AFRICAN FILM AND
VIDEO FOR THE TEACHING OF FRENCH
LANGUAGE AND
LITERATURE
Table
of Contents
A:
Background Articles
B.
Films
Afrique,
je te plumerai
Angano...
Angano...
Aristotle’s
Plot
Ça
Twiste a Poponquine
Clando
Chocolat
Femme
Aux Yeux Ouvertes
Le
Grand Blanc de Lambarene
Guimba
le tyrant
Keita
Quartier
Mozart
Sango
Malo
Three
Tales From Senegal:
Fary L’Anesse (Fary, the Donkey)
Le Franc
Picc Mi (Little Bird)
Touki Bouki
La
Vie Est Belle
Zan
Boko
C. Distributor Information
D. Appendices
Africa On-Line
Other Lists
Web Sites On Africa and Related Topics
Internet Resources for Africa
and African Studies
A. BACKGROUND READINGS
Ciccone,
A. (1995). Teaching with authentic
video: theory and practice. In
H. Eckman et al (eds.), Second Language Acquisition: Theory and Pedagogy. Lawrence Earlbaum Associates.
Diawara,
M. (1992). Anglophone African
production. In M. Diawara, African
Cinema: Politics and Culture. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Diawara,
M. (1989). Oral literature and
African film: narratology in Wend
Kuuni. In J. Pines and P. Willemen (eds.), Questions of
Third Cinema. London: British Film
Institute.
Gabriel,
T. H. (1989). Towards a critical theory
of third world films. In J.
Pines & P. Willemen (eds.), Questions
of Third Cinema. London: British
Film Institute.
Harrow,
K. (1995). Introduction: shooting forward. In Research in African Literature (Special Issue
on African
Film), 26 (3): 1-5.
Harrow,
K. (1997). Women in African Cinema. Matutu: Journal for African Culture and
Society, 19: vii-xii.
Racevskis,
M. (1996). Applications of
African cinema in the high school curriculum.
Research in African Literatures, 27 (3): 98 -109.
Tomaselli,
K. (1994). Decolonising film and
television (teaching film and TV in Africa).
In MATHASEDI, Nov/Dec.
Ukadike,
N. F. (1994). Introduction. In N. F. Ukadike (ed.), Black African Cinema. Berkeley: University
of California Press.
B.
FILMS
AFRIQUE, JE TE PLUMERAI
(Africa, I will fleece you), 1992
88 minutes in French with
English subtitles
Director: Jean-Marie Teno
Distributor: California
Newsreel
Purchase: $195, Rental: $95
Synopsis
Past and present are intertwined in this film as they
forge the ties of cause and effect between a violent colonial past and an
unbearable autocratic present. Thirty
years have passed since Cameroon gained its independence. As major political upheavals resound
throughout the world, a generation of young Africans attempt to do the same, by
ridding their country of 'one party'
system plagued by corruption, nepotism and economic devastation. This film is a personal statement about the
means of delivering Africa from its present dilemma, and focuses on a tool of
freedom and domination: the written word.
Critique
Afrique, je te plumerai provides a devastating overview of one hundred years
of cultural genocide in Africa.
Director Jean‑Marie Teno uses Cameroon, the only African country
colonized by three European powers, for a carefully researched case study of
the continuing damage done to traditional African societies by alien neo‑colonial
cultures.
Unlike most historical films, Afrique, je te
plumerai moves from present to past, peeling away layer upon layer of
cultural forgetting. Teno explains: 'I
wanted to trace cause and effect between an intolerable present and the
colonial violence of yesterday... to understand how a country could fail to
succeed as a state which was once composed of well‑structured traditional
societies.'
Teno begins with present‑day cultural production
in Cameroon, examining press censorship, government controlled publishing and
the flood of European media and books.
He next looks at his own Eurocentric education during the 1960s. 'Study, my child,' he was told, 'so you can become like a white man.' Condescending newsreels from the 1930s
reveal that France conceived its 'civilizing mission' as destroying traditional
social structures and replacing them with a colonial regime of evolués
(assimilated Cameroonians.) Survivors
of the independence struggle recall how the French eliminated any popular
nationalist leaders, installing a corrupt, bureaucratic regime which continues
to pillage the country.
Afrique, je te plumerai like Lumumba, and Allah Tantou,
develops what could be called an 'anti‑documentary' style ‑
juxtaposing many conflicting types of images to decanter the eye (and the
I.) An authentic African reality, these
films suggest, can only come from a rigorous deconstruction of Africa's past
and present.
(from California Newsreel's information)
ARISTOTLE’S PLOT, 1996
71 minutes French with English subtitles
Director:
Jean-Pierre Bekolo
Distributor: JPB Productions
Purchase Price: $295.00
Synopsis
This feature film examines the trials of African movie-making in a
humorous, and critical, manner.
