maspero. Feinberg, Lexi (n.d.) ‘Tsotsi’, CinemaBlend.com. http://www.cinemablend.com/ reviews/Tsotsi-1434.html. Accessed 11 June 2011. Ferro, Marc (1993) Cinéma et Histoire, Nouvelle édition refondue, Paris: Gallimard. —— (1988 [1977]) Cinema and History (Cinéma et Histoire, Paris: Denoël, [1977]), trans. Naomi Greene. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. Fofana, Amadou T (2013) The Films of Ousmane Sembène: Discourse, Culture, and Politics, Amherst, NY/London, UK: Cambria Press. Folch, Christine (2010) ‘Movie Review: The Figurine’, mtviggy.com, 13 April, http:// www.mtviggy.com/articles/movie-review-the-figurine/. Accessed 18 July 2013. 388 Africa

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Frampton, Daniel (2005) Filmosophy, London: Wallflower. French, Philip (2009) ‘Disgrace’, The Observer, 6 December, http://www.theguardian. com/film/2009/dec/06/disgrace-coetzee-john-malkovich. Gabara, Rachel (n.d.) ‘Mixing impossible genres: David Achkar and African auto-biographical documentary’, Documentary is Never Neutral, http:// documentaryisneverneutral.com/words/miximpgen.html. Accessed 27 April 2012. Gabriel, Teshome H (1989) ‘Third cinema as guardian of popular memory: Towards a third aesthetics’, in Jim Pines and Paul Willemen (eds), Questions of Third Cinema, London: British Film Institute, pp. 53–61. Gadjigo, Samba (2010) Ousmane Sembène: The Making of a Militant Artist (trans. Moustapha Diop), Bloomington/Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Gandy, Mathew (2005) ‘Learning from Lagos’, New Left Review, 33, pp. 36–52. Gane-McCalla, Casey (2009) ‘Nigeria bans District 9’, Newsone, 22 September, http:// newsone.com/308517/nigeria-bans-district-9/. Accessed 18 April 2013. Gardies, André and Haffner, Pierre (1988) Regards sur le cinéma négro-africain, Bruxelles: OCIC. Garnier, Xavier (1999) La magie dans le roman africain, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Garritano, Carmela (2013) African Video Movies and Global Desires: A Ghanaian History, Athens, OH: Ohio University Press. Giannetti, Louis and Eyman, Scott (5th Edition 2006, originally published 1986) Flashback: A Brief History of Film, Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall. Givanni, June (ed.) (2000) Symbolic Narratives. African Cinema: Audiences, Theory and the Moving Image, London: British Film Institute. Gonzalez, Ed (2005) ‘Tsotsi’, Slant Magazine, 18 December. http://www.slantmagazine. com/film/review/tsotsi. Accessed 11 June 2011. Gorbman, Claudia (1987) Unheard Melodies: Narrative Film Music, London: British Film Institute. Gramsci, Antonio (1971) Selections from the Prison Notebooks (ed. and trans. Quentin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith), London: Lawrence and Wishart. Grant, Barry and Sloniowski, Jeannette (eds) (1998) Documenting the Documentary: Close Readings of Documentary Film and Video, Detroit: Wayne State University Press. Guèye, Mbaye (1995) ‘Le 1er décembre 1944 à Thiaroye ou le massacre des tirailleurs sénégalais, anciens prisonniers de guerre’, Revue sénégalaise d’histoire, No 1, pp. 3-23.

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Gugler, Josef (2004) ‘Fiction, fact and the critic’s responsibility: Camp de Thiaroye, Yaaba and The Gods Must Be Crazy’, in Françoise Pfaff (ed.), Focus on African Films, Bloomington/Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, pp. 69–85. —— (2003) African Film: Re-imagining a Continent, Bloomington/Oxford/Cape Town: Indiana University Press/James Currey/David Philip. Gugler, Josef (ed.) (2011) Film in the Middle East and North Africa: Creative Dissidence, Austin: University of Texas Press. Haffner, Pierre (1996) ‘Les avis de cinq cinéastes d’Afrique noire: Entretiens avec Pierre Haffner’, CinémAction, 81, pp. 89–103. Harms, Robert (2007) ‘The transatlantic slave trade in cinema’, in V Bickford-Smith and Richard Mendelsohn (eds), Black + White in Colour: African History on Screen, Oxford: James Currey, pp. 59–81. Harrow, Kenneth W (2007) Postcolonial African Cinema: From Political Engagement to Postmodernism, Bloomington/Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Haynes, Jonathan (2007) ‘Nollywood in Lagos, Lagos in Nollywood films’, Africa Today, 54: 2, pp. 131–50. —— (ed.) (2000 [1996]) ‘Nigerian Video Films’ [revised and expanded version], Research in International Studies Africa Series, no. 73, Athens: Ohio University Center for International Studies. Hennebelle, Guy (1978), ‘Entretien avec Jean-René Debrix’, in Guy Hennebelle and Catherine Ruelle (eds), Cinéastes d’Afrique noire, Paris : CinémAction, no 111/L’Afrique Littéraire et Artistique no 49, pp. 153-158). —— (1975) ‘Entretien avec Mahama Traoré’, in L’Afrique littéraire et artistique, 35, pp. 91-99. Hoefert de Turégano, Teresa (2005 [2004]) African Cinema and Europe: Close-up on Burkina Faso, Florence: European Press Academic. —— (2003), ‘Bright Lights, 1985-1995’, in M. Bonetti and P. Reddy (eds), Through African Eyes: Dialogues with the Directors, New York: 10th African Film Festival New York, pp. 31-34. Hron, Madelaine (2009) ‘Interview with Eric Kabera’, Peace Review, 21: 3, pp. 359–62. Imbert, Henri-François (2007) Samba Félix Ndiaye: Cinéaste documentariste africain, Paris: L’Harmattan. Izod, John and Kilborn, Richard (1998) ‘The documentary’, in John Hill and Pamela Church Gibson (eds), The Oxford Guide to Film Studies, Oxford: OUP, pp. 426–33. Jaafar, A (2007) ‘Finding our own voices’ [Introduction], Sight & Sound, February, p. 30. James, Nick (2007) ‘Shaking the world’, Sight & Sound, September, p. 22.

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Kamin, Louise (2011) ‘Swahiliwood: A platform for entertain-educate feature films: A study about the Tanzanian film industry led by Media for Development International’ [Unpublished report], MDI Tanzania, September. Kaplan, E Ann and Wang, Ban (2004) Trauma and Cinema Cross-Cultural Explorations, Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Kaplan, Jonathan (2006) ‘Introduction’, in Athol Fugard, Tsotsi, New York: Grove, pp. ix–xv. Kaplan, Robert (2001) The Coming Anarchy: Shattering the Dreams of the Cold War, New York: Doubleday. Keeling, Kara (2007), The Witch’s Flight: The Cinematic, the Black Femme, and the Image of Common Sense, London/Durham: Duke University Press. Klobb, Colonel and Meynier, Lieutenant (2001) À la recherche de Voulet: Sur les traces sanglantes de la mission Afrique centrale, Paris: Cosmopole. Klobb, Arsène (1931) Un drame colonial: À la recherche de Voulet, Paris : Nouvelles Éditions Argo. Kouyaté, Dani (2004) ‘Note d’auteur’, http://sialefilm.com/fr/note_auteur.html. Accessed 15 May 2013. —— (2002) http://www.dani-kouyate.com/fr/presse/index-sia.php. Accessed 15 May 2013. Korman, Becky (2007) ‘A comparative look at Blood Diamond and Ezra’, http://www. offscreen.com/index.php/pages/essays/blood_diamond_and_ezra/. Accessed 16 June 2010 Krahe, Dialika (2010) ‘Nigeria’s silver screen: Nollywood’s film industry second only to Bollywood in scale’ (trans. Christopher Sultan), Spiegel.de, 23 April, http://www. spiegel.de/international/world/nigeria-s-silver-screen-nollywood-s- film-industrysecond-only-to-bollywood-in-scale-a-690344-3.html. Accessed 18 July 2013. Krings, Matthias and Okome, Onookome (eds) (2013) Global Nollywood: The Transnational Dimensions of an African Video Film Industry, Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Kruger, Loren (2006) ‘Filming the edgy city: Cinematic narrative and urban form in postapartheid Johannesburg’, Research in African Literatures, 37: 2, pp. 141–63. Larkin, Brian (2008), Signal and Noise: Media, Infrastructure, and Urban Culture in Nigeria, Durham/London: Duke University Press. Laremont, Ricardo René (2000) Islam and the Politics of Resistance in Algeria (1783– 1992), Trenton, NJ and Asmara, Eritrea: Africa World Press, pp. 169–72. Leggot, James Bell (2012) ‘Social realism’, in Emma Bell and Neil Mitchell (eds), Directory of World Cinema: Britain, Bristol, UK/Chicago, USA: Intellect, pp. 167–69.

