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Presented by The Film Society of Lincoln Center and the
African Film Festival, Inc., in collaboration with the Brooklyn Museum
This program was organized by Richard Peña and the African Film Festival, Inc. (Mahen Bonetti, Don Webster, Maureen Slattery, and Sharan Sklar). Thanks are due Tunde Giwa, Hilary Ney, Nicole Kekeh, Mamadou Niang, Manthia Diawara, Luca Bonetti, Cat Stevens, Kevin Dugan, Lubangi Muniania, William C. MacKay, Amy Empson, and French Cultural Services.
Air Afrique provides transportation for visiting African filmmakers. Additional support comes from the Rockefeller Foundation, UNDP, UNESCO, New York State Council on the Arts, Chase Manhattan Foundation and Piper Heidsieck.
Since our very first sold-out celebration of African filmmaking--1993’s Modern Days, Ancient Nights--we have continued to present in-depth surveys of the remarkable riches of this exhilarating, ever-expanding cinematic territory. In our fourth festival, we spotlight the latest films by veteran directors such as Idrissa Ouedraogo, Jean-Marie Teno, Kwah Ansah and Adama Drabo, as well as selections representing what’s new in African cinema. Whatever the directorial style--cutting-edge or classic--the themes that move these films are as familiar as today’s headlines, and as eternal as the land from which they arise: the terrible, yet often creative tensions between past traditions and present progress; actual and mystical quests for durable truths that can change the life of a person, a village or a nation; and always the rich ground that lies between men and women, ready for battle or tilling. Join us for an eye-opening journey through this year’s screenings of Africa’s modern days and ancient nights.
Note: all films are subtitled in English unless otherwise noted.
program notes and times
FOOLS
Ramadan Suleman, South Africa,
1997; 90 minutes
Professor Zamani is well-respected in his community, though everyone knows he had an affair with one of his students and sold out his early resistance to apartheid. When Zani, brother of the young woman Zamani debauched, returns from his studies in Swaziland, he idealistically dreams of redeeming the teacher. Suleman's strong directorial debut is "not about the eternal conflict between the 'white devil' and the 'noble black,' but simply the black people of South Africa--the state of their consciences, education, their brutal oppression by the Afrikaners, sexual violence, and the place of women in the South African community."
with
The Foreigner,
Zola Maseko, South Africa, 15 minutes:
In a South African city, a West African street vendor befriends a homeless waif but encounters hostility and mistrust from the neighborhood toughs.
Wednesday, April 15: 2 and 7 pm
Saturday, April 18: 9:30 pm
SCRAP HEAP / TABLEAU FERRAILLE
Moussa Sene Absa, Senegal, 1997; 85 minutes
An idealistic young man returns to Tableau Ferraille (literally, "scrap heap"), the director's hometown, determined to rise in the government in order to improve the lot of his people. In the two wives Daam takes--a dignified but barren woman devoted to husband, family and community and a young, Western-educated beauty eager for wealth and travel abroad--he finds two faces of Africa. After socioeconomic chaos and exploitation result in his community spitting Daam out, new promise appears from a most unexpected quarter.
Thursday, April 16: 2 and 6 pm
Saturday, April 18: 5:30 pm
TREE OF BLOOD / PO DI SANGUI
Flora Gomes, Guinea Bissau, 1996; 90 minutes
In the village of Amanha Lundju, a new tree is planted for every new birth--and the lives of human and tree are believed to be inextricable. But wood has become scarce, and trees are falling left and right. New economics are destroying the spiritual and physical balance of nature. Old witchdoctor Calacalado must lead his people into the desert on a quest to find new seed--and restore that balance. Director Gomes closes in on the expressive faces and eyes of his cast, and utilizes a fluid camera to move this almost biblical parable about the collision of ancient with modern realities.
Thursday, April 16: 4 and 7:45 pm
Saturday, April 18: 2 pm
LOVE BREWED IN AN AFRICAN POT
Kwah Ansah, Ghana, 1980; 125 minutes
Kwah Ansah uses an African Romeo and Juliet love story to express the clash between homeland traditions and outside influences in Ghana before its independence. A young woman educated in a posh Cape Coast school and trained as a dressmaker falls in love with a semi-literate auto mechanic, the son of a fisherman--outraging her father, who expects her to marry the man of his choice, a respected lawyer. Ansah measures the pressures of class, family ties, and society brought to bear on the lovers, through satire, comedy and finally melodrama with what one critic called "an unsurprised sort of humanity I associate with Jean Renoir."
