Thursdays
July 17th - August 7th
4070 Vilas Hall
All films begin at 7:00 pm except on July 17 which begins at 7:15 pm
Tribute to Ousmane Sembene
"For better or worse (and, almost certainly, the latter), our cinematic visions of Africa have been almost entirely limited to visions of South Africa, and non-native gloss-overs at that (with the notable exception of Uys). And yet there is Ousmane Sembene -- the French-West-African novelist, activist and filmmaker widely regarded as the father of modern African cinema -- who has been steadily at work for four decades now, producing [nine] features and a series of shorts. Taken together, the body of work might constitute the closest that landlocked cineastes have gotten to the "real" Africa, were the films themselves not so exceedingly difficult to see." --Scott Foundas
"Of all African film directors, Sembene is the first to confer value to images." --Med Hondo
"These films [presented at the festival] explore the question of women in society - colonial and postcolonial, the question of class and exploitation in postcolonial Africa, and the politics of religion." --Aliko Songolo
July 17
La Noire de... (Black Girl) (1966) 65 min.
"In his pioneering 1966 film, Black Girl, the great Senegalese author and director, Ousmane Sembene, explores the complex dynamics of the immediate post-colonial period through the simple, devastating story of a Senegalese servant, Diouana (Mbissine Thérèse Diop), and her relationship to the unnamed French couple (Anne Marie Jelinek and Robert Fontaine) who employ her. Sembene reverses the Eurocentric convention where the French characters are those who are individualized and the colonized represent their group." Rahul Hamid
Faat Kine(2000) 90 min.
A penetrating analysis of the interplay of gender, economics and power in today's Africa. Sembene accomplishes all this through the deceptively light domestic drama of Faat Kine, a gas station operator born, significantly, the same year as Senegalese independence, 1960. "At times, Faat Kine treads thematic water -- it indulges in a panoply of pet Sembene devices, from the conflagration of Muslim and Christian religious practices to the gleeful caricaturing of pompous bourgeois types, without adding much new to the discussion. But those concerns exist on the periphery of "Faat-Kine," which at its heart is the most intimate, human work Sembene has done, preferring a richness of personal detail to political diatribe and evoking, from Venus Seye, one of the most deeply felt pieces of acting in the Sembene canon." Scott Foundas
July 24
Borom Saret(1966) 20 min.
"With Borom Saret, his first short, Sembene ushered Senegal and Africa into the landscape of world cinema, albeit 68 years after the invention of cinematography, and 63 years after the first Lumiere brother's L'arroseur arrosé was screened in Senegal. His film work would transform Africa from a mere consumer of images made elsewhere to that of a "producer" of its own images. As Borom Saret shows, Sembene was urgently concerned with pointing his camera on the present day, post colonial Senegalese society whose spatial mapping reflects the internal conflicts between the old and the new, between the powerful and the powerless, the changing of the old markers of identity." Samba Gadjigo
Mandabi (1968) 90 min.
Sembene s second feature unlocked for the first time the complex daily world of modern Africa. This story of a man who receives a money order and, in his attempts to cash it, encounters an intimidating barrage of Third World bureaucracy, becomes a witty, masterful portrait of an ancient civilization in the throes of change. Receiving the dubious windfall at first seems a blessing to Ibrahima Dieng, who lives with his two wives and their seven children. However, as the tale unfolds, the seemingly easy transaction threatens to destroy the traditional fabric of his life. Quickly, the whole neighborhood becomes aware of it, the wives buy provisions on credit, their parents ask for a share and people try to extort him for money.
July 31
Xala(1974) 123 min.
Zeroing in on the myth of African independence and the black-facing of white colonial policies by African leaders, this savage and funny satire deals with a self-satisfied, half-Westernized black businessman who is suddenly struck down by the xala (pronounced "ha-la"): a curse rendering its victim impotent. While he desperately chases after witch doctors and soothsayers in search of a cure, his impotence becomes a mirror of the impotence of young African nations over-dependent on white technology and bureaucratic structures.
August 7
Guelwar (1993) 115 min.
When the body of Guelwaar ("the noble one"), a political activist, philanderer, and pillar of the local Christian community, is mistakenly buried in a Muslim cemetery, the result is a tempest of bureaucratic red tape, family conflicts, and regional factionalism. One of Sembene's most eloquent works, Guelwar is many films in one: black comedy, social satire, political allegory, and family drama. Quintessentially Sembene, it indicts homegrown African corruption and "emergency aid" from other countries, but never wavers in its belief in the possibility of social change.
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