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F I L M
S
Nha
Fala - Tree
of Blood - Blue
Eyes of Yonta - Mortu
Nega - Fishers
of Dar -
Alex's Wedding - Afro@digital
- Bedwin Hacker - Closed
Doors - A Drink in the Passage
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Me and My White Pal - Petite
lumière - Rapbizz - The
River - Si-Gueriki - Wariko
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| RETROSPECTIVE
: FLORA GOMES |
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Nha
Fala / My Voice
Flora Gomes
Creole/French
Guinea Bissau 2002(90min)
A
Musical Comedy by FLORA GOMES, with FATOU N'DIAYE and music by
Manu Dibango.
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Before
leaving for Europe to pursue her studies, Vita, a young African
woman promises her mother that she will never sing. A family legend
has it that any woman in her family who sings is cursed and will
die. In Paris, Vita meets Pierre, a young musician and falls in
love. Full of joy, she lets herself go and sings. Vita is horrified
by what she has done, but Pierre, overwhelmed by her talent, convinces
her to make a record. The record is an overnight success. Fearing
her mother will learn that she broke her promise, Vita decides
to return home… To die! Aided by Pierre, Vita stages her
own death and resurrection, showing family and friends that anything
ispossible, if you have the courage to dare.
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http://www.nhafala.com
Lanterna
Magica, Venice Film Festival 2002
Arco
Balleno Latino, Città di Roma
Official Competition, Carthage Film Festival
Official Competition, Festival International
du film d’Amiens
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Po
di Sangui /
Tree of Blood
Flora Gomes
Portuguese/Creole
Guinea Bissau
1996(90min)
 1996
Original screenplay: Flora Gomes, Anita Fernandez
Running time: 90'
35 mm colour
Director of Photography: Vincenzo Marano
Sound: Pierre Donnadieu
Music: Pablo Cueco
Editing: Christine Lack
Scenery: Joseph Kpobly, Etienne Mery
Cast: Ramiro Naka, Bia Gomes, Edna Evora, Adama Kouyate, Dadu Cisse,
Djuco Bodjan, Dulcenia Bidjanque
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In
the village of Amanha Lundgu every time a child is born a tree
is planted. These trees grow as the children grow up and outlive
them thus becoming the souls of the village people. But day after
day, out of necessity, the villagers cut the trees and wood becomes
a rare commodity. One day drought and death will come. When Dou
returns to the village, his twin brother Hami has just died. Tensions
are running high but Dou doesn’t understand what is going
on. What did Humi die of? What evil is eating away at Amanha Lundgu?
In the eyes of the community Dou must take the place of his twin
brother and become a husband to the dead man’s wife and a
father to his daughter. Saly, to whom he is engaged, goes mad
and falls in love with the sun. When the lumberjacks from the
city arrive in the village to exploit the forest everything is
precipitated. Calacalado, the old witch doctor, looks for a way
of dealing with this new threat. He orders the villagers to go
into exile, he entrusts Dou with the mission of leading them and
asks Saly to guide them by the sun.
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Review
and synopsis : Cannes 1996
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Os
Olhos Azuis de Yonta
/
The
Blue Eyes of Yonta
Flora Gomes
Portuguese/Creole
Guinea Bissau
1992(90min)
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In
Criola with English subtitles. Romantic Melodrama. The "story
of three people, each of whom is so much in love with their dreams
that they miss the real opportunities which life offers."
Vicente, a hero of the revolution, now a businessman, is so despondent
over the failure of his political ideals that he fails to notice
the flirtations of Yonta, the beautiful, young daughter of two
former comrades. Yonta represents the younger generation who has
grown up since independence and replaces revolutionary rhetoric
with an unabashed enthusiasm for Western consumer culture. She,
in turn, is oblivious to the attentions of Ze, a poor student
from the country, who sends her absurdly romantic poems.
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Review
by Arnold Shepperson, African Media Project.
Review
by California Newsreel.
"Flora
Gomes' moody film offers a richly shaded vision of a post-colonial
African society on
the verge of losing hope."