Thursday, April 16: 9:30 pm
Wednesday, April 22: 2 and 9:45 pm
MOSSANE
Safi Faye, Senegal, 1996; 105 minutes
One night only!
Faye's gorgeous film begins as a study of contemporary Wolof life and unfolds with the mounting force of ancient tragedy as Mossane, whose mythic beauty is tied to her family's fortune, falls in love with Fara, a student with no prospects. Their passion for one another becomes a catalyst for defiance and desperation.
Thursday, April 16: 7:45 pm
SKIRT POWER / TAAFE FANGA
Adama Drabo, Mali, 1997; 95 minutes
presented with the Human Rights Watch
International Film Festival
Originally written by Drabo for the theater, this beautifully photographed comic tale about sexual politics was partly inspired by Dogon mythology. A traditionally robed griot arrives at a contemporary compound, turns off the TV, and begins an old story about a disgruntled wife who steals a powerful ritual mask with which she forces the men of her
village to take over women's roles and work. Drawing modernday lessons from this sundrenched cathartic farce about gender-bending, the griot links Mali's past, present and future.
Friday, April 17: 2 and 6 pm
Saturday, April 18: 3:45 pm
KINI AND ADAMS
Idrissa Ouedraogo, Burkina Faso, 1997; 93 minutes
Ouedraogo explores the poignant complexities of a friendship between two men who share a common dream of beginning a business together. Lacking money to buy a car to transport them to the big city, the two entrepreneurs decide to assemble one out of spare parts they slowly collect, a piece at a time--but somehow their vehicle remains immobilized. Significantly, when Kini and Adams get steady jobs with decent wages, ambition and rivalry begin to fray both the friendship and the men's dream of a collaborative business venture. Shot in Southern Africa, in English.
Friday, April 17: 4 pm
Saturday, April 18:
7:30 pm
Monday, April 20: 9 pm
Tuesday, April 21: 2 pm
Three Selections from AFRICA DREAMING (1997)
(compilation film)
The Last Picture
Farai Sevenzo, Zimbabwe:
A young photographer falls in love with an old man's wife. When her angry husband retaliates by ignoring her, the girl gives in to the photographer, who's later asked to take photos of the couple and their newborn baby.
So Be It
Joseph Gai Ramaka, Senegal:
A foreign doctor (Alex Descas) discovers the "heart of darkness" in the Wolof village where he works, when a mentally ill child he befriends becomes the scapegoat for "bad spirits."
The Homecoming
Richard Pakleppa, Namibia:
Martha returns home, after years of working in a white family's home, to find that she has become a stranger to husband and children and has been replaced in their affections by her sister.
total program: 90 minutes
Friday, April 17: 8 pm
Tuesday, April 21: 4 pm
SANGO
Obafemi Bandele Lasode, Nigeria, 1997; 160 minutes
This extraordinary epic film brings 15th-century Africa--before the arrival of colonizers--to rich, colorful life, chronicling the exploits of legendary Yoruba king Sango, ruler of the Oyo Empire. In this example of popular cinema, all manner of exciting trials, adventures, and emotional drama attend Sango's ascension to the throne, his battles with the Olowu and his own war generals, his dangerous experimentation with potent charms, and his ultimate deification. (Sango is still worshipped in parts of Africa and the New World as a god of thunder and lightning.)
Sunday, April 19: 6:15 pm
Thursday, April 23: 9 pm
Friday, April 24: 2 pm
WHEN THE STARS MEET THE SEA /
QUAND LES ETOILES RECONTRENT LA MER
Raymond Rajaonarivelo, Madagascar, 1996; 85 minutes
In this magical, richly symbolic quest-movie, a supposedly cursed baby is saved, though crippled, from ritual infanticide by a childless woman who weaves shrouds for the dead. In adulthood, Kapila is haunted by a blind, wrathful sorceress who arms him with a staff of vengeance to use against the society that sentenced him to death--and encounters his Poet-Father, eager to deny his guilt for trying to destroy his son. An earthbound Luke Skywalker and an African Oedipus, Kapila must find his way from metaphysically arid highlands to the eternal promise of the sea.
