Africa!
January 5 - January 22 at Istanbul Modern
İstanbul Modern Cinema presents a selection from the African cinema that though considered a relatively newcomer with its continental history of cinema dating only half a century back, has already enriched the global art realm with unique film productions. Between January 5-22, within the programme called “Africa!”, a selection of 10 films curated by Mahir Saul, a professor who is an expert in African anthropology at the Illinois University, will be presented. This selection of masterpieces from the African cinema initiated in 1960’s, is made in order to expose African moviemaking to the audience in İstanbul. Films display the surprisingly wide range of variety of the African cinema from traditional arts to video and avant-garde. Some of these films are awarded works at Panafrican Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou (FESPACO), the most important film festival of Africa, and some are works that became world classics or are really striking by their innovative style.
The Wind (Finye)
Souleymane Cisse, Mali, 1982, Color, 100’
Two university students in love with each other find themselves in the middle of turbulent events. There is some fraudulency concerning the exam questions, this provokes big mass demonstrations, and when two lovers also get involved in political protests, they get into prison. This results in the confrontation of their families with opposing inclinations. One of the fathers is an administrator in the modern government, while the other is a tribal chieftain representing the rural area people perpetuating old mystical traditions. This film proved a landmark in the cinema history of West Africa. Particularly one scene in the village showing the relation with the ancestors’ spirits makes the film a forerunner in the transition from realistic social cinema to a new cinematic art based on the African traditional culture.
Carthage Film Festival Golden Tanit Award, 1982; FESPACO Film Festival, the Grand Prize, 1983; Cannes Film Festival, “Un Certain Regard”, 1982.
Sarraounia
Med Hondo, Mauritania, Burkina Faso, 1986, Color, 120’
This historical film that won in 1987 the Grand Prize at FESPACO Film Festival tells the story of a local resistance movement initiated by a female leader, and reveals one of the darkest episodes of the invasion of Africa by Europeans. In 1899, two young French officers accompanied by a large colonial army proceed toward Central Africa, ravaging everywhere on their way. Their aim is to impede the British venture of invasion. However, when they arrive at the present Nigerian Republic area, people of two villages stop their progress with an unexpected resistance. The solid belief in their leader, in their queen/prophetess (Sarraounia) of this bunch of people, who perpetuate their old traditional practices in an area dominated by Muslims, triumphs over the weapons of Europeans and the fear and terror they instigate. One of the more formally innovative works of the African cinema, this epic film presents intense images that will remain with the audience for a long time.
The Law (Tilaï )
Idrissa Ouedraogo, Burkina Faso, 1990, Color, 81’
In the vast waste land called Sahel, a man returns to his village after an extended absence. When this passenger called Saga reaches there, the messenger blows his horn joyfully in order to announce his arrival, but he cannot find the joy he expects at home. His beloved for whom he made all sacrifices was apparently unable to wait for him, and still worse, she has married to his own father. Saga cannot refrain himself. So everybody has to react and adopt an attitude. Bloodshed and hatred swallowing all the family ensue complicated emotional relationships. Ouedraogo is a prominent author of the African film works widely screened in Europe.
Hyenas (Hyènes)
Djibril Diop Mambéty, Senegal, 1992, Color, 110’
Poor but proud citizens of a small town get excited when they learn that an influential old lady comes to visit. The lady is told to be “much richer than the World Bank”. Would she help the town to prosper? But this guest that they welcome with treats and compliments is there for the revenge for a painful event she cannot forget, and she will share her fortune only in return for an unexpected action. The ironical moral tale has surprising twists. The dilemmas of the protagonists are thought provoking for the audience as well. This parable presented with glamorous but imaginary African sets and costumes is surprisingly an adaptation from Swiss author Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s play entitled “The Visit” (Der Besuch der alten Dame).