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Lelièvre, Samuel (ed.) (2003) ‘Cinémas africains, une oasis dans le désert?’, CinémAction, 106, Paris: Corlet-Télérama. Lincoln, Sarah L (2004) ‘Trauma, testimony and nation-building in the “new” South Africa’, in Ann E Kaplan and Ban Wang (eds), Trauma and Cinema Cross-Cultural Explorations, Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, pp. 25–45. Lipkin, Steven (2005) ‘US docudrama and Movie of the Week’, in Alan Rosenthal and John Corner (eds), New Challenges for Documentary, 2nd edn, Manchester: Manchester University Press, pp. 453–62. MacDonald, Kevin (2010) ‘Kevin MacDonald’, Made in Scotland Film, Glasgow, Scotland: Scottish Screen, pp. 6–7. —— (2007) ‘Warped Love Story’, Interview, Sight & Sound, 17: 2, p. 35. Mbali, Mandisa (2004) ‘AIDS discourses and the South African state: Government denialism and post-apartheid AIDS policy-making’, Transformation, 54, pp. 104–22. McCluskey, Audrey Thomas (2009) ‘Interview with Khalo Matabane’, in Audrey Thomas McCluskey (ed.), The Devil You Dance With: Film Culture in the New South Africa, Chicago: University of Illinois Press, pp. 120-29. McNab, Geoffrey (2007) ‘Blood Diamond’, Sight & Sound, 17: 2, pp. 46–47. Maingard, Jacqueline (2009) ‘Love, Loss, Memory and Truth’, in Bhekizizwe Peterson and Ramadan Suleman, Zulu Love Letter: A Screenplay, Johannesburg: Wits University Press, pp. 5–17. —— (2007) South African National Cinema, London/New York: Routledge. Mamani, Abdoulaye (1980) Sarraounia, le drame de la reine magicienne, 1st edn, Paris: L’Harmattan. Marx, Lesley (2000) ‘Black and blue in the city of gold’, in Sarah Nuttall and Cheryl-Ann Michael (eds), Senses of Culture: South African Cultural Studies, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 127–40. McCain, Carmen (2011) ‘Champions of our time, The Figurine and Nigeria’s rebranding project at FESPACO (II)’, weeklytrust.com.ng, 19 March, http://weeklytrust.com. ng/index.php/my-thoughts-exactly/6480-champions-of-our-time-the-figurine-andnigerias-rebranding-project-at-fespaco-ii. Accessed 18 July 2013. Mendès-Leite, Rommel (2000) Le Sens de l’altérité: Penser les (homo) sexualités, Paris: L’Harmattan. Mercer, Kobena (2000) ‘Respondent to Boughedir’, in June Givanni (ed.), Symbolic Narratives. African Cinema: Audiences, Theory and the Moving Image, London: British Film Institute, pp. 145–56. Mhando, Martin and Kipeja, Laurian (2010) ‘Creative/cultural industries financing in Africa: A Tanzanian film value chain study’, Journal of African Cinemas, 2: 1, pp. 3–25. 392 Africa

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Millet, Raphaël (1998) ‘(In)dépendance des cinémas du Sud &/vs France’, Théorème, 9, Paris: Presses Universitaires de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, pp. 141–78. Mills, Jean and Mills, Richard (eds) (2000) Childhood Studies: A Reader in Perspectives on Childhood, London/New York: Routledge. Moi, Toril (ed.) (1987) French Feminist Thought, Oxford/New York: Blackwell. Moine, Raphaelle (2002) Les genres du cinéma, Paris: Nathan. Morton-Williams, P (1950) Cinema in Rural Nigeria: A Field Study of the Impact of Fundamental-Education Films on Rural Audiences in Nigeria, University College, Ibadan: West African Institute of Social and Economic Research. Moyer, Cara Lynn (2003) Re-Presenting Blackness, Independent Black Cinema in the United States and South Africa: A Comparative Perspective, MA thesis, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY. Mudimbe, VY (1988) The Invention of Africa: Gnosis, Philosophy and the Order of Knowledge, London: James Currey. Murphy, David and Williams, Patrick (2007) ‘Darrell James Roodt’, in Postcolonial African Cinema: Ten directors, Manchester: Manchester University Press, pp. 205-223. Murphy, David (2000) Sembène: Imagining Alternatives in Film and Fiction, Oxford, UK/ Trenton, NJ: James Currey/Africa World Press. Naficy, Hamid (2010 [2001]) An Accented Cinema: Exilic and Diasporic Filmmaking, 2nd edn, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Naremore, James (ed.) (2000) Film Adaptation, London: Athlone. Ndebele, Njabulo S (1997) Fools, Cape Town: Francolin Publishers. Niang, Sada (2014) Nationalist African Cinema: Legacy and Transformations, Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. —— (2002) Djibril Diop Mambéty, Paris: L’Harmattan. —— (ed.) (1996) Littérature et cinéma en Afrique francophone: Ousmane Sembène et Assia Djebar, Paris: L’Harmattan. Nichols, Bill (2001) Introduction to Documentary, Bloomington: Indiana University Press. —— (1994) Blurred Boundaries: Questions of Meaning in Contemporary Culture, Bloomington/Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. —— (1991) Representing Reality: Issues and Concepts in Documentary. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Notcutt, LA and Latham GC (1937) The African and the Cinema: An Account of the Work of the Bantu Educational Cinema Experiment During the Period March 1935 to May 1937, [Published for the International Missionary Council], London: Edinburgh House. Recommended Reading 393

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‘Notes de production’, Delwende (n.d.) www.commeaucinema.com/notes-de-prod/ delwende. Accessed 28 April 2014. Obaseki, don Pedro (2008) ‘Nigerian Video as the "Child of Television"’, in Pierre Barrot (ed.), Nollywood : the Video Phenomenon in Nigeria, Oxford/Ibadan/ Bloomington : James Currey/HEBN/Indiana University Press, pp. 72-76. First published in French as ‘La vidéo nigériane est née de la télévision, pas du cinéma’, in Pierre Barrot (ed.), Nollywood: Le phénomène vidéo au Nigeria, Paris: l’Harmattan. 2005. Okome, Onookome and Haynes, Jonathan (1995) Cinema and Social Change in West Africa, Jos, Nigeria: Nigerian Film Institute. Orbinski, James (2008) An Imperfect Offering: Humanitarian Action in the Twenty-First Century New York, New York: Walker & Company. Ouédraogo, Hamidou (1995) Naissance et évolution du Fespaco de 1969 à 1973, Ouagadougou: Self published. Peres, Phyllis (1997) Transculturation and Resistance in Lusophone African Narrative, Gainesville: University of Florida Press. Petty, Sheila (2009) ‘The rise of the African musical: Postcolonial disjunction in Karmen Geï and Madame Brouette’, in Blandine Stefanson (ed.), Journal of African Cinemas, 1: 1, pp. 95–112. —— (2008) Contact Zones: Memory, Origin, and Discourses in Black Diasporic Cinema, Detroit: Wayne State University Press. Petty, Sheila J (ed.) (1996) A Call to Action: The films of Ousmane Sembène, Westport, CT/Trowbridge, UK: Praeger/Flicks Books. Pfaff, Françoise (ed.) (2004) Focus on African Films, Bloomington/Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Pfaff, Françoise (1986) ‘The Films of Med Hondo: An African filmmaker in Paris,’ Jump Cut, no. 31, March, pp. 44–46, http://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/onlinessays/ JC31folder/HondoFilms.html. Accessed 14 May 2014. —— (1984) The Cinema of Ousmane Sembène: A Pioneer of African Film, Westport, CT: Greenwood. Philips, Deborah (2005) ‘The Althusserian moment revisited (again)’, in Mike Wayne (ed.), Understanding Film: Marxist Perspectives, London: Pluto, pp. 88–90. Powrie, Phil (1997) French Cinema in the 1980s: Nostalgia and the Crisis of Masculinity, Oxford: Clarendon. Reinwald, Brigitte (2006) ‘Tonight at the Empire? Cinema and Urbanity in Zanzibar, 1920s to 1960s’, Afrique & Histoire, 5: 1, pp. 81–109, http://www.cairn.info/revueafrique-et-histoire-2006-1-page-81.ht. Accessed 30 May 2013.

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Reynolds, Glenn (2009) ‘The Bantu Educational Kinema Experiment and the struggle for hegemony in British East and Central Africa, 1935–1937’, Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 29: 1, pp. 57–78. Rijsdijk, Ian-Malcolm (2014) ‘The Stick: a mental state’ in Lizelle Bisschoff and David Murphy (eds) Africa’s Lost Classics: New Histories of African Cinema, London: Legenda, pp. 102-106. Rosello, Mireille (2001) Postcolonial Hospitality: The Immigrant as Guest, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Rosenstone, Robert A (1995) Visions of the Past: The Challenge of Film to Our Idea of History, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Rouch, Jean (1995) ‘L’autre et le sacré: jeu sacré, jeu politique’, in CW Thompson (ed.), L’autre et le sacré : Surréalisme, cinéma, ethnologie, Paris: L’Harmattan., pp. 407– 32. Ruelle, Catherine, Tapsoba, Clément and Speciale, Alessandra (eds) (2005) Afriques 50: Singularités d’un cinéma pluriel, Paris: L’Harmattan. Sellers, William (1954) ‘Mobile cinema shows in Africa’, Colonial Cinema, 12: 4, pp. 75–81. Shafik, Viola (2007 [1998]) Arab Cinema: History and Cultural Identity, 2nd edition, Cairo: American University in Cairo Press. Shohat, Ella and Stam, Robert (1994) Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the Media, New York: Routledge. Sissako, Abderrahmane (2003a) ‘A screenplay is not a guarantee’, Interview, in M Bonetti and P Reddy (eds), Through African Eyes: Dialogues with the Directors, New York: 10th African Film Festival New York, pp. 37–42. —— (2003b) Interview ‘Filmer n’est pas un bonheur’, in S. Lelièvre (ed.), CinémAction 106 Cinémas africains, une oasis dans le désert, Paris: CorletTélérama, pp. 88-92. —— (2007a) ‘Finding our own Voices’, Sight & Sound, February, pp. 30–31. —— (2007b) ‘How the rich rob the poor’, Sight & Sound, February, p. 39. —— (2008) Tiya’s Dream [online video], http://www.youtube.com. watch?v=3JGjljTLYgA. Accessed 8 June 2010. —— (n.d.) ‘Rostov-Luanda: Notes for a Film’, http://www.ljudmila.org/~vuk/dx/ english/news/films/n-rostov.htm. Accessed 16 April 2013. Smyth, Rosaleen (1988) ‘The British Colonial Film Unit and sub-Saharan Africa, 1939– 1945’, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 8: 3, pp. 285–98. Souldiasporamove.com (n.d.) www.souldiasporamove.com. Accessed 22 July 2013