Critique
In a southern African town, a group of wanna-be gangstas hangs out at
the Cinema Africa, subjecting themselves to megadoses of the latest actions
fests. They’ve taken the names of their
screen gods: Van Damme, Bruce Lee,
Nikita, Saddam, and the leader Cinema. In walks an earnest
cineaste, trying to enlist the government’s help in cleansing the Cinema Africa
of Hollywood, replacing Schwarzenegger with Sembene. The government is indifferent and the gangsta won’t come quietly,
so he takes matters into his hands and becomes a vigilante for an indigenous
film culture.
In its combination of critical questioning and anarchic glee,
Aristotle’s Plot harks back to Godard, but with a sense of humor all its
own. Instead of working toward the end
of cinema like Godard, Bekolo just wants a new beginning and a decent middle.”
(Critique quoted from article by Cameron Bailey, Toronto Film
Festival Catalogue)
ANGANO... ANGANO...(Tales from Madagascar), 1989
64 minutes in Malagasy with English subtitles
Director: Cesar Paes
Distributor: California
Newsreel
Purchase: $195, Rental: $95
Synopsis
This documentary highlights the folktales of the Malagasy, featuring
them as the storylellers against the backdrop of scenes of daily life on
Madagascar.
Critique
Angano...Angano... pioneers a new approach to ethnographic filmmaking, at once
scrupulously non‑interpretative yet deeply evocative. The central
character in Angano...Angano... is the oral tradition itself which
passes down the wisdom of the ancestors, the "ear's inheritance,"
through myths and folktales. Venerable storytellers recount for the camera and
their listeners the founding myths of Malagasy culture. The film makers do not
dramatize these tales; rather they document story‑telling itself by
placing it in its social and geographical context. The tales flow into and out
of stunning shots of the daily Malagasy life which gave them life and which
they in turn explain.
(from California Newsreel's information)
"Tales...Tales... says the opening interviewee, and our
ears perk up. This film offers plenty of good stories...Absorbing and highly
recommended."
‑‑ Video Librarian
"A splendid film...Images of fantasy and reality are evoked by the
words of personable storytellers."
‑‑ Harold Scheub, University of Wisconsin
ÇA TWISTE A POPONQUINE (Rocking Popenguine), 1993
90 minutes in French with English subtitles
Director: Moussa Sene Absa
Distributor: California
Newsreel
Purchase: $195, Rental: $95
Synopsis
A coming-of-age tale of Senegalese teens in the optimistic
post-independence period of the 1960s.
This film deals with how the residuals of the colonialism and imported Western culture influence the
people of Poponguine’s outlook for a new Africa.
Critique
Ça Twiste á Poponguine is perhaps the most charming, fast‑paced and
accessible film in our Library of African Cinema collection. This bittersweet,
coming of age story is a kind of African equivalent of George Lucas' American
Graffiti, Spike Lee's Crooklyn or Godard's Masculin/Feminin.
These Senegalese teenagers living it up on the beach may also remind less
discriminating viewers of Annette Funicello and Frankie Avalon in Beach
Blanket Bingo!
Director Moussa Sene Absa's comedy is set during the weeks before
Christmas, 1964, in a seaside village, where the local teenagers are divided
into rival cultural camps. The "Ins" (or Inseparables) have adopted
the names of French pop stars ‑ Johnny Halliday, Sylvie Vartan, "Clo
Clo" and Eddie Mitchell. Their clique attends school, has a female
auxiliary, exchanges fervent love poetry ‑ but they don't own a record
player. The Kings, on the other hand, style themselves after
African American Rhythm and Blues legends ‑ Otis Redding, Ray
Charles and James Brown. They work as fishermen, don't have any girls but they
do have a record player.
The story of their rivalry is told through the memories of Bacc, a
husky‑voiced, street‑smart little boy who acts as a messenger for
the older kids. Abandoned by his father and mother, he's been adopted by the
whole village. His grandmother, Madame Castiloor, the keeper of the local
tales, predicts: "Someday you too will be a storyteller, who will make
Africa famous throughout the world."
Her counterpart is M. Benoit, the gruff but well‑loved, French
teacher, who continues to propagate French culture in the post‑colonial
period. He makes his students memorize the fables of Jean de la Fontaine and
paddles anyone who speaks anything but French in class.
Beneath its genial surface, Ça Twiste á Poponguine is about the
importance and ultimate fragility of dreams and about each person's right to
construct whatever dream they need. The film reveals how young Africans' have
always created overlapping, identities, blending elements of American and
French pop culture into their daily lives. Chubby Checkers' Let's Twist Again,
sung in French, wafting over a Senegalese village just emerging from feudalism,
offers a quintessentially post‑modern moment.
The film is at the same time a fond evocation of the 1960s, the decade
when any dream seemed possible, especially for the young. The sound track is
full of Soul favorites such as James Brown's "Sex Machine", Ray
Charles' "What I Say" and Otis Redding's "Dock of the Bay."