- New York Times
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Mortu
Nega / Death
Denied
Flora Gomes
Portuguese/Creole
Guinea Bissau 1988(85min)
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Produced
in 1988... Mortu Nega... is a bittersweet eulogy to those
veterans who gave so much yet often benefited so little from the
struggle. The film poses a question facing much of Africa at the
start of the 21st century: with the goal of independence achieved,
what can serve as an equally unifying and compelling vision around
which to construct a new society? Or as Chris Marker observed
in his 1980 documentary San Soleil, coincidentally contemplating
the decay of Guinea-Bissau's revolution: "What every revolutionary
thinks the morning after victory: now the real problems begin."
Mortu
Nega covers the period from January 1973 during the closing months
of the war against the Portuguese until the consolidation of an
independent Guinea-Bissau in 1974 and 1975. This tiny West African
nation's valiant struggle and eventual triumph over 500 years
of Portuguese domination attracted international support and heralded
the final anti-colonial wave culminating in the defeat of apartheid
in 1994. The revolution's charismatic leader, the Cape Verdean
agronomist, Amilcar Cabral, was assassinated on the eve of victory
in January 1973 by Portuguese assisted mainland nationalists.
-From
California
Newsreel.
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"The
true revelation of FESPACO.
It
has a personal tone, full of freshness and emotion. Provides a
non-heroic vision of history that shows the natural participation
of women in the struggle."
- Le Monde
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Samaki
wa Dar es Salaam/
Fishers of Dar
Lina
Fruzzetti, Brown
& Ákos Östör, Wesleyan
English, 38min, 16-mm
Released in 2001
Awards &
featured screenings
- Best
Cinematography, 40th Ann Arbor Film Festival * 2002
- Juror's
Choice, Black Maria Film Festival * 2003
- Golden
Dhow, Director's Choice,
Zanzibar International Film Festival 2002
- Best
Documentary, Athens Ohio Film
Festival 2003
- Rakumi
Arts Film Festival, Seattle Museum
of Art 2003
- Northwest
Folk Life Film Festival, Seattle 2003
- Fine
Arts Cinema, Berkeley, CA February 23-28, 2003
- Seagull
Media Center, Kolkata, India
October 2002
- Brunei
Gallery, SOAS, London 2002
- 5th
World Congress of Anthropological Sciences, Florence, Italy
2003
- Rhode
Island International Film Festival, Providence 2003
- Selected
for the traveling film festival and shown at numerous venues
throughout the USA
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Samaki
wa Dar es Salaam/Fishers of Dar is an ethnographic film about the
fishermen and women of downtown Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. It explores
the continuity and integrity of traditional fishing practices in
new, contemporary settings. Dar es Salaam is a metropolis of 3 million
people yet the city's demand for fish is entirely met by equipment,
methods and tools that have been used here for hundreds of years.
This
38-minute, 16-mm color film takes the viewer to the central fish
market and pier in the city harbor, and to a small fishing community
away from the market. It is structured between two sunrises and
two sunsets: the story begins before dawn, with small lanteen
sailed boats (ngawaalas) and bigger mashua boats (a diesel engine
replacing the sail) leaving for fishing grounds close by or further
out to sea, and continues with fishing at sea; coming back to
unload and sell fish at the market; auctions and retail sales;
fast food preparation and sale at the market; home-based work
and leisure activities in the fishing community.
Eschewing
commentary and voice-over explanation, the film shows the many
hands the fish pass through before reaching customers. Hundreds
of people make a living in the process. We see fishermen and women,
boat builders, boat crews, auctioneers, laborers, vendors and
market people of all kinds. Not the least are women who come with
buckets, buy and clean small fish and then go back home by bus
to sell fried fish in the hundreds of smaller markets of the city.
The film reveals how traditional methods articulate with modern
demands. There are problems: a brief text at the end of the film
points out that the market was recently demolished to make way
for expansion of the harbor. The age old process continues but
under difficult new conditions.
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The
making of the film stands as a successful collaboration between
Tanzanians and Americans as well as local and foreign institutions
and agencies. The idea first came up during a visit by Lina
Fruzzetti (Professor of Anthropology, Brown University) and
Ákos Östör (Professor Anthropology and Film
Studies, Wesleyan University) to Dar es Salaam during 1995.