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Snyman, Wilhelm (2005) ‘Film shatters the myth of Rainbow Nation’, Cape Times, 8 August. Sow, Moussa (2013) ‘Ecocinema in Senegalese documentary film’, Journal of African Cinemas, 5: 1, pp. 3–18. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty (1988) ‘Can the subaltern speak?’, in Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (eds), Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, London: Macmillan, http://www.mcgill.ca/files/crclaw-discourse/Can_the_subaltern_speak. pdf. Accessed 25 June 2010. Stam, Robert (2003) ‘Beyond Third Cinema: The aesthetics of hybridity’, in W Dissanyake and A Guneratne (eds), Rethinking Third Cinema, London/New York: Routledge, pp. 31–48. Stam, Robert and Raengo, Alessandra (eds) (2005) Literature and Film: A Guide to the Theory and Practice of Film Adaptation, USA/MA: Malden; UK/Oxford and Australia/Carlton: Blackwell. Stefanson, Blandine (2009a) ‘Sembène écrivain, l’opposition homéopathique’, Africultures 76, Sembène Ousmane (1923–2007), pp. 106–12, http://www. africultures.com/php/index.php?nav=article&no=6982. Accessed 10 February 2013. —— (2009b) ‘Violence in Souleymane Cissé’s films: A cultural perspective’, in Blandine Stefanson (ed.), Journal of African Cinemas, 1: 2, pp. 189–205. —— (ed.) (2009) ‘Different genres for new needs’, Journal of African Cinemas, 1: 1. —— (ed.) (2009) ‘Aesthetics and ideology’, Journal of African Cinemas, 1: 2. Stewart, Ryan (2009) ‘Disgrace’, Slant Magazine, 17 September. http://www. slantmagazine.com/film/review/disgrace Accessed 11 June 2011. Sugnet, Charles J (2006) ‘Wolof orality, Senghorian literacy, and the status of cinema in Djibril Diop Mambéty’s La Petite vendeuse de soleil’, The French Review, 79: 6, pp. 1222–38. Sutherland-Addy, Esi (2000) ‘The Ghanaian video phenomenon: Thematic concerns and aesthetic resources’, in Kofi Anyidoho and James Gibbs (eds), FonTomFrom: Contemporary Ghanaian Literature, Theatre and Film, Amsterdam: Rodopi, pp. 265-77. Suriano, Maria (2007) ‘Mimi ni msanii, kioo cha jamii : Urban Youth Culture as seen through Bongo Flava and hip‐hop’, Swahili Forum, 14, pp. 207–23, http://www. ifeas.uni‐mainz.de/SwaFo/SF_14_12%20Suriano.pdf. Accessed 30 May 2013. Tarkovsky, Andrei (1989) Sculpting in Time: Reflections on the Cinema (trans. Kitty Hunter-Blair), London: Faber and Faber. Tapsoba, Clément (1997) ‘Un discours inachevé sur l’homosexualité’/‘An unfinished discourse on homosexuality’, Écrans d’Afrique, 20.

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Taylor, Kenn (2006) ‘A Film Review of Tsotsi’, Africa Resource, Africa Resource Center, 23 December. http://africaresource.com/index.php?option=com_ content&view=article&id=199:a-film-review-of-tsotsi&catid=113&Itemid=332 Accessed 11 June 2011. Tcheuyap, Alexie (2011) Postnationalist African Cinemas, Manchester: Manchester University Press. —— (2005) De l’écrit à l’écran: Les réécritures filmiques du roman africain francophone, Ottawa: Les Presses de l’Université d’Ottawa. Thackway, Melissa (2003) Africa Shoots Back: Alternative Perspectives in Sub-Saharan Francophone African Film, Bloomington/Cape Town/Oxford: Indiana University Press/ David Philip/James Currey. Tine, Alioune (1985) ‘Wolof ou français: Le choix de Sembène’, Notre Librairie, 81, pp. 43–50. Thompson, Katrina Daly (2011) ‘Imported alternatives: Changing Shona masculinities in Flame and Yellow Card’, in Lahoucine Ouzgane (ed.), Men in African Film and Fiction, Woodbridge, UK/Rochester, NY: James Currey, pp. 100–12. Tomaselli, Keyan K (1992) ‘The cinema of Jamie Uys’, in Johan Blignaut and Martin Botha (eds), Movies, Moguls, Mavericks: South African Cinema 1979–1991, Cape Town: Showdata, pp. 191–231. —— (2006) Encountering Modernity, Amsterdam: Rosenberg. Turan, Kenneth (2002) Sundance to Sarajevo: Film Festivals and the World They Made, Berkeley/Los Angeles/London: University of California Press. Ukadike, N Frank (ed) (2014) Critical Approaches to African Cinema Discourse, Lanham: Lexington Books. Ukadike, N Frank (2007), ‘Calling to account’, Sight & Sound, February, pp. 38–39. —— (2004) ‘The other voices of documentary: Allah Tantou and Afrique, je te plumerai’, in Françoise Pfaff (ed.), Focus on African Films, Bloomington/ Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, pp. 159-72. —— (2002) Questioning African Cinema: Conversations with African Filmmakers, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. —— (2000) ‘African Cinema’, in John Hill and Pamela Church Gibson (eds), World Cinema: Critical Approaches, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 185–91. —— (1998) ‘The Hyena’s last laugh: A conversation with Djibril Diop Mambéty’, Transition, 78, pp. 136–53, http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/i345810. Accessed 10 April 2013. —— (1994) Black African Cinema, Berkeley: University of California Press.

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Ungar, Steven (2007) ‘Whose voice? Whose film?: Jean Rouch, Oumarou Ganda and Moi, un noir’, in Joram Ten Brink (ed.), Building Bridges: The Cinema of Jean Rouch, London/New York: Wallflower., pp. 111-23. . Available on-line. http://www. maitres-fous.net/Ungar.html, Accessed 12 May 2014. Verster, François (2012) ‘Violence and Transformation: Limits to Ethical Strategies in Documentary Filmmaking.’, Unpublished paper presented at a Carnegie Resident Equity scholars Meeting, University of Witwatersrand, 22 October. Vieyra, Paulin Soumanou (1972) Sembène Ousmane Cinéaste, Paris: Présence Africaine. —— (1969) Le cinéma et l’Afrique, Paris: Présence Africaine. Waldron, Darren (2007) ‘From critique to compliance: Images of ethnicity in Salut cousin! (1996) and Chouchou (2003)’, Studies in European Cinema, 4: 1., pp. 35-47. WARA (West African Research Association in Dakar) (2013) ‘Saharan Crossroads Conferences’, http://www.bu.edu/wara/saharan-crossroads-conferences. Accessed 30 June 2013. Watson, Ruth (2007) ‘Beholding the colonial past in Denis’s Chocolat’, in Vivian BickfordSmith and Richard Mendelsohn (eds), Black + White in Colour: African History on Screen, Oxford: James Currey, pp. 185–202. Williams, Sally (2010) ‘Africa United: Set report’, The Telegraph, 4 October, http://www. telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/8030562/Africa-United-set-report.html. Accessed 25 April 2014. Wynchank, Anny (2003) Djibril Diop Mambéty ou le voyage du voyant, Ivry-sur-Seine: Éditions A3. Wotzke, Anders (2009) ‘Interview with ‘Disgrace’ director Steve Jacobs’, 14 June, http:// moviedex.com/interviews/interview-steve-jacobs-disgrace. Accessed 20 July 2012. Zack, Naomi (1993) Race and Mixed Race, Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

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AFRICAN cinema online 1. General information on African cinema Africa in Motion http://www.africa-in-motion.org.uk/ Africa in Motion: Scotland African Film Festival (Edinburgh/Glasgow, UK). Africa Past and Present http://afripod.aodl.org/ To better understand and read African films, a good knowledge of African history, culture and politics is necessary. This site, hosted by historian Peter Alegi and librarian Peter Limb at Michigan State University, presents African experiences through interviews, current events and discussions. Africa: Geography, Culture, History and Politics www.about.com; www.ask.com These two sites provide information on every aspect of African history, culture, politics or any related issue that the user desires to learn about. African Screens http://www.linkedin.com/company/african-screens A monthly online pan-African magazine aimed at creating a forum for debating the successes, challenges and aspirations of African film-makers. African Women in Cinema http://africanwomenincinema.blogspot.com/ Hosted by Beti Ellerson, this bilingual blog (English and French) contains interviews with African women film-makers and comments pertaining to women in the media landscape in Africa. The site also provides some information on works that are addressing women’s condition or the representations of women in cinema.