In retrospect, the gaudy (not to say ghastly) Carnaby Street fashions seem more
like costumes than clothing, transforming everyday life into fantasy.
In contrast to the younger generation, M. Benoit seems imprisoned by
his memories of France ‑ particularly a lost love, Marceline. As it gets
closer to his Christmas vacation, he begins to drink heavily, becomes
increasingly dissatisfied with his life in Popenguine but doesn't seem to want
to return to France either. Concerned by his depression, the entire village,
led by Madame Castiloor, sing a praise song to him in the hope that he will
stay.
Meanwhile, the teenagers' schemes lead to disaster: a fight, the arson
of the "Ins" clubhouse, a near drowning and the alienation of the
girls. "We lost all our illusions that night," Bacc recalls. The
village elders, led by El Hadj Gora, the Islamic fundamentalist shopkeeper and
father of "Eddie Mitchell", decide to punish the rebellious
adolescents. But M. Benoit intervenes, echoing the words of Pres. Leopold
Senghor (and, one suspects, the filmmaker's own sentiments): "The children
you beat are your future. Should they be humiliated because they dream of other
horizons?...Civilizations die that reject the Other. Universal civilization is
the fruit of give and take."
The "Ins," realizing their exclusivity has divided
Popenguine, persuade a visiting French crooner to host a dance party for the
whole village. In one of the small epiphanies the film celebrates, old and
young dance together to the strains of a James Brown ballad. M. Benoit is
introduced to a beautiful Senegalese woman and even Bacc, after his harrowing
ordeals, gets a first kiss from his girlfriend. An epilogue tells us that in
the years that followed, the "Ins" drifted apart: the girls married
managers in the city, "Clo Clo" joined the army, Johnny disappeared
and Bacc is living somewhere in Paris ‑ presumably, the filmmaker
himself.
(from California Newsreel's information)
"An unusual and vibrant piece tackling serious material with an arrestingly
light touch. It signals a
notable new talent in Moussa Sene Absa...A surprise, a delight and a
genuine discovery."
‑‑ Variety
"The tender and funny chronicle of an African village in the
Sixties. A sort of 'African Side Story', deliciously light with moments of real
grace."
‑‑ Liberation
"A bitter‑sweet chronicle, that sails between tenderness and
drollery, where tradition and modernity cohabit ‑ just like life."
‑‑ Teleloisirs
CLANDO, 1996
95 minutes in French with English subtitles
Director: Jean-Marie Teno
Distributor: California
Newsreel
Purchase: $195, Rental: $95
Synopsis
The tale of a white collar worker, Sobgui, who is imprisoned for supporting pro-democracy efforts in
Cameroon, while living in Germany. After his return home and his release from
prison, he is forced to earn a living operating an illegal cab in Douala.
Critique
Clando
wrestles with a dilemma facing more and more educated Africans: whether to work
to change the autocratic regimes at home or seek their fortunes abroad.
Clando is a
call to action from one African to his fellow Africans ‑ a heart‑felt
conversation we are privileged to overhear.
Teno writes: "A majority of Africans are waiting, waiting for
change to happen, a passivity inherited from 400 years of oppression, where
things can only go from bad to worse."
Clando
begins in medias res; a chaotic, disorienting, urban present where
people are so busy surviving they don't have the time to confront the
underlying causes of their desperation. The central character, Sobgui, a former
computer programmer, has, for reasons not yet clear, been reduced to driving a
"clando" or gypsy cab through Douala's anarchic streets. He is
clandestine, not just because his cab is unlicensed, but because he is hiding
from his own past. When a radical political group involves him in the revenge
slaying of an informer, Sobgui knows it is definitely time to get out of
Douala. A wealthy elder from his village provides the chance when he asks
Sobgui to go to Germany to buy more cars ‑ and to try to locate his long‑lost,
prodigal son, Rigoberto.
In a series of flashbacks after he arrives in Germany, we discover that
Sobgui allowed a group of pro‑democracy students to use his office to
duplicate an anti‑government flyer. He had, however, been under
surveillance and is immediately abducted by the political police and brutally
tortured. Sobgui is dumped in a civil jail, which a fellow prisoner
sardonically observes must be "heaven" ‑ since the nation
beyond its wall is a prison and a hell. One day, without explanation, the
political police whisk a terrified Sobgui away, drop him on a busy street
corner and tell him not to move until they return. As the hours pass, he
realizes that they aren't coming back but that he remains their prisoner ‑
only now his cell is all of Cameroon.
Director Jean‑Marie Teno, however, suggests alternatives to
Sobgui's state of powerless isolation. The informal economy in which Sobgui
works, "helping his brothers out in the sun to get home," provides
basic services unavailable from the government‑controlled sector. Both in
Douala and Cologne the members of Sobgui's clan have set up tontines,
"credit unions," which support their members' entrepreneurial
ventures. Even in the jail, captives and captors learn to share what they have.