Faat Kine
Ousmane Sembene, Senegal, 2001, Color, 120’
One of the last works of Sembene, probably the best-known name of the African cinema, this film features once again women. Faat Kine is a successful working woman who climbed up the ladder and faced the difficulties all by herself. She is not a person who can easily share her life that she herself created, on the other hand, her old mother and her children that she raised and sent to university with her own efforts are still under her responsibility. Sembene sees his own film as “a eulogy to the African women’s daily heroism”, and the film provides an opportunity for those who want to see Africa’s contemporary daily life under a different, surprising and bright light, far from the stereotypes of newspapers and magazines.
Karmen Geï
Joseph Gaï Ramaka, Senegal, 2001, Color, 86’
“Love is a rebellious bird, nobody can harness her”: Similar to Bizet’s Carmen, Senegalese Karmen as well voices these words in a song while falling in love, she gets involved in shady businesses, she leaves her lover in order to live her freedom and she sacrifices everything to this end. African Karmen leads a more independent, tempestuous and heedless life than her French counterpart. In this adaptation, Gaï Ramaka creates a heroine with a plot familiar from the favorite operatic piece, though in a completely different vein. This feast of music and dance on the background of Dakar’s ocean views does not use Bizet’s most popular arias, melodies penetrated into our daily life. The film’s soundtrack is composed of carefully selected examples from Senegal’s different kinds of music. A work hard to describe with words, cross bred at origins, but with an imagery borrowed from the African sun, with colors from African patterns.
Waiting for Happiness (Heremakono)
Abderrahmane Sissako, Mali-Mauritania, 2002, Color, 95’
“Homesickness is already felt before going away,” says the director Sissako. Passengers wait in a fishing village by the ocean for their broken car to be repaired. Some will try their luck in Europe, some came to visit their family, and some will lose their lives on the way. This poetic film woven with personal impressions, partly a collection of memories, partly the portrait of a village, is based on improvisation, it develops on a vague area between facts and fiction. Breathtaking images and the director’s idiosyncratic humour make the film captivating for the audience. Sissako is an African contemporary filmmaker whose every film creates big expectations and who is recognized in USA as well.
FIPRESCI Prize, “Un Certain Regard”, Cannes Film Festival, 2003; Grand Prize, Fespaco Film Festival, 2003.
Drum
Zola Maseko, South Africa, 2004, Color, 94’
This hit film of the new South African cinema is based on a true story and true places. Henry Nxumalo, a successful journalist in 1950’s working in a magazine called Drum published at Johannesburg, is tired of writing an apolitical sports column, so he begins to treat other daily topics with a touch of political criticism. His editor is at the beginning worried about this change, but when these articles become popular, he encourages him. But the situation changes when a hidden intention of the state is discovered. This film beautifully recreates the lively world of music and entertainment of Johannesburg’s African dwellers within the setting and the scenery of the era, while it also intricately depicts one of the most ruthless political regimes that survived until recently.
Grand Prize, FESPACO Film Festival, 2005.
The Bloodiest (Les Saignantes)
Jean-Pierre Bekolo, Cameroon, 2007, Color, 97’
In the dark of the night partly illuminated by city lights, two young women try to get rid of the dead body of an influential statesman. While working to this end, young women live through strange experiences in futuristic spaces, and a mysterious feministic force called Mevungu backs them. One of the most thought provoking African films, this work seems like a video parody, but it is most of all significant due to Bekolo’s incredible mastery in a specific editing style: successive Godardian jump cuts, dissolves, superimposed images and the resulting colorful, unexpectedly rich audiovisual texture.
Dry Season (Daratt)
Mahamat Saleh Haroun, Chad, 2006, Color, 96’
In tropical Africa, during the dry season all agricultural works stop, rural people then deal with other chores or go on a journey. Young Atim (the Orphan) also packs up and hits the dusty roads in order to go for the first time to the faraway capital city. However there is a certain tension in the air. After a forty-year civil war, the government that promised peace has just amnestied all the war criminals. This news outrages the aggrieved families, resulting in chaos. So Atim is in fact sent to the city with a secret mission. He carries in his bag the gun of his father killed years ago. However while searching for a monster in the city, he unwillingly finds himself in a father-and-son relationship. He goes spontaneously through a moral transformation. When he turns back to his village behind the dunes, he is a mature and different person.
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