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Africiné http://www.africine.org/ This French (and occasionally English) language website was created in 2004 by members of the African Federation of Film Critics and is managed by Thierno Ibrahima Dia. It offers many interviews and film reviews written predominantly by journalists and film critics from the African continent. There is a considerable contribution from North African critics. This site lists the details of the cast and production of the films, with links to Africultures. Africultures http://www.africultures.com/ This French (and English) language resource site is owned by film critic Olivier Barlet, who interviews African film-makers and posts numerous reviews of recently released African films. Reviewers are welcome. The site, which links with Africiné, is a source of information complementing Barlet’s books. Selected articles are also published in Africultures, a themed quarterly journal. Ascleiden http://www.ascleiden.nl/?q=content/asc-catalogue Ascleiden (Afrika Studie Centrum at Leiden) is a multilingual (English/Dutch/French/ German) African studies database that is free of charge. It contains titles (and indepth abstracts) of monographs, journal articles and chapters from edited works. Clap Noir http://www.clapnoir.org/ Clap Noir (France) is an association devoted to the electronic promotion and dissemination of African film and other audio-visual publications. The well-presented site with synopses, credits and stills as well as film-makers’ filmographies, is in French. H-AfrLitCine https://networks.h-net.org/h-afrlitcine H-AfrLitCine is a member of H-Net Reviews in the Humanities and Social Sciences, which is an online scholarly review resource. Subscription to the H-AfrLitCine list is free. This powerful source of information offers African film reviews and reviews of publications about African cinema. Images Francophones http://www.imagesfrancophones.org/ This French language site is a source of information about African films sponsored by Fonds francophone audiovisuel du Sud, also known as Fonds Sud, a French government agency created in 1988 to replace the discontinued Ministry for Cooperation. Lola Kenya Screen Film Forum www.lolakenyascreen.org/ Lola Kenya Screen (‘See films in Kenya’) aims to seek, identify, nurture and promote creative talent among children and youth in media and cultural events. The site focuses on Kenya.

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Movies that make you think http://moviessansfrontiers.blogspot.com This English language website, which is owned by Indian film critic Jugu Abraham, is not specifically devoted to Africa, but promotes films from developing countries, including African ones. The reviews address meaning and message rather than trends in film genres.

2. Distributors (The) African Film Library www.africanfilmlibrary.com This online rental library is a division of Electronic Media Network (M-Net, South Africa). It has a large choice of African films classified into genres. Africafilms. Tv http://www.africafilms.tv Africafilms. Tv (Senegal) is a fair, cooperative initiative and is totally managed from Africa. It sells feature films, soaps, documentaries, filmed concerts and shows from all over Africa and the diaspora. It is owned by IDmage, Studio Sankara (Didier Awadi, Dakar) and Sarama Films (Salif Traoré, Bamako). The catalogue holds many titles of well known and lesser known African films. ArtMattan Productions (New York) http://www.africanfilm.com/ In 1993, ArtMattan Productions launched the first African Diaspora Film Festival (ADFF) in New York. ArtMattan distributes films that focus on the human experience of black people in Africa, the Caribbean, North and South America and Europe. California Newsreel http://newsreel.org/about-California-Newsreel California Newsreel is a distributor of a substantial collection of African feature and documentary films that are intended for college and university students of film studies and social sciences. The subtitle of this well-presented site – ‘Film and video for social change since 1968’ – spells out its pedagogical aim and offers information under various subheadings as well as reviews of DVDs for sale. Doc and Film International http://www.docandfilm.com/catalogue_prc_en.cfm This distribution company attends all major markets and festivals around the globe in order to ensure maximum international exposure for over 800 titles. The African theme list holds 77 titles, mainly documentaries. Icarus Films (Brooklyn, New York) http://homevideo.icarusfilms.com/subjects/africa.html Icarus Films, created in 1978, is a leading distributor of documentary films. This distributor addresses key areas of political, social and cultural concern. Documentaries about Africa are listed with a synopsis in the Subject Index: Africa.

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Global Films http://catalogue.globalfilm.org/films-by-region/africa.html?p=1 The Global Film Initiative (San Francisco) promotes cross-cultural understanding through the medium of cinema. The African list has some twenty films, in particular from lusophone Africa. Marfilmes (Lisbon) http://www.marfilmes.com/ Marfilmes is an international sales agent that specializes in the diffusion and restoration of feature films and documentaries from Portugal and Africa. Marfilmes promotes the essentials of African film history. It is an English/Portuguese website. Pyramide Films (Paris) http://www.pyramidefilms.com/ Not a specifically African film distribution, but it produces and promotes African works, in particular Un Homme qui crie/A Screaming Man (Mahamat-Saleh Haroun, 2010).

3. Film festivals (in alphabetical order of cities that host African film festivals) (Apt, France) Festival des cinémas d’Afrique du pays d’Apt (Fcapa) http://www.africapt-festival.fr/ November, since 2002. (Besançon, France) Lumières d’Afrique http://www.lumièresdafrique.com An African cinema festival organized by ACAPA (Association pour la Promotion des Arts et des Cultures d’Afrique), November. Created in 1996, held annually since 2003. (Cannes, France) Festival du Film Panafricain de Cannes/Cannes International Panafrican Film Festival http://www.festivaldufilmpanafricain.org/ April, since 2003. (Carthage, Tunisia) JCC – Journées Cinématographiques de Carthage/Carthage Film Festival http://www.jccarthage.com/eng/index.php November, since 1966. Held biennially on even years since 1970, alternating with FESPACO. (Cordoba, Spain) Festival de Cine Africano Córdoba/African Film Festival (FCAT) http:// www.fcat.es/FCAT_en/ : October, yearly. This Spanish/English/French website includes a Film Archive of over 700 African films that have been programmed (and some other 4000 films dealing with Africa), which have been sub-titled in Spanish and can be viewed at Al Tarab’s headquarters, the NGO organizing the Cordoba African Film Festival (formally held in Tarifa). (Durban, South Africa) Durban International Film Festival http://www.cca.ukzn.ac.za/ July, since 1979.

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(Edinburgh/Glasgow, UK) Africa in Motion: Scotland African Film Festival http://www.africa-in-motion.org.uk/ October/November, since 2006. (Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso) FESPACO (Festival Panafricain de Cinéma et de Télévision de Ouagadougou/Panafrican Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou http://www.fespaco-bf.net/ February/March, since 1969. It is held biennially on odd years, alternating with JCC – Carthage Film Festival. (Harare, Zimbabwe) Zimbabwe International Film Festival http://www.zimfilmfest.co.zw/ September/October, since 1997. (Khouribga, Morocco) Festival du cinéma africain de Khouribga http://festivalkhouribga.com June, since 1997. (Lausanne, Switzerland) Festival Cinémas d’Afrique - Lausanne http://www.cine-afrique.ch August, since 2006 (London, UK) Film Africa http://www filmafrica.org.uk November, since 2008. (Maputo, Mozambique) Dockanema Festival do Filme Documentário/Dockanema Documentary Film Festival http://www.signis.net/article.php3?id_article=2754 November, since 2006. (Marrakech, Morocco) Festival International du Film de Marrakech/International Film Festival of Marrakech http://en.festivalmarrakech.info/ December, since 2001. (Milano, Italy) Festival Cinema Africano, d’Asia e America Latina http://www.festivalcinemaafricano.org This Festival celebrates Africa, Asia, and Latin America and is held in May, since 1991.This website is in Italian. (Montreal, Canada) Vues d’Afrique http://www.vuesdafrique.com/ April, since 1984. (Namur, Belgique) Festival International du Film Francophone (FIFF) http://www.fiff.be/ September/October, since 1985. Twin festival with FESPACO (Ouagadougou) since 1988. (Nantes, France) Festival des 3 Continents: Cinémas d’Afrique, d’Amérique Latine et d’Asie http://www.3continents.com/fr/ November, since 1979. African Cinema Online 403

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(New York, USA) New York African Film Festival http://www.africanfilmny.org April, since 1990. (New York, USA) African Diaspora International Film Festival http://nyadiff.org/ November/December, since 1990. (Ouidah, Benin) Quintessence: Festival International du Film de Ouidah http://www.festival-ouidah.org January, since 2002. (Portland, USA) Cascade Festival of African Films http://www.africanfilmfestival.org February, since 1991. (Verone, Italy) Festival di Cinema Africano http://festivalafricano.altervista.org November, since 1980. (Yaoundé, Cameroon) Écrans Noirs/Black Screens http://www.écrans-noirs.org June, since 1996 (created by film-maker Bassek Ba Kobhio). (Zanzibar, Tanzania) Zanzibar International Film Festival (ZIFF) http://www.ziff.or.tz/ July, since 1997.

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TEST YOUR KNOWLEDG Directory of World Cinema

Questions

1.

Give the acronym of the best known and most influential film festival in francophone Africa and the capital where it is held on odd years.

2.

Which African film-maker liked to refer to himself as ‘l’aîné des anciens’ (‘the elder of the elders’) and is often quoted as the ‘father of African cinema’?

3.

Some African film titles are African language words that become internationally known. Quote two films (director, country) that have this sort of African title.