Sunday, April 19: 9:30 pm
Monday, April 20: 4:15 pm
Wednesday, April 22: 4:20 pm
ROUCH IN REVERSE
Manthia Diawara, UK/USA/Mali, 1995; 52 minutes
West African filmmaker, eminent scholar of Pan-African film and culture, and NYU professor Manthia Diawara returns to Paris and reverses the ethnographic gaze to focus on Jean Rouch, innovative and controversial ethnographer. Diawara visualizes the textbook Paris of his youth in colonized West Africa, the Paris Rouch knows and loves, Parisian museums holding trophies of the French conquest of Africa, and also private spaces maintained by post-colonial Africans in Paris. Shot by Arthur Jafa (Daughters of the Dust, Crooklyn), Diawara's film sees through Rouchian ethnography's "primitive" images to reveal new voices--simultaneously modern, French and African.
With
Les Maitres Fous,
Jean Rouch, 1954; 35 minutes:
A controversial documentation of the annual ceremony of the Hauku cult, a religious movement widespread in Niger and Ghana from the 1920s to the 1950s.
Wednesday, April 22: 6 pm
ROSTOV LUANDA
Abderrahmane Sissako, France, 1997; 60 minutes
In 1980, director Sissako left his native Mauritania for Rostov-on-the-Don, where he became fast friends with Baribanga, an Angolan independence fighter, while he learned Russian, then studied the art of filmmaking. Almost two decades later, Sissako begins another life-altering journey, this one to Luanda--back to his old friend and to his deepest African roots. This is turbulent African history written in actual flesh and blood, as Sissako captures the painful stories of the habitues--blacks, whites, and mixed--of the Biker Cafe, located in the heart of Luanda.
Wednesday, April 22: 8:10 pm
Thursday, April 23: 4:30 pm
SPOTLIGHT ON CAMEROON FILMMAKER JEAN-MARIE TENO
GYPSY CAB / CLANDO
1996, 95 minutes
"A work of art on the level of artistry with Satyajit Ray's investigation of India.... Acting doesn't get any better than this." -- Philadelphia Forum
A former political prisoner and victim of torture, Sobgui leads a precarious life driving a gypsy cab ("clando") in Cameroon, a country that has become his prison. He's only too happy when he's sent to Germany to buy secondhand cars. Along the way, Teno's African Everyman travels deep into a dark dream that haunts, paralyzes and eventually propels him back into the battle for Cameroon's future.
Wednesday, April 15: 4:15 and 9:15 pm
Friday, April 17: 10 pm
AFRICA, I WILL FLEECE YOU /
AFRIQUE, JE TE PLUMERAI
1992, 88 minutes
A mixture of cinematic nostalgia (young Teno falls in love with the movies by watching Indian melodramas), faux documentary, historical footage, polemic essay, even an hilarious yet politically searing cabaret act! Africa is "fleeced" by not only the former colonial powers but also the local bourgeoisie as Teno fuses present and past in this beautiful yet melancholy visual poem. An extremely personal meditation that offers its own often surprising solutions for what Teno describes as "our present-day quagmire."
Sunday, April 19: 4 pm
Monday, April 20: 2 pm
THREE SHORT FILMS BY JEAN-MARIE TENO
Yellow Fever Taximan
1985; 30 minutes:
A delightfully comic film that chronicles the misadventures of Sam, a swaggering cab driver in the Cameroonian capital who imagines himself to be quite the ladies' man;
Head in the Clouds
1997;
37 minutes:
Investigating the source of the chaos that infects contemporary African life with violence, poverty, repression, etc., Teno quotes a friend's telling parable: "Funerals are so important to us....If we don't bury a friend or foe well, we are likely to see his ghost often until the day we unbury him and bury him again according to the tradition. We didn't bury colonization well, and we can see its ghost everywhere!"; and
Mr. Foot,
20 minutes, concerning politics and soccer.
Sunday, April 19: 2 pm
Thursday, April 23: 2 pm
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