In Cologne, Sobgui manages to track down his sponsor's son whose fate
provides a cautionary tale for Sobgui as well. A once prosperous businessman,
Rigoberto has been reduced to a penniless drunk. Sobgui tries to encourage him
to return to Cameroon by telling him a parable about a hunter from a drought‑stricken
village who goes into the forest to find food for his family. After two weeks
he has still shot no game and is so ashamed he wanders off into the forest
rather than return empty‑handed. But the villagers send out a search
party and convince him to assume his hereditary role as chief.
Sobgui discovers another reason to return, ironically, through an
affair he has with a young German human rights Irène. activist, She is impatient
with the Cameroonian emigrant community's complacent waiting for change to
happen at home. She tells Sobgui that if you wait to change society, society
will change you first. Sobgui realizes that since his imprisonment he has felt
immobilized by the "law of series:" you can know how a sequence of
actions begins, but never how it will end. Sobgui has, for example, been
haunted by a terrifying dream. He and some other prisoners are riding shackled
in a police van driven by a psychopath. One of the prisoners has a gun but the
dream always ends in indecision: should he shoot the driver, risking death in a
crash, or do nothing and suffer a slow death in captivity? "That
metaphoric gun," director Teno comments, "is in the hands of every
African."
In a sense, Sobgui completes his dream when he tells Irène that he has
decided to return to Cameroon. Irène's politics demand no less; it has nothing
to do with their personal affection or her nationality. For the first time, he
addresses her as "comrade," and she replies, "we have to wait
till you've earned that name." Sobgui answers: "I'm tired of
waiting."
(from California Newsreel's information)
"One hears the voice of Africa expressing itself in the first
person and taking the risk of its subjectivity, without using the excuse of
poverty or relying on folklorism. This is, above all, very courageous ."
‑‑Libération (Paris)
"The first feature film confronting the reality of the movement
for democratization in francophone Africa has a rare quality among African
films in that it entirely accomplishes its ambitions."
‑‑Le Monde
"Clando is a work of art on the level of artistry with
Satyagit Ray's investigations of India...Acting doesn't get any better than
this."
‑‑Philadelphia Forum
"Clando dramatizes how global forces can reach right into a
man's psyche. Teno's first feature film confirms his position as one of African
cinema's most exciting directors."
‑‑Cameron Bailey, Toronto International Film Festival
CHOCOLAT, 1988
105 minutes in French with English subtitles
Director: Claire Denis
Distributors: Facets
Multimedia, Inc.
Indiana University-African
Studies Program
Select video stores
Purchase: $19.98, Rental: $2.00-$4.00
Synopsis
This film dramatizes the memoirs of a young French girl
as she grows up in colonial Cameroon.
Critique
No critique available.
FOR FURTHER READING:
West Africa
(May 29-June 4, 1989): 875-876
Washington News,
Weekend (April 14, 1989): 33
Jump Cut 40: 67-73
FEMMES AUX YEUX OUVERTS (Women with Open Eyes), 1994
52 minutes in French with English subtitles
Director: Anne-Marie Folly
Distributor: California
Newsreel
Purchase: $195, Rental: $95
Synopsis
This film profiles contemporary African women in four West African
countries: Burkina Faso, Mali,
Senegal, and Benin. We meet a
woman active in the movement against female genital mutilation, a
health care worker educating women about sexually transmitted diseases,
and business women who
describe how they have set up an association to share expertise and provide
mutual assistance.
Critique
Femmes Aux Yeux Ouverts is visually quite stunning and makes economical use
of its 52
minutes to cover many aspects of the roles of African women. Although it begins with a poem by a
Burkinaabe women and in Burkina Faso, by the end of the film the viewer
has also seen footage from
Mali, Senegal, and Benin. It is
organized thematically by titles flashed on the screen. Most of the
women speak French, with English subtitles provided. The subjects covered include female genital
mutilation (Burkina Faso), forced marriage and lack of property rights
(Burkina Faso), AIDS, the
struggle against poverty (Senegal, Mali, Benin), and political
participation for women (Benin,
Burkina Faso). The narration is
multi-vocal, often from activists involved in amelioration of various
aspects of women’s situations.
Although most of these activities come from the elite, a non-
condescending view of the situation of poor women is presented in many
contexts; men are heard
from occasionally; and the point is made firmly by a market woman that
by discriminating against
women “man is destroying himself.”
The tone varies from anger to dispassionate observation,
depending on the speaker. Many
of the women are eminently quotable, and there is significant
footage from the 1991 revolution in Burkina Faso, along with an
interview with a participant whose
daughter was killed in the women’s demonstration that was a key
event. Also included is an
extended interview with Mali’s first female governor (of Bamako), who
does some of the narration.
The film therefore has historical ramifications in several aspects, but
... it is an unintentional
historical document, not a historical documentary.
(Review by Claire Robertson. American Historical Review 101.4 (Oct
1996): 1142-1143.)