4.

Depression is often associated with western materialism and stress. Name at least two African films in which a character finally gets out of depression.

5.

Two African film-makers from francophone Africa have been compared with Jean-Luc Godard for their provocative montage. Name one and give his country of origin.

6.

Name the actor from Burkina Faso who, in spite of his light build, plays the role of tyrannical characters in Roger Gnoan M’Bala’s Adanggaman and Sembène’s Moolaadé.

7.

Name the first African film to deal solely and explicitly with the theme of homosexuality, and in particular, gay male sexuality.

8.

Name at least two films which deal with the theme of immigration or emigration, either explicitly or implicitly.

9.

Who is the director of the Algerian film Rachida, which deals with women’s issues in the 1990s during the rise of religious movements and terrorism?

10. Name at least two musicals which focus on the fate of women in post-colonial African societies. 11. Which film is considered the first documentary in sub-Saharan Africa? 12. Name at least two performative documentaries made by African film-makers. 13. Which film deals with Africans and their use of digital technology? 14. Name the film that deals with the effects of the uranium strip mining industry in sub-Saharan Africa. 15. What category of the French population is satirized in two African diaspora comedies reviewed in this volume? Give the two titles too.

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16. Name the South African comedy that was the most successful abroad yet the most dismissive of the anti-apartheid sentiment at the time of its release. 17. What popular film genre do Tampy Police Station and Les Bobodiouf belong to? 18. Which film by Algerian director Lakhdar-Hamina appears to be the comic version of The Battle of Algiers (Pontecorvo, 1966), the famous epic of the Independence War? 19. In the 1990s, flamboyant Senegalese actor Thierno Ndyaye Doss (deceased in 2012) used to be addressed by the name of the title role of one of Sembène’s films. Give the Wolof title and its meaning. 20. Cameroonian director Jean-Marie Teno is reputed for his politically committed documentaries. What is the title of his only feature film and what does the title mean in the context of the film? 21. Who made a feature film entirely in isiZulu on the subject of the AIDS pandemic and its aftermath in South Africa? Give the title (director, year of release). 22. Which film opens with children dancing on a rooftop overlooking an African capital city, blaring music and a sense of transnational space? Give the title, its meaning, as well as the city and country where the film is set. 23. Although there are many African films devoted to children’s lives, only two films (both reviewed in this volume) won the FESPACO Golden Stallion. Name at least one. 24. What Senegalese director is often contrasted with Ousmane Sembène because of his metaphoric rather than realist approach, in particular when reality is seen through children’s eyes? 25. Unfortunately, this volume has only one review of a film from Zimbabwe. Give the title and director who is also well known as a writer. 26. Who directed a film based on South African novelist Allan Stratton’s Chanda’s Secrets? Give the title of the film and the director’s name. 27. In what African film does a young boy look to Melville’s Moby Dick for guidance and inspiration? Give the title of the film (director, country). 28. Two famous African actors playing main roles in Sissoko’s La Genèse are now deceased. Who were they and what roles did they play? 29. Quote the literary work that inspired Senegalese Djibril Diop Mambéty for a sequel to his postcolonial drama Touki-Bouki? 30. Who plays the role of the failed teacher in The Silence of the Forest (Central African Republic)? Which African country does this actor come from, and name at least one other film where he has a lead role. 31. Which film relating to the Independence of the Belgian Congo was shot entirely outside the Congo? Test Your Knowledge 407

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32. Which film adaptation of a famous historical novel about the Algerian War of Independence was overall faithful except for the demotion of women as freedom fighters? 33. What adjective would characterize the main character’s (a female journalist) attitude to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in Ramadan Suleman’s Zulu Love letter? 34. What does Sankofa, the symbolic title of Haile Gerima’s famous film about the Atlantic slave trade, refer to? 35. Judging from the films reviewed in Chapter 8, what is the favoured approach among African directors to screening war? 36. In western cinema, war is a favourite topic for multipartite documentaries, in the style of the 28-episode BBC The World at War (1973-4, first episode directed by Hugh Ragget). What are the favourite genres in the representation of war in this edition’s selection of African films? 37. Name one African film (director, country) that examines ethnic violence in Africa and beyond from an African viewpoint. 38. In the world of African cinema, who is Maria João Ganga? 39. What non-professional actor (from which country) featured in Jean Rouch’s documentary I, a Black Man and later became one of the founding fathers of African cinema? 40. Who confessed in what documentary: ‘once a suicide attempt [i.e. ‘my’] was based on the fact that I realized that I could never get Rwanda out of my system’? 41. What historical location does the subheading ‘Return to Gorée’ refer to in Borgeaud’s documentary on Senegalese singer Youssou N’Dour? 42. Who does Kevin MacDonald’s Last King of Scotland refer to and who plays this role? 43. What film (director, country), whose narrative is entirely based on magic, was the first African film that won the Jury Prize in Cannes in 1987? 44. Give the title and country of production of a docu-drama from a Central African country, in which scientific explanations, in the context of an accident, are presented as undesirable because they deny spiritual belief in salvation. 45. Name one African film (director, country) in which magic is clearly used to destroy rather than save a woman.

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46. What African film (director, country) was nominated in four different sections for the Academy Award in 2010? 47. What is title of the first well-known Nigerian video-film? (Give its date of release.) 48. What object serves as a metaphor for treasured values, in particular for women’s strength in Ifeanyi Onyeabor’s My Mother’s Heart, a popular video-film from Ghana? 49. Who is considered to be the best known Nigerian video-film director? 50. To outsiders, film titles in an African language are hard to remember. This applies to Araromire, a Nigerian video-film. What does this word stand for? Is the English title different?

answers on next page Test Your Knowledge 409

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Answers 1.

FESPACO, Ouagadougou

2.

Ousmane Sembène (1928–2007, Senegal)

3. Xala (Sembène, Senegal); Moolaadé (Sembène, Senegal); Yeelen (Cissé, Mali); Daratt (Haroun, Chad) 4.

Yellow House (Algeria); L’Afrance (Senegal); Abouna (Chad)

5.

Jean-Pierre Bekolo (Cameroon) OR Djibril Diop Mambéty (Senegal)

6.

Rasmane Ouédraogo

7. Dakan

29. Hyènes, based on Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s The Visit 30. Eriq Ebouaney (Cameroon); Lumumba; Disgrace 31. Raoul Peck’s Lumumba 32. Opium and the Stick 33. sceptical (cautious, distrustful) 34. A bird of passage in the Akan culture 35. Indirect (more concerned with post-war suffering than military action) 36. Fiction, drama, docu-drama

8.

Heremakono: Waiting for Happiness, Bye Bye Africa, O Sun, Touki-Bouki

37. Night of Truth, by Fanta Régina Nacro (Burkina Faso)

9.

Yamina Bachir Chouikh

38. The first Angolan-born woman to direct a feature film, Hollow City

10. Nha Fala and Madame Brouette 11. Afrique-­sur-­Seine 12. The Journey of Cape Verde; Black Business 13. Afro@Digital 14. Arlit, second Paris 15. Migrants in Black Micmac and in Hi, Cousin! 16. The Gods Must be Crazy 17. The TV series

39. Oumarou Ganda, from Niger 40. (UN) General Roméo Dallaire in Shake Hands with the Devil: The Journey of Roméo Dallaire 41. Gorée Island, the Atlantic slave trade port, off Dakar, Senegal 42. Ugandan dictator Idi Amin, played by Forest Whitaker

18. Hassan ‘Terro’

43. Yeelen, Brightness (Souleymane Cissé, Mali)

19. Guelwaar (The noble man)

44. Mystery Mountain (Malawi)

20. Clando: clandestine taxi driver

22. Dôlé, Money is set in Libreville, Gabon

45. Sia, the Dream of the Python (Dani Kouyaté, Burkina Faso) OR And They Said… the Devil is a Woman (Hafsa ZinaïKoudil, Algeria)

23. Ali Zaoua (Morocco); Ezra (Nigeria)

46. District 9 (Neill Blomkamp, South Africa)

24. Djibril Diop Mambéty

47. Living in Bondage 1 (1992)

25. Everyone’s Child (Tsitsi Dangarembga)

48. The heart-shaped golden locket handed down from mother to daughter

21. Yesterday (Darrell Roodt, 2004)

26. Life, Above All (Oliver Schmitz) 27. Sleepwalking Land by Teresa Prata, Mozambique 28. Balla Moussa Keïta (Hamor, the farmer) and Sotigui Kouyaté (Jacob, the pastoralist)

