Films/DVD Asylum

I'd also put in a word for Ousmane Sembene ...

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In Reply to: RE: So, have you seen ANY African films, films that were NOT posted by tinear on March 19, 2009 at 08:28:26

The late Senegalese writer ostensibly turned to film-making to make his work more accessible to African audiences.

I remember being shown Mandabi (The Money Order) as part of my induction into an anthropology degree programme. My wife was shown it before going to Nigeria to teach. It certainly captures the pace of rural life and the everyday frustration of dealing with bureaucracy.

Xala (impotence, I think, in Wolof) was famous as a novel before it was filmed. It deals with the corruption of post-colonial elites.

And Moolade, one of his last films, was about genital mutilation. This is on DVD currently but I think the other two only show up occasionally on VHS. (I assume his work's more easily found in West Africa.)

Not a barrel of laughs, then, but his narratives and characters always seem realistic and are involving without conceding to the feel-good conventions that we're used to.

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