LE GRAND BLANC DE LAMBARÉNÉ (The Great White Man of Lambarene), 1995
93 minutes in French with English subtitles
Director: Bassek ba Kobhio
Distributor: California Newsreel
Purchase: $195, Rental: $95
Synopsis
Told from the African perspective, this film narrates the story of
Noble Peace Prize winner, Albert Schweitzer, during his tour as a doctor at the
hospital he established in colonial Gabon.
Critique
Cameroonian filmmaker Bassek ba Kobhio provides a fascinating
revisionist perspective on Albert Schweitzer, Noble Peace Prize winner and
secular saint of the colonial era.
Like Frantz Fanon: Black Skin, White Mask and Rouch in Reverse, this
film begins to rewrite the history of colonialism from the point of view of the
colonized. Le Grand Blanc de Lambaréné is not, however, a facile exercise in
iconoclasm but rather a deeply‑felt lament for a missed opportunity, for
a cross‑cultural encounter between Africa and Europe which never
happened.
Shot on the site of Schweitzer's hospital in Gabon, Bassek ba Kobhio
elicits psychologically complex portrayals from his actors as he did in his
earlier California Newsreel release, Sango Malo. Behind Schweitzer's
impenetrable reserve, Ba Kobhio discovers a man blinded to the people around him
by his own spiritual self‑absorption and arrogance. For Schweitzer to see
himself as a stern but loving father, he had to cast Africans as childlike
primitives whom he could protect from the temptations of modernity. He even
refused to install electrical generators or institute modern sanitation in his
hospital's wards. In the film, an African boy Schweitzer discouraged from
becoming a doctor, returns with his degree and rebukes him: "The
independence of the people has never been your concern. You only wanted to
share their hell in the hope of reaching your heaven."
The film reveals that the ultimate tragedy of colonialism may have been
its refusal to see and value the colonized as autonomous, creative human
beings. Schweitzer knew numerous European languages but never learned to speak
the local tongue; he was an accomplished organist and Bach scholar who never
evinced any interest in African m usic. Ba Kobhio represents the richness of
Africa through Bissa, a beautiful concubine the local chief gives le Grand Blanc. Though clearly tempted, Schweitzer
remains aloof; only at his death does he invite her to sleep in his bed rather
than on a mat. The film's epigraph, ironically, is a famous remark by
Schweitzer himself: "All we can do is allow others to discover us, as we
discover them."
(from California Newsreel's information)
"Gripping, vast, animated, with something profoundly magical...In
Le Grand Blanc the cinema truly meets Africa."
‑‑Le Nouvel Observateur
"Audacious...The filmmaker presents the story of Schweitzer from
an incisive, intellectually provocative point of view."
‑‑Le Monde
GUIMBA, LE TYRANT (Guimba, the Tyrant), 1995
93 minutes in Bambara and Peul with English subtitles
Director: Cheick Oumar Sissoko
Distributor: California Newsreel
Purchase: $195, Rental: $95
Synopsis
Through an epic drama set in the Malian ancient city of Djenné, a
prince abuses his powers and loses the confidence of his subjects. Guimba is an allegorical tale of
present African society.
Critique
Winner of the most prestigious award in African cinema, the Grand Prize
at FESPACO 95, Guimba has been acclaimed as one of the most visually
ravishing African films ever made. This epic allegory contrasts Africa's
tremendous wealth and potential with its present poverty and plunder. Director
Cheick Oumar Sissoko comments, "Guimba is a political film, a fable
about power, its atrocities and its absurdities. I was personally influenced by
what I experienced not long ago in Mali, but the ravages of power are,
unfortunately, universal." The story has obvious parallels with the 1991
overthrow of Malian dictator Moussa Traore in which Sissoko was active.
Guimba tells
the timeless tale of a tyrant's hubris and his downfall at the hands of his
people, reminiscent of MacBeth or Richard III. The film's narrative embodies
the process of revealing the truth from behind the facade of despotic power.
For Guimba, the prince of a once prosperous trading city, the key to power is
spectacle: humiliating court rituals, arbitrary displays of wrath, occult
powers, even the terrifying mask which always covers his face. Guimba's
authority begins to crumble when he demands that a nobleman divorce his wife so
that his own son, the physical and moral dwarf, Janginé, can marry her. This
ludicrous demand reveals him to the townspeople as a unrestrained beast not a
prince; they jeer and defy him and abandon the city to join a rebel force.
Isolated, his magic powers exhausted, driven‑mad, Guimba is left with no
alternative but to commit suicide.
Guimba is
thus a story of the restoration of truth and legitimate authority to Djenné,
the legendary city where the film was shot, and, allegorically, of democratic,
"transparent" government to present‑day Africa. In its opulence
and epic scale, Guimba recalls and calls for the return of the continent's own
former greatness and prosperity. Even, the film's striking costumes (themselves
simultaneously veilings and statements) occasioned the revival of several
traditional Malian textile crafts.