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49. Tunde Kelani 50. Araromire is a Yoruba goddess. The English title is The Figurine

notes on contributors Directory of World Cinema

Rosa Abidi is an Algerian-born film curator and critic specializing in African and Arab cinemas. She has curated for various festivals (BFI Southbank, Ciné Lumière and Film Africa), and is a programme advisor to Festival CinéSud in France. Abidi manages the Maghreb Cinema Series and is Founding Director of the London Maghreb Film Festival. Jugu Abraham was a staff film critic for the Hindustan Times group of publications in New Delhi, India, from 1978 to 1985. His subsequent career in non-profit international agricultural research did not diminish his interest in world cinema and he is the sole author of the blog Movies that make you think (http://moviessansfrontiers.blogspot. com/). He has attended important film festivals and interviewed scores of reputed movie directors. Michel Amarger is a film-maker, film critic and radio journalist for Radio France Internationale (RFI). He has written numerous film and film-festival reviews in various cinema journals and on websites devoted to African cinema (Africiné, Africultures). He directed (with Frédérique Devaux) many documentaries and experimental films. He is cofounder of the Fédération Africaine des Critiques de Cinéma and has directed, among other films, Regards de femmes (Production FCAPA, 2005). Dr Zélie Asava is Joint-Programme Director of the BA in Video and Film at Dundalk Institute of Technology (Dublin), where she teaches courses on film and media theory. Her monograph is entitled The Black Irish Onscreen: Representing Black and Mixed-Race Irish Identities on Film and TV (Peter Lang, 2013). She has published essays in various journals and essay collections, including Masculinity and Irish Popular Culture: Tiger’s Tales (Palgrave MacMillan, 2014) and Oxford Bibliographies Online: Cinema and Media Studies (Oxford University Press, 2013). Saër Maty Bâ, PhD, is a researcher, lecturer and writer in film studies, visual culture studies, and critical theory. His articles and reviews on African cinema have appeared in journals like Transnational Cinemas, Film International and Ecquid Novi: African Journalism Studies. Bâ is co-editor of the book De-Westernizing Film Studies (Routledge, 2012) and a general editor of The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism, 2 Volumes (forthcoming, 2014). Olivier Barlet is editor of the journal Africultures and of the bi-monthly Afriscope. He manages the website of the same names as well as other e-publications devoted to African cultures such as the association Afrimages and the data bank Sudplanète. He manages the Images Plurielles collection at L’Harmattan publishers in Paris, where he authored Les cinemas d’Afrique noire: Le regard en question (1996) (translated into several languages) and Les cinemas d’Afrique des années 2000: Perspectives critiques (2012, forthcoming in English in 2014).

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Brett Bell is a Canadian film-maker and writer, as well as an instructor at the University of Regina’s Department of Film. He has made a number of short films in a variety of forms and genres, with more than a hundred film-festival screenings across the globe. Samuel Benagr is a lecturer at the School of Performing Arts, University of Ghana, Legon in Accra. He teaches African Theories of Drama, Analysis and Interpretation as well as Media and Society. Benagr’s research area is cinema and new technologies focusing on West African video-films. His current project is: ‘A Humble Plea To Whom It May Concern; Kwaw Ansah’s Love of AA, an allegory for negotiating peace between feuding factions (in Ghana)’. Brahim Benbouazza was born in Rabat, Morocco where he taught constitutional and administrative law as a lecturer at the Law Faculty of Rabat. He holds an MBA from the Université de Sherbrooke and is presently a researcher at the University of Regina. In April 2013, he was the organizer of the following colloquium at the Institut français/ University of Regina: Le printemps arabe et la problématique du changement/The Arab Spring and the Problematics of Change. Yifen T Beus received her PhD in comparative literature from Indiana University. She is currently professor of cultural studies at Brigham Young University – Hawaii. Her research interests include postcolonial studies, narratology in cinema, film festivals and screen culture, and cinema and modernity. Her research areas also cover sinophone and francophone cinemas. Karine Blanchon is currently Research Associate at the Laboratoire Francophonie, Education, Diversité (FRED) at the University of Limoges (France). She works on cultural representation in African media. She authored Les Cinémas de Madagascar 1937–2007 (L’Harmattan, 2009). Her biography of Malagasy film-maker Benoît Ramampy is forthcoming in 2014. Michael Carklin is Principal Lecturer in Drama and Film Studies at the University of South Wales, in Cardiff, UK. His teaching and research focuses on live performance and cinema across the African continent, including applied theatre and media practices. He has a particular research interest in childhood in African cinema. Michelle Chilcoat is Associate Professor of French and Francophone Studies and Co-director of Film Studies at Union College (Schenectady, NY). Her research and publications explore topics ranging from constructions of race and gender identities in colonial France to representations of brain sex in French Enlightenment philosophy and cyberpunk film. Marie-Magdeleine Chirol is Professor of French at Whittier College, California, where she teaches French and African cinema and literature. Her research interests comprise the study of ruins and African cinema. She is the author of Gaston Kaboré: Conteur et visionnaire du cinéma africain (Presses Universitaires de Lyon, 2011) and L’Imaginaire de la ruine dans: À la recherche du temps perdu de Marcel Proust (Summa, 2001).  Samba Diop is Professor of French and postcolonial studies at Kwara State University (Ilorin, Nigeria). He has edited books on African literature and published numerous articles on orality. Diop edited and translated into French and English various Wolof epics (Ndiadiane Ndiaye; El Hadj Omar Tall). He also authored Discours nationaliste et identité ethnique à travers le roman sénégalais (Silex, 1999); African Francophone

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Cinema (University Press of the South, 2004); and Oralité africaine: Entre esthétique et poétique (L’Harmattan, 2012). Angéline Dubois is Coordinator of the Centre canadien de recherche sur les francophonies en milieu minoritaire (Canadian Research Centre for French in Minority Settings) at the Institut Français of the University of Regina in Canada. Following her studies in law and political science in France, Ireland and Belgium, Angéline became involved in non-governmental organizations in Europe and in Central Africa. Colin Dupré is a historian specializing in African cinemas. He graduated with a history degree (Université de Toulouse Le Mirail) and completed a MA in cultural mediation (Université de Lorraine, Metz). In 2012, he published the first history of the Panafrican Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou: Le Fespaco, une affaire d’État(s) 1969– 2009 (L’Harmattan). He also writes for Africultures, Journal of Film Preservation (FIAF), InaGlobal (National Audiovisual Institute). As of May 2014, he is Advisor on film and culture at the Institut Français in Antananarivo (Madagascar) Alexander Fisher is Lecturer in Film Studies at Queen’s University, Belfast, where he teaches courses in world cinemas, postcolonialism, and film music. He has published widely on sub-Saharan African cinemas, most notably with regard to their uses of music in relation to cinematic form, and recently co-led the two-year networking project ‘World Cinema On Demand: Film Distribution and Education in the Era of Streaming Media’, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. David Gane is a screenwriting instructor at the University of Regina, Canada. He focuses on representations of memory and narrative in his fiction and scriptwriting. His short story ‘But We Do It Anyway’ was published online with Briarpatch (17 April 2012) and his thesis project ‘Black Bear’ is presently in scriptwriting competitions. Sarah Hamblin is Assistant Professor of Film Studies and English at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. Her research focuses on global art cinema, political film, and graphic literatures, emphasizing the relationship between aesthetics, affect and radical politics. Her articles and reviews have appeared in Black Camera, Cinema Journal, Film and History and Studies in Popular Culture, and she is currently completing a book manuscript on revolutionary film-making and the rise of global art cinema in the 1960s. Madelaine Hron is Associate Professor in the English and Film Studies Department at Wilfrid Laurier University in Canada. She is the author of Translating Pain: Immigrant Suffering in Literature and Culture (University of Toronto Press, 2009), as well as various publications related to postcolonialism, trauma and human rights issues in literature and film. Hron’s current book project explores the literary, cinematic and cultural representations of the Rwanda post-genocide. Maria Loftus lectures in French cinema, literature and language at the School of Applied Language and Intercultural Studies, Dublin City University. Her research interests pertain to African cinema, transnational cinema, the aesthetics of revolution, as well as the use of smartphone technology to assist second-language acquisition. Dr Liani Maasdorp has been a lecturer at the University of Cape Town’s Centre for Film and Media Studies since completing her PhD on self-reflexive editing devices in a selection of South African documentary films. She previously worked in the television

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industry as director and editor. Her work has been broadcast on SABC, National Geographic and the Discovery Channel. She has written for academic journals, travel and film magazines and has lectured on fiction and non-fiction film at various film schools. Donna-Lynne McGregor (d.2012) was a screenwriter who received her MFA in Film and Video Production from the University of Regina in 2007. She was the recipient of the University of Regina Governor General’s Academic Gold Medal in 2008. In partnership with co-writer Chris Cunningham, she wrote several half-hour comedies, TV series pilots and feature-length thrillers and dramas, several of which garnered awards such as: Canada Feature Film Fund and Horizon ’95 from Telefilm Canada; Superchannel Script Development Award; SaskFILM Hotspots Screenwriting Competition; and a 1997 Gemini Award Nomination for Best Half-hour Drama for Dirty Money (1998). Allison McGuffie received her PhD from the University of Iowa and was a Postdoctoral Fellow of Media for Social Change at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Geneva, and New York. She is currently Adjunct Professor of Film Studies at Portland State University, Portland, Oregon. Her current research focuses on nonprofit educational film-making in Africa. Dr Martin Mhando is Associate Professor of Media Studies at Murdoch University (Australia) and co-editor of Journal of African Cinemas. He heads the Participatory Media Hub of the National Academy for Screen and Sound (NASS) at Murdoch University. His research areas include indigenous cinema, festival studies and African cinemas. He presently is Director of the Zanzibar International Film Festival (ZIFF), Tanzania. As a film-maker, Mhando has won awards, in particular the Best Film Award at the first ZIFF Festival (1998) for Maangamizi, the Ancient One (2000). Peter Mitunda is a lecturer in Broadcast Journalism at University of Malawi, Faculty of Media and Education. He holds an MA degree in International Broadcast Journalism from Birmingham City University, UK, 2001. He is now coordinator of a community radio project at the University of Malawi Polytechnic in Blantyre, targeting rift valley districts to mitigate educational, social, political, economy and health challenges. Jonathan Mitchell is completing a research degree at Queen Mary University of London in Cinematic Deconstruction in sub-Saharan African celluloid and video-films. Cara Moyer-Duncan holds a PhD in African Studies from Howard University and is a Scholar-in-Residence at Emerson College where she teaches courses on African cinema, literature and society. She has authored papers on contemporary South African cinema for Critical Interventions: Journal of African Art History and Visual Culture, History Compass and Art and Trauma in Africa: Representations of Reconciliation in Film, Art, Music and Literature. Sada Niang is Professor of French and Francophone studies at the University of Victoria (Canada). He authored Djibril Diop Mambéty, un cinéaste à contre-courant (L’Harmattan, 2002, translated into Spanish in 2011) and Nationalist African Cinema: Legacy and Transformations (Lexington Books, 2014). In 2010, he co-edited, with Samba Gadjigo, Viatique pour l’éternité: Un hommage à Ousmane Sembène (Éditions Papyrus Afrique). He also co-edited two special issues of Présence Francophone on African cinemas. 414 Africa