Östör then spent the 1996-97 academic year at the
University of Dar es Salaam as a Fulbright Professor helping
the Department of Fine and Performing Arts set up a new program
in Film Studies. Between October 1996 and April 1997, Östör
carried out ethnographic research in cooperation with Professor
Amandina Lihamba (Head of the Department) and Ms. Mona Mwakalinga
(graduate student and teaching assistant). Lina Fruzzetti joined
the research group in January 2001.
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Alex's
Wedding
Jean Marie Teno
French/Bamileke
Cameroon / France, 2003 (45 min)
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A
chronicle of a rather particular afternoon during which the lives
of three people changes dramatically. Alex, the husband, goes to
his in-laws’ to bring home his second wife. Elise, Alex’s
childhood sweetheart and first wife, accompanies him — as she
must, according to tradition. And Josephine, the young bride, leaves
her parents to begin a new life... From the preparations to the
minister’s blessing, the wedding party to the awkward end of
the festivities, the director films a polygamous marriage ceremony.
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Afro@digital
Bakupa-Kanyinda Balufu
French/English
Congo-Kinshasa 2003(52min)
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Afro@Digital
begins with a provocative question: “Why speak of new technologies
on a continent which wakes up and goes to sleep to the terrorism
of poverty?” In other words, how can Africa escape the logic
of poverty and unequal development by making sure that digital technology
doesn’t pass it by, become an agent of neo-colonialism or marginalize
it still further? As Nigerian filmmaker Ola Balogun warns: “
We must ask what is the purpose of this technology and what type
of technology is most appropriate to us?...Technology is not a value
in itself.”
The
documentary asserts that computing technology may in fact be indigenous
to Africa. The new field of ethno-mathematics has discovered the
oldest calculating tool in the world in the Great Lakes region
of Central Africa. Named the “Ishango bone” after its
place of origin, it uses a base twelve system devised 15,000 years
before the construction of the pyramids. Despite the relative
scarcity of computers on the continent, the largest source of
coltan, a product used in most microprocessors, is the Congo.
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Bedwin
Hacker
Nadia El Fani
Arabic/French
Morocco/Tunisia 2003(98min)
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From
an apartment jammed full of computer equipment, Kalt spends her
days hijacking the frequencies of foreign television channels and
using them to broadcast messages in Arabic, signed by a moving cartoon
character, a camel named Bedwin Hacker. When Julia, alias Agent
Marianne, from the Paris counter-hacking department recognizes the
signature as that of Kalt, her old rival, she uses her friend, the
reporter Chams, to collect more information. Chams begins working
on the case unaware that he is the catalyst for a game of cat-and-mouse
between the two women. Energetic and warmhearted, a modern portrayal
of North African women and culture. |
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Al
Abwab Al Moghlaka /
Closed Doors
Atef Hetata
Arabic
Egypt 1999(105min)
Cast:
Sawsan Badr, Ahmed Azmi, Mahmoud Hemeida, Manal Afifi, Ahmed Fouad
Selim
Writer: Atef Hetata
Cinematographer: Samir Bahzan
Music: Hisham Nazih
Producers: Gabriel Khoury, Marianne Khoury
Director: Atef Hetata
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Set
during the Gulf war, this engrossing feature debut by Atef Hetata
centers on a teenage boy, Mohamad, caught in an ever-tightening
vise between his incestuous longings for his mother and the authoritarian
temptations of a local religious leader. Mohamad lives alone with
his strong-minded and loving mother, after his father abandoned
the two of them and Mohamad's older brother who is in the army,
to start a new family. When Mohamad's high school teacher begins
to court his mother, Mohamad's feelings of betrayal escalate and
push him to embrace fundamentalist ideas as a way of dealing with
the confusion of adolescence and sexual awakening. The Closed Doors
touches on several taboos in contemporary Egyptian society, examining
their social and political implications.
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Notes
by Michael Dembrow of Cornell.
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A
Drink in the Passage
Zola Maseko
English
South Africa, 1997 (28min)
Additional
Information: Bio
Additional
Information: Credits
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In
1960, Edward Simelane won a prize for his remarkable sculpture.