Sissoko notes that in Guimba he adapted to film two traditional
Malian types of discourse used to "speak truth to power:" kotéba, a
popular form of satiric street theater, and baro, a virtuoso kind of public
oratory. Thus Sissoko creates through his film not just an allegory of present‑day
African politics but a community of viewers prepared to mock illicit power
whatever its trappings.
(from California Newsreel's information)
"The highest quality ever seen in an African film...The atmosphere
is pure magic...In a class by itself."
‑‑Variety
"Remarkable for its elegant simplicity...Deserves to be seen and
savored by a large audience."
‑‑New York Post
KEITA, 1995
94 minutes in Jula and French with English subtitles
Director: Dani Kouyate
Distributor: California Newsreel
Purchase: $195, Rental: $95
Synopsis
Keita
creates a unique world where the West Africa of the 13th Century Sundjata Epic
and the West Africa of today co-exist and interpenetrate.
Critique
Director Dani Kouyati frames his dramatization of the
epic within a contemporary boy from Burkina Faso, learning the history of his
family. During the film, Mabo and his distant ancestor, Sundjata, engage in
parallel quests to understand their destinies, to "know the meaning of
their names." In so doing, Keita makes the case for an
"Afrocentric" education, where African tradition, not an imported
Western curricula is the necessary starting point for African development.
Both ancient and modern storylines are initiated by
the mysterious appearance of a hunter, a passerby representing destiny who
intervenes at strategic moments to propel Sundjata and Mabo on their journeys.
The hunter both foretells the birth of Sundjata to the Mandi court and, eight
centuries later, rouses Djiliba (or Great Griot) Kouyati to go to the city and
initiate young Mabo into the secrets of his origin. The Kouyatis have always
served as the Keitas' griots, bards (jeli) belonging to a discrete Mandi caste
or endogamous occupational group, who alone perform certain types of poetry and
divination.
The griot's arrival creates tension in the Keita
household especially between Mabo and his mother and his school-teacher, who
stand for a Westernized lifestyle ignorant of African tradition. Mabo becomes
so caught up in the griot's story that he stops studying for exams, day-dreams
in class and eventually skips school to tell the story to other boys.
The film pointedly contrasts the moral depth of the
griot's teachings with the sterile, culturally irrelevant facts which
constitute Mabo's "Eurocentric" education. For example, the griot
first comes upon Mabo while he is studying the Western "creation
myth," Darwin's theory of evolution, of a universe ruled only by chance
and the "survival of the fittest." In contrast, Mandi myth holds that
human history is suffused with purpose and that every person has a particular
destiny within it. By listening to The Sundjata Epic present-day Mandi
listeners like Mabo can perceive the working out of destiny in history and see
their own lives as part of a continuing narrative flow.
The Sundjata Epic, which Mabo hears recounts the life
of Sundjata Keita (sometimes spelled Sundiata or Son-Jara Keyta,) the man
responsible for turning his nation into the great Malian trading empire. Set in
the early 13th century, the epic provides the wide-spread Mandi people a legend
explaining their common origin and subsequent division into castes or clan
families. An oral recitation of the complete poem with musical accompaniment
can last close to sixty hours. But, this film, like most performances, recounts
only a part of the epic, here the events surrounding the birth, boyhood and
exile of Sundjata. (This corresponds to lines 356 to 1647 in the standard
translation, Johnson, John William. The Epic of Son-Jara: A West African Tradition,
Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992.)
Sundjata's quest, like Mabo's, requires the successful
reconciliation or integration of two types of power represented by his paternal
and maternal lineages. His father, Maghan Kon Fatta Konati a descendant of the
Prophet Mohammed, has brought barika or law and progress to human society. In
contrast, Sundjata's mother, Sogolon, and his grandmother, the Buffalo Woman of
Do, rely on pre-Islamic occult powers or nyama. Their potentially disruptive
effect on human civilization is symbolized by their habit of turning into
ferocious animal "doubles."
Sundjata himself, hexed at birth by his mother's
co-wife, must crawl across the earth, scorned as a "reptile." A Mandi
proverb explains: "The great tree must first push its roots deep into the
earth." When the climactic moment arrives for Sundjata to walk erect like
a man, he tries to lift himself up with a seven-forged iron rod, symbolizing
man-made technology. Even this cracks beneath his strength, so the hunter
reappears and instructs Sogolon to fetch a supple branch of the sun tree which
has the nyama to hold Sundjata's weight. Thus, the hero must harness natural
and supernatural powers to fulfill his heroic destiny.
In the film's final scene, the griot disappears and
for the first time Mabo directly confronts the hunter; after hearing the epic,
he is finally in touch with his destiny. At this point, the stories of the two
Keitas intersect; history and legend, event and destiny have been brought into
alignment. Indeed, in making this film, Dani Kouyati (who shares the name of
the griot) succeeds in fulfilling the "meaning of his name." He has
used a quintessentially 20th century invention, motion pictures, to insure that
The Sundjata Epic is passed on as an inspiring force in the lives of young
Africans everywhere.