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Victoria Pasley, formerly Associate Professor of History at Clayton State University in the United States, recently returned to the United States after teaching at the Community College of Qatar, in Doha for two years. She holds a PhD in Caribbean/ Latin American History from the University of Houston and an MA in Film and Video from American University. Her research focuses on the history of Third Cinema in Africa and its legacies, focusing on colonialism, globalization, migration and social justice. Sheila Petty is Professor of media studies at the University of Regina (Canada). She has written extensively on issues of cultural representation, identity and nation in African and African diasporic screen media, and has curated film, television and digital media exhibitions for galleries across Canada. She is author of Contact Zones: Memory, Origin and Discourses in Black Diasporic Cinema (Wayne State University Press, 2008). Riché Richardson is Associate Professor in the Africana Studies and Research Center at Cornell University. She is a scholar of African American literature with additional specialties in American literature, Southern studies and gender studies. Her first book is entitled Black Masculinity and the U.S. South: From Uncle Tom to Gangsta (University of Georgia Press, 2007). Since 2005, she has served as co-editor with Jon Smith of the New Southern Studies book series at the University of Georgia Press. Ian-Malcolm Rijsdijk is a senior lecturer in the Centre for Film and Media Studies and director of the African Cinema Unit at the University of Cape Town. He has published on Terrence Malick in the journal Film & History and in the book Terrence Malick: Film and Philosophy (Thomas Tucker and Stuart Kendall, eds, Continuum International Publishing Group, 2011). He has also published articles on South African film, wildlife documentary, and literary fiction, and has written for the stage and television. He is currently working on early South African cinema and South Africa imagined in international films. Brett AB Robinson recently completed an MA in Interdisciplinary Studies with a major in Media Studies at the University of Regina (Canada). His work utilizes an interdisciplinary approach to the critical analysis of media and its cultural influence. Robinson plans to pursue a PhD and continue his research in media studies. Brigitte Rollet has taught film at the University of Portsmouth (1991–2000) and at the University of London Institute in Paris (2000–11). She writes on French cinema and television and has co-authored Cinema and the Second Sex: Women’s Filmmaking in France in the 1980s and 1990s (2001). She edited ‘40 years of women filmmaking in francophone Africa: 1972–2012’ (Journal of African Cinemas [2012], Volume 4, Issue 2.). She is currently Associate Researcher at Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin and is a part-time lecturer in film and gender studies at Sciences-Po (Paris). J Coplen Rose is a PhD candidate at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. His areas of interest include postcolonial studies, African drama, humour studies and nationalism. Currently his dissertation analyses contemporary dramatic responses to social and political changes in post-apartheid South Africa. Mazin Saffou graduated as a BA Honours Film Studies major and a BA English major from the University of Regina. He is currently completing an MA in Media Studies at the University of Regina, with an MA thesis on the American television series The Wire (HBO, 2002-2008, 60 episodes, Baltimore).

Notes on Contributors 415

Boukary Sawadogo is Assistant Professor of French and Francophone Studies at Marlboro College in Vermont, USA. He is the author of Les Cinémas francophones ouest africains, 1990–2005 (L’Harmattan, 2013). His research interests include gender and sexuality in francophone African film, francophone women’s autobiographical narratives, humour in West African film and the issues of immigration. Naomi Scapinello graduated from Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Canada in 2010 with an MA in English. With a passion for human rights, she found a focus for her studies in literature and film. Since graduation, she has remained active in human rights initiatives including Canadian immigration, refugees in Canada and Canadian First Nations people’s rights. Dr Stefan Sereda is a sessional lecturer in the Department of English and Film Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University, where his dissertation, ‘Cinema in scare quotes: Postmodern aesthetics and economics in the American art cinema’, received the Faculty of Arts Gold Medal. He contributed to the journal ARIEL (A Review of International English Literature) and to the volumes Viewing African Cinema in the Twenty-First Century- Art Films and the Nollywood Video Revolution (Mahir Saul and Ralph Austen, eds, Ohio University Press, 2010) and The Memory Effect (Russell Kilbourn and Eleanor Ty, eds, Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2013. Blandine Stefanson is a visiting research fellow at the University of Adelaide. Her current research interest is African cinema and the representation of history. She is editor (with Issiaka Mandé) of Les Historiens africains et la globalisation/African Historians and Globalization (Paris Karthala, 2004). She also edited ‘Renewal in African cinema: Genres and Aesthetics’, the inaugural volume of Journal of African Cinemas, 2009 (Issues 1 and 2). Jean Olivier Tchouaffé is Visiting Assistant Professor at Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas (USA). He teaches classes in communication and film studies. He is currently working on a book on Cameroonian cinema and grassroots democratic activism, forthcoming in 2014 with Intellect. Dr Astrid Treffry-Goatley is a researcher at the Africa Centre for Health and Population Studies, University of KwaZulu-Natal. Her interests include South African cinema, ethnomusicology, digital storytelling, research ethics, and the application of participatory methodologies in health research. She published (with Mduduzi Mahlinza and John Imrie) ‘Public engagement with HIV in a rural South African context’, Critical Arts: South-North Cultural and Media Studies (27: 1, 2013), pp. 112–26. Melanie Wilmink is an MA candidate in Interdisciplinary Fine Arts at the University of Regina and a recipient of the Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Masters Scholarship. With a background as Programming Coordinator for the Calgary Society of Independent Filmmakers and the $100 Film Festival, her research focuses on cinematic curation and the role of space as a key to audience engagement with moving image art. Visit www.mwilmink.wordpress.com.

416 Africa

Ken Wilson lectures in English and Film Studies at the University of Regina. His first play, The Interview, won the 2010 Dorothy White Prize and was produced at the Ottawa Fringe Festival in 2011, and his site-specific audio collage, Cyclone Podwalk, was presented as part of the 2012 Spiralling Forces event in Regina. A past president of the Saskatchewan Filmpool Cooperative, he has served as editor of the Filmpool’s Splice Magazine and has contributed site-specific film and performance text to several Saskatchewan-based arts events, including Crossfiring/Mama Wetotan (2006) and, most recently, Windblown/Rafales (2008).

Notes on Contributors 417

FILMOGRAP Abouna, Our Father/Abouna, notre père (Chad/France/Netherlands, 2002) 204 Adanggaman/Adanggaman roi nègre (Ivory Coast/France/Switzerland, 2000) 260 L’Afrance (Senegal/France, 2001) 182 Africa, I’ll _eece you/Afrique, je te plumerai (Cameroon, 1991) 98 Africa United (Rwanda/South Africa/UK, 2010) 128 Afrique-sur-Seine (Senegal/France, 1955) 87 Afro@Digital (Democratic Republic of Congo, 2003) 93 Alaskaland (USA/Nigeria, 2012) 378 Ali Zaoua (Morocco/France, 2000) 210 Allah Tantou: God’s Will Be Done/Allah Tantou: À la grâce de Dieu (Guinea/France, 1991) 96 And They Said … the Devil is a Woman/Le Démon au féminin (Algeria, 1993) 353 Araromire/The Figurine (Nigeria, 2009) 376 Aristotle’s Plot/Le Complot d’Aristote (Cameroon/France, 1996) 149 Arlit: Second Paris/Arlit: Deuxième Paris (Niger/France, 2004) 115 Arugba (Nigeria, 2010) 377 Badou Boy/Badou Boy (Senegal, 1970) 215 Black Business/Une Affaire de nègres (Cameroon/France, 2009) 109 Black Girl/La Noire de… (Senegal/France, 1966) 225 Black Micmac/Black micmac (France, 1986) 134 Blood Diamond (USA/South Africa, 2006) 323 The Bloodettes/Les Saignantes (Cameroon, 2005) 355 The Blue Eyes of Yonta/Les Yeux bleus de Yonta (Guinea Bissau/Portugal, 1991) 170 Bye Bye Africa (Chad/France, 1999) 80 Camp de Thiaroye (Senegal/Algeria/Tunisia, 1988) 262 A Child’s Love Story/Un Amour d’enfant (Senegal, 2004) 216 Chocolat (France/Germany/Cameroon, 1988) 334 Cinderella of the Cape (South Africa, 2004) 104 Clando (Cameroon/France/Germany, 1996) 180 Conversations on a Sunday Afternoon (South Africa, 2005) 186 Contras’ City (Senegal, 1968) 118 Dakan, Destiny/Dakan, le destin (Guinea/France, 1997) 70 Daratt, Dry Season/Daratt, saison sèche (Chad/France/Belgium, 2006) 308 Daresalam, Let There Be Peace/Daresalam (Chad/Burkina Faso/France, 2000) 292 Delwende, Stand up and Walk/Delwende, lève-toi et marche (Burkina Faso/France/ Switzerland, 2005) 177 Disgrace (South Africa/Australia, 2008) 229 District 9 (South Africa/New Zealand/USA, 2009) 357 Dôlé, Money/Dôlé, l’argent (Gabon/France, 2001) 167 Dribbling Fate/Fintar o Destino (Cape Verde/Portugal, 1998) 64 Drum (South Africa, 2004) 277 Eighteen Days/Tamantashar Yom (Egypt, 2011) 17 Everyone’s Child (Zimbabwe, 1996) 197 Ezra/ Ezra (Sierra Leone/France/UK, 2007) 303 Faat Kiné (Senegal, 2001) 156 Father Christmas Does Not Come Here (South Africa, 2009) 74 Fools (South Africa/France/Mozambique, 1997) 234 Forerunners (South Africa, 2011) 107