He did not know that the contest was strictly for whites. While
the committee decided to give him the award, it created a nation-wide
outcry. An Afrikaaner man who is moved by the Simelane’s work
invites him to have a drink, but is suddenly afraid to take him
inside his flat. The film shows how class differences and racial
prejudice can prevent us reaching, touching and connecting with
each other. Adapted for the screen from the Alan Paton story written
in 1963 and winner of the special prize for short film at FESPACO.
Also screened at Cannes, the 1st Commonwealth Film Festival, and
Zanzibar.
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Moi
et mon blanc /
Me and My White Pal
Pierre Yameogo
French
Burkina Faso / France 2003(90min)
Additional
Information
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Mamadi
is a living in France, and like many other African students, his
country has not paid him his scholarship money for six months. To
survive, finish his thesis, and renew his residence permit, he takes
a job at a parking attendant, ajob that allows him to discover all
kinds of secrets, including a stash of drugs. His friend convinces
him that they can move the drugs and become rich. However, evading
the dealers is tougher than they expect. Mamadi and his white pal
escape to Burkina Faso, Mamadi’s home country, but find that
their adventures don’t end there. |
Winner
of the RFI
Audience Award at FESPACO
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Petite
lumière
Alain Gomis
Senegal, 2002 (15min)
Additional
Information
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Fatima
is a very curious eight-year-old girl in Senegal. This beautifully
composed and thoughtful film follows her thoughts as she figures
out life’s little mysteries, from whether the light shuts off
inside the fridge when it’s closed to whether people exist
when you can’t see them. A poignant exploration of childhood
wonder and philosophical inquiry.
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Rapbizz
Benny Malapa
French
France, 2002 (20min)
Additional Information:
Bio
Additional Information:
Credits
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Tony,
an African immigrant in Paris, dreams of becoming a rap star, but
his buddies don’t believe he has what it takes. He decides
to take destiny in his own hands, with his sample tape in hand he
heads out to meet the decision-makers in the industry. Not getting
any results, he decides to work with a producer from the Ghetto.
Starring French rap stars Stomy Bugsy and Princess Erika..
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Le
Fleuve / The River
Mama Keita
French
Guinea / France
2003(96min)
Additional Information
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After
having avenged the death of his best friend, Alfa returns home to
his country Guinea. He begins a journey of initiation which is not
only to escape from the brother of the person he’s killed,
but also to discover Africa and regain his equilibrium. He is accompanied
on his journey by the affectionate but overbearing cousin, Marie
whose sincere, yet adolescent love for him despite his aloofness.
Starring French rap star, Bugsy Stomy and featured at the Tribeca
Film Festival and Milan African Film Fest.
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Si-Gueriki
/ The Queen Mother
Idrissou Mora Kpai
French
Benin 2001(62min)
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The
director, Idrissou Morai Kpai, 33 is a member of the Wassangari
tribe of northern Benin. Once a tribe of fierce warriors ruled by
rigid traditions, the Wassangari people have maintained their strict
patriarchy to this day. Following the death of his father, the director
returns to his village after a ten-year of absence. He is disheartened
to see his sisters and nieces suffering from continuing female oppression.
But he is surprised to find his mother liberated. When Mora Kpai
was a child, his mother, a stranger to him, was simply one of his
father’s wives, a mere shadow in the family compound…Today,
she has received the title, Si-Gueriki, “the queen mother,”
the female equivalent of a king. Si-Gueriki / The Queen Mother is
the story of a young man’s confrontation with his culture and
traditions. It’s an intimate, personal film…an insider’s
view of this ancient culture. The film is also the belated meeting
between a son and his two “mothers.” Winner of Best Documentary
at Namur, accepted to Rotterdam and Milan African Film Festivals.
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Wariko
/ The Jackpot
Fadika Kramo-Lanciné
French
Ivory Coast
1994(100min)
Additional Information |
A
traffic cop very unexpectedly wins the lottery. Only one problem:
the winning ticket has disappeared. As Ali looks high and low through
his society for help, his quest turns hillariously allegorical:
it is pure satire on the African Dream of socio-economic success.
If money makes the world turn, one can never be sure whether striking
it rich is a miracle, answer to a prayer, or merely an accident. |
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