(Critique quoted from California Newsreel’s Online
Catalogue.)
QUARTIER MOZART, 1992
80 minutes in French with English subtitles
Director: Jean-Pierre Bekolo
Distributor:
California Newsreel
Purchase: $195, Rental: $95
Synopsis
Quartier Mozart
is the story of 48 hours in the life of a working class neighborhood in
Yaounde. It recounts the not very sentimental education of a young schoolgirl,
Queen of the 'Hood, whom a local sorceress helps enter a young man's body so
she can see for herself the real "sexual politics" of the quarter.
Critique
Twenty-six year old Jean-Pierre Bekolo's startlingly
original film, Quartier Mozart, will remind viewers of other
breakthrough "youth" films like Spike Lee's She's Gotta Have It
or Jim Jarmusch's Stranger than Paradise. Trained in television and
music video, Bekolo reveals a sensibility which effortlessly crosses MTV with
African folklore and which has delighted festival audiences around the world.
He has written: "I've tried to make a popular film where people can see
themselves and be amused. African cinema won't have a future if it does not
reach an African public." Quartier Mozart is the story of 48 hours
in the life of a working class neighborhood in Yaounde. It recounts the not
very sentimental education of a young schoolgirl, Queen of the 'Hood, whom a
local sorceress helps enter a young man's body so she can see for herself the
real "sexual politics" of the quarter. Quartier Mozart is an
affectionate celebration of African youth and the vibrant cultural pastiche it
is continually inventing.
(Quoted from California Newsreel’s Online Catalogue)
SANGO MALO, 1991
94 minutes in French with English subtitles
Director: Bassek ba Kobhio
Distributors: California
Newsreel
TheVideo Project
Kino International
Boston University
Facets Multimedia, Inc.
Purchase: $195, Rental: $95
Synopsis
Sango Malo
explores the contradictions in Western formal education in Africa versus
indigenous informal education. The
film’s hero, Malo, initiates social change by introducing populist education
that empowers the villagers.
Critique
Sango Malo
offers American viewers an intimate and engaging portrait of the complex social
dynamic underlying economic and political change in a typical African village.
It argues passionately that a populist education must be a key component of any
democratic, human‑centered development paradigm for Africa. Bassek ba Kobhio
explains why his first feature focuses on education: "It is education
which can form a new people...It is hard to think about changing African
society without
envisioning an appropriate form of education."
Sango Malo
contrasts two views of education. The traditional headmaster represents a
rigid, "Eurocentric." curriculum designed to produce docile colonial
administrators. Malo, the radical young teacher, emphasizes the practical
skills needed to build a self‑reliant rural community. The film illustrates
Brazilian educator Paolo Freire's celebrated distinction between an education
which the ruling class uses to inculcate its values in students' minds and one
which empowers students to shape
their own destiny.
Malo's innovative ideas soon spread to the rest of the village. With
his help, the peasants establish a cooperative store and a cocoa marketing
cooperative which undercut the power of the village chief, store owner and
priest. When Malo alienates the villagers by demanding too rapid change, his
enemies call in the army which arrests and imprisons him.
But Malo has taught his lessons so well the villagers can carry on his
reforms without him. In the last, open‑ended shot, the camera discretely
pulls back as the peasants celebrate a future they themselves will make. The
narrative thrust, the responsibility for development, no longer lies with the
village elite, nor the progressive schoolmaster, nor even the socially‑engaged
filmmaker, but has passed to the peasants themselves and to the African audiences
viewing the film.
(from California Newsreel's information)
"Offers a valuable look at the harsh realities of village life in
a little‑seen land. The director shines with a lively script and complex
characters."
‑‑ Variety
THREE TALES FROM SENEGAL
(An anthology of short films on one video cassette)
82 minutes total, in Wolof with English subtitles
Distributor: California
Newsreel
Purchase Price: $195.00
Rental Price: $95.00
The three Senegalese shorts (Le Franc, Picc Mi and Fary
l’Anesse) in this brief film anthology adapt the ancient African
storytelling tradition to a modern medium and setting. If the novel and its
close relative, the feature film, reflect the complex, overlapping narratives
of urban life, then these cinematic fables encapsulate the basic beliefs which
support ordinary Africans as they try to navigate through a rapidly changing
world.
LE FRANC, 1994 45 min
45 minutes in French with English subtitles
Director: Djibril Diop Mambety
Synopsis
Djibril Diop Mambety has already produced two
feature-length masterpieces of African storytelling, Hyenas and Touki
Bouki. Now in Le Franc, he begins a trilogy of short films, Tales
of Little People, whom he describes as, "the only truly consistent,
unaffected people in the world, for whom every morning brings the same
question: how to preserve what is essential to themselves."