RAPHY

Directory of World Cinema

The Franc/Le Franc (Senegal/Switzerland/France, 1994) 144 Genesis/La Genèse (Mali/France, 1999) 238 The Gods Must Be Crazy (South Africa, 1980) 138 The Golden Ball/Le Ballon d’or (Guinea/France, 1994) 206 Guelwaar (Senegal, 1992) 158 Halfaouine, Boy of the Terraces/Halfahouine, l’enfant des terrasses (Tunisia/ France, 1990) 208 Hassan ‘Terro’ (Algeria, 1967) 140 Heremakono: Waiting for Happiness/Heremakono: En attendant le bonheur (Mauritania/France, 2002) 82 Hi, Cousin!/Salut cousin_! (Algeria/France, 1996) 136 The Hero/O Herói (Angola/Portugal/France, 2005) 295 Hollow City/Na Cidade Vazla (Angola/Portugal, 2004) 301 Hotel Rwanda (UK/USA/Italy/South Africa, 2004) 321 Hyenas/Hyènes (Senegal/Switzerland/France, 1992) 241 The Journey of Cape Verde (In Search of Identity) (Cape Verde, 2004) 111 Jump the Gun (South A_rca/UK,1996) 72 Karmen Geï (Senegal/France/Canada, 2001) 243 Kounandi (Burkina Faso, 2003) 344 The Last King of Scotland (UK/Germany/USA, 2006) 319 Life, Above All (South Africa, 2010) 195 Living in Bondage 1 (Nigeria, 1992) 367 Living in Bondage 2 (Nigeria, 1993) 368 The Little Girl Who Sold the Sun/La Petite vendeuse de soleil (Senegal/ France/Switzerland, 1998) 212 Little Senegal (Senegal/France/Germany, 2001) 184 Lumumba (France/Belgium/Mozambique, 2000) 271 Madame Brouette/L’Extraordinaire destin de Madame Brouette (Canada/ Senegal/France, 2002) 66 Malunde (South Africa/Germany, 2001) 200 Mascarades/Masakhra (Algeria/France, 2008) 142 My Mother’s Heart 1&2 (Ghana, 2005) 371 My Shoes/Sabbat El Aïd (Tunisia, 2012) 348 Mystery Mountain (Malawi, 2007) 346 I, a Black Man/Moi, un noir (France, 1958) 317 Moolaadé (Senegal, 2004) 161 Mortu Nega, Death Denied/Mortu Nega, celui dont la mort n’a pas voulu (Guinea–Bissau/France, 1988) 290 Nha Fala, My Voice/Nha Fala, ma voix (France/Portugal/Luxembourg, 2003) 68 The Narrow Path (Nigeria, 2006) 369 The Night of Truth/La Nuit de la vérité (Burkina Faso/France, 2004) 299 No Time to Die/L’Ultime hommage (Ghana/Germany, 2006) 132 October (France/Mauritania/Russia, 1992) 60 Opium and the Stick/L’Opium et le bâton/Al-afyun wal-asa) (Algeria, 1969) 266 O Sun/Soleil O (Mauritania/France, 1970) 58

Filmography 419

Outside the Law/Hors-la-loi (Algeria/France/Belgium, 2010) 270 The Pirogue/La Pirogue (Senegal/France/Germany, 2012) 15 Pumzi (Kenya/South Africa, 2009) 360 Rachida (Algeria/France, 2002) 76 Rostov-Luanda (Angola/France/Mauritania, 1997) 113 Sambizanga (Angola/France/Republic of Congo (Congo Brazzaville), 1972) 236 Sankofa (Ghana/USA/Burkina Faso/UK, 1993) 259 A Screaming Man/Un Homme qui crie (Chad/France, 2010) 11 Seasons of a Life (Malawi, 2009) 130 Selbe and So Many Others/Selbe et tant d’autres (Senegal, 1983) 100 Shake Hands with the Devil: The Journey of Roméo Dallaire/J’ai serré la main du diable (Canada, 2004) ) 327 Shooting Dogs (UK/Germany, 2005) 325 Sia, the Dream of the Python/Sia, le rêve du python (France/Burkina Faso, 2001) 351 The Silence of the Forest/Le Silence de la forêt (Gabon/Cameroon, 2003) 250 Sisters-in-Law (Cameroon/UK, 2005) 102 Sleepwalking Land/Terra Sonãmbula (Mozambique/Portugal, 2007) 248 Sometimes in April/Quelques jours en avril (France/USA/Rwanda, 2005) 297 Soul Diaspora (USA/Nigeria, 2009) 380 Summer of 62/Cartouches Gauloises (France, 2007) 305 A Sting in a Tale (Ghana, 2009) 374 Tabataba (Madagascar, 1988) 265 Tableau Ferraille (Senegal/France, 1997) 165 Tampy Police Station/Commissariat de Tampy (Burkina Faso, 2006) 124 Tasuma, Fire/Tasuma, le feu (Burkina Faso, 2003) 126 Thomas Sankara, the Upright Man/Thomas Sankara, l’homme intègre (France, 2006) 274 A Time There Was: Stories from the Last Days of Kenya Colony (Canada, 2009) 268 Touki-Bouki, Journey of the Hyena/Touki-Bouki, ou Le voyage de la hyène (Senegal, 1973) 62 Triage: Dr. James Orbinski’s Humanitarian Dilemma (Canada, 2007) 332 Tsotsi (South Africa/UK, 2005) 232 Under the Moonlight/Sous la clarté de la lune (Burkina Faso/France, 2004) 174 U-Carmen e-Khayelitsha (South Africa, 2005) 246 When the Stars Meet the Sea/Quand les étoiles rencontrent la mer (Madagascar, 1996) 349 Wendemi, the Good Lord’s Child/Wendemi, l’enfant du bon dieu (Burkina Faso, 1993) 146 Why?/Pourquoi? (Senegal, 2003) 179 The Wooden Camera (South Africa/France/UK, 2003) 202 Xala (The Curse or Impotence)/Xala (l’impuissance temporaire) (Senegal, 1974) 227 Yeelen, Brightness/Yeelen, la lumière (Mali/Burkina Faso/France/West Germany, 1987) 343 The Yellow House/La Maison jaune (Algeria/France, 2007) 78 Yesterday (South Africa, 2004) 172 Youssou N’Dour, Return to Gorée/Youssou N’Dour, retour à Gorée (Switzerland/ Luxemburg, 2007) 329 Zahra’s Mother Tongue/La Langue de Zahra (Algeria/France, 2011) 92 Zulu Love Letter (South Africa/France/Germany, 2004) 279

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AFRICA

STEFANSON PETTY

DIRECTORY OF WORLD CINEMA AFRICA

Eschewing the postcolonial hubris that suggests Africa could only define itself in relation to its colonisers, a problem plaguing many studies published in the West on African cinema, this entry in the Directory of World Cinema series instead looks at African film as representing Africa for its own sake, values and artistic choices. With a film industry divided by linguistic heritage, African directors do not have the luxury of producing comedies, thrillers, horror films or even love stories except perhaps as DVDs that do not travel far outside their country of production. Instead, African directors tend to cover serious, sociopolitical ground, even under the cover of comedy, in the hopes of finding funds outside Africa. Contributors to this volume draw on filmic representations of the continent to consider the economic role of women, rural exodus, economic migration, refugees and diasporas, culture, religion and magic as well as representations of children, music, languages and symbols. A survey of national cinemas in one volume, Directory of World Cinema: Africa is a necessary addition to the bookshelf of any cinephile and world traveller.

Directory of World Cinema ISSN 2040-7971 Directory of World Cinema eISSN 2040-798X Directory of World Cinema: Africa ISBN 978-1-78320-391-8 Directory of World Cinema: Africa eISBN 978-1-78320-392-5

www.worldcinemadirectory.org intellect | www.intellectbooks.com

DIRECTORY OF WORLD CINEMA AFRICA

EDITED BY BLANDINE STEFANSON AND SHEILA PETTY

DIRECTORY OF

WORLD

CINEMA

EDITED BY BLANDINE STEFANSON AND SHEILA PETTY