Critique
Mambety uses the French government's 50% devaluation
of the West African Franc (CFA) in 1994 as the basis for a whimsical yet
trenchant parable of life in today's Africa. For the millions of people
impoverished by this devaluation, the national lotteries became the only hope
for salvation. Mambety symbolizes the global economy as a game of chance, which
the poor are compelled to play, though the odds are heavily stacked against
them.
The hero of this tale (and perhaps Mambety's alter
ego) is Marigo, a penniless musician living in a shanty town, relentlessly
harassed by his formidable landlady. He survives only through dreams of playing
his congoma (a kind of guitar) which has been confiscated in lieu of back rent.
At the end of his luck, he buys a lottery ticket from
the dwarf Kus, the god of fortune, and glues it to the back of his door under a
poster of his hero, Yaadikoone, a legendary Senegalese Robin Hood. When he
wins, Marigo begins a harrowing odyssey across a Dakar of trash heaps,
dilapidated buildings and chaotic traffic. Stumbling along under the unwieldy
door, he seems to carry the burdens of an absurd world on his shoulders. Played
with slapstick gusto by the gangly, rubber-legged Dieye Ma Dieye, Marigo is
both comic and poignant, a Senegalese Charlie Chaplin.
Marigo is told the ticket has to be removed from the
door so he carries it down to the shore so the waves can wash it off. He is, of
course, swamped in the surf and loses the ticket, only to discover it pasted to
his forehead. In the last shot, Marigo is seen exulting on a barren rock, as
the breakers which opened the film continue to crash around him. We, the
viewers, are left to decide if he is a symbol of hope or its ultimate
futility.”
(Critique quoted from California Newsreel’s Online
Catalogue.)
2) PICC MI (Little Bird), 1992
20 minutes in Wolof with English subtitles
Director: Mansour Sora Wade
Synopsis
A tale of two young boys who befriend each other and
experience a glimpse of freedom in the absence of adults.
Critique
After graduating from film school, director Mansour
Sora Wade worked for the Senegalese Ministry of Culture charged with the
preservation and revitalization of the country's oral tradition. In these two
"fables on film," he displays a style characterized by economy and
wit, each episode leading to the inevitable moral conclusion.
Picc Mi, (Little
Bird), protests the increasing exploitation of children in the fast‑growing
cities of the developing world. Mamadou (Modou) is a talibe, a boy given by his
poor parents into the care of a marabout, or Moslem holy man. Each day the
talibe are sent into the bazaars to beg for alms for the holy man. One day Modou
meets another young boy, Ablaye, who scavenges the streets for junk to give to
his father, a farmer driven into the city by drought. The two boys spend one
day of freedom together scoffing at the venality of the adult world around
them. A song by Senegalese superstar Youssou N'Dour about a young bird who a
crocodile tries to lure from its nest with promises of food provides a
commentary. In the final scene, Modou runs along the beach towards the sea and,
at least in his imagination, is transformed into a bird, who can fly free of
the adult crocodiles who would devour him.
(from California Newsreel's information)
FARY L’ANESSE (Fary, the Donkey), 1989
17 minutes in Wolof with English subtitles
Director: Mansour Sora Wade
Synopsis
A cautionary folktale of a young man who can only
appreciate surface beauty and unbeknownst to him marries an ass.
Critique
Fary, l'Anesse
(Fary, the Donkey) gives an African twist to the timeless theme of men
led astray by foolish desires. Ibra refuses to marry any woman with the
slightest physical flaw. One day, Fary, a beautiful young woman, arrives
mysteriously at his village. Ibra marries her but soon word spreads among the
villagers that each day Fary transforms herself into a donkey. Things that seem
too good to be true usually are. The moral: "The man who falls in love
with beauty forgets that there are
other qualities in women. Since Fary, the donkey, have
times changed?"
(from California Newsreel's information)
TOUKI BOUKI, 1973
85 minutes in Wolof with English subtitles
Director: Djibril Diop Mambety
Distributor:
California Newsreel
Purchase: $195, Rental: $95
Synopsis
Often compared to a modern-day African Bonnie and
Clyde, Touki Bouki explores the issues of cultural imperialism, through
the story of Mory and Anta as they scheme and steal in order to get their boat
fare from Dakar, Senegal to the promised land of France.
Critique
Touki Bouki
opens with a mesmerizing shot of a boy leading a herd of prized white cattle to
market. These symbols of Africa's promise and
traditions are slaughtered in a sordid abattoir to
feed the insatiable appetite of Dakar's modern
consumer society. As the boy returns to the
country, he passes Mory, the film's hero (or
anti-hero) riding to the city and a similar fate on a
motorcycle with cattle horns mounted on its
handlebars.
Mory and his girlfriend, Anta, are African cousins of
the outlaw couples in Bonnie and Clyde and
Pierrot le Fou. Like these New Wave heroes, they are
alienated from their society but can imagine
freedom only in the glittering images of the mass
media. They lead us on an exhilarating,
picaresque adventure through a cross-section of Dakar society in a desperate search for the