SEPTEMBER 2008

FHISER FILM SEMINAR SERIES: 43 years of African cinema

FHISER will be hosting an African Film Seminar Series, showing and introducing 11 films by African or Caribbean directors, starting the end of September.

All the films shown during the seminar series will be preceded by an introduction by visiting film expert, Max Annas and/or other FHISER teaching staff. For more information contact Henriette Gunkel on 043-704 7515 or hgunkel@ufh.ac.za

Thursday 25 September – 5pm

All film screenings: FHISER/GMRDC Board room, 4 Hill Street, East London (although times vary)

Introduction by Max Annas

La Noire de... / Black Girl
Ousmane Sembene
1966
France, Senegal
65 mins
English subtitles

A young woman from Senegal finds work as a domestic worker in France. Her motives are simple, she wants to escape poverty and lead a self-determined life. But what she finds is a societal hierarchy based on skin colour. Her employer abuses and humiliates her. Initially Sembene planned a long feature film but was forced by French funding guidelines to shorten his film and to cut important passages.

and

Molaadé
Ousmane Sembene
2005
Senegal, Tunisia, Burkina Faso, Morocco
Running time: 124 min
(English subtitles)


Sembene's last film is a tribute to African women's agency and ability to initiate change. Set in a rural village during the circumcision season for village girls, the three wives of a respected member of society formulate a spell in their husband's absence. Girls who escape the circumcision ceremony find refuge in their household compound and no one is allowed to enter who defends this tradition. A struggle develops between the three women and the traditionalists, who are mainly but not only male. Mooladé was produced without any European funding.

and

Book launch

Ousmane Sembene: Interviews, edited by Annett Busch and Max Annas, published by University Press of Mississippi, 2008

Thursday 2 October – 6pm

Introduction: Kelly Rosenthal

Hijack Stories
Oliver Schmitz
2000
South Africa , Germany
90 mins

South Africa-born director Oliver Schmitz narrates the story of an actor who has to play a tsotsi in his next movie. The young man takes his new role very seriously and is thrown into a world that he did not know before. He sees a different South Africa, a South Africa that he could never have imagined. A dangerous rivalry develops between the actor and the tsotsi. Schmitz dissolves the rivalry with an unexpected twist.

Thursday 9 October 2008 – 6pm

Introduction: Henriette Gunkel

Afrique je te plumerai
Jean-Marie Téno
1992
France, Cameroon
88min
(English subtitles)

'Africa, I will fleece you' is the translation of this Cameroonian film's title. It is a documentary that looks at a country which has hardly developed since independence.

Téno asks himself, and viewer, for the reasons behind this state of affairs. He finds answers by examining the history of his country in more detail. None of the answers, however, leave behind much hope for a better future for the country and its citizens.

Thursday 23 October 2008 – 6pm

Introduction: Leslie Bank

Bamako
Abderrahmane Sissako
2007
France, Mali
115 mins
(English subtitles)

Documenta participant Abderrahmane Sissako turns a compound in the Malian capital Bamako into a tribunal against the IMF and the World Bank.

A hearing has been arranged in order to examine whether or not the distribution of money and the politics associated with it, are fair. Everyone has a say, despite the fact that there is no common language. In the end no sentence is necessary.

It is clear from the way Washington's institutions have impacted on peoples' lives that they are destroying structures, rather than creating new ones.

Wednesday 22 October 2008 – 6pm

Introduction: Leslie Bank

Daratt
Mohamed-Saleh Haroun
2006
France, Chad
96 mins
(English subtitles)

After decades of civil war the government of Chad issues a general pardon. A young man takes the law into his own hands and makes his way into the capital, N'Djamena, in order to find and execute his father's murderer. But despite several opportunities, he doesn't succeed. In this feature film, Haroun describes Chad as a country that does not find its identity because its citizens are not certain of their past.

Thursday 30 October 2008 – 6pm

Introduction: Gary Minkley

West Indies ou les nègres marrons de la liberté
Med Hondo
1979
France, Mauritania, Algeria
111 mins
(English subtitles)

Mauritanian director Med Hondo has always worked outside the mainstream. In this musical, he describes the history of the Caribbean islands since the beginning of globalisation. As an example he focuses on Martinique which has remained a French colony.

The film is buoyed up by the political optimism of the 1970s – and the poet Aimé Cesaire, a member of French parliament at the time together with the then mayor of Martinique 's capital, Fort-de-France (!), could not but take it personally. It is people like him that Hondo marks as collaborators and traitors.

Wednesday 12 November – 6pm

Introduction: Gary Minkley

Sometimes in April
Raoul Peck
2005
France, Ruanda
140min
(English subtitles)

Raised as the son of a Haitian diplomat in Kinshasa, Raoul Peck's film is the least internationally recognised film about the Rwandan genocide. This film is not interested in heroism or in white identification figures in an ‘unmanageable Africa'. Instead it focuses on the horror of the never-ending genocide.

Peck, who was briefly Minister of Culture in Aristide's first government, is less interested in developing his own answers than in portraying what most people would not dare to say. He forces the viewer to search for their own answers.

Thursday 13 November – 5pm

Introduction: Max Annas

Passé Bure! The filmmaker Fanta Régina Nacro
Dorothee Plass and Max Annas
1996
Germany
34 mins
(English subtitles)

This film is a portrait of Burkina's director, Fanta Régina Nacro. She is shown on the set of her short film Puk Niini while her colleagues are commenting on her work. In Paris , where she lives, we meet a different Fanta Nacro. Her life there is dominated by a rigorous daily routine because producing films in West Africa is a strenuous business.

and

The Night of Truth
Fanta Régina Nacro
2004
France, Burkina Faso
100 mins
(English subtitles)

Fanta Nacro presents us with a fictitious West African state in which a national crisis is growing. The characters involved are driven only by their own interests and greed. In the end the situation explodes. The Night of Truth is less an answer to Rwanda and rather a reflection on the political situation in the Ivory Coast. Thousands of Burkinabe fled the neighbouring Ivory Coast in 2002 in order to escape xhenophobic attacks.

Thursday 20 November 2008 – 6pm

Introduction: Henriette Gunkel

Indigenes / Days of Glory
Rachid Bouchareb (Algeria)
2005
France
128 mins
(English subtitles)

The English distribution title is wrong; it should have been called ‘Natives' in order to do justice to the original title. The director, Rachid Bouchareb, sends off some of his fellow countrymen into the war against Germany.

In World War II France deployed thousands of soldiers from their colonies in the European conflict.

Many of them were used as cannon fodder in order to save the lives of the French soldiers. Bouchareb narrates their story from the recruitment until the end of the war – and beyond.

Thursday 27 November 2008 – 6pm

Introduction: Max Annas

Touki Bouki
Djibril Diop-Mambety
1974
France, Senegal
85 mins
(English subtitles)

At a time when various West African filmmakers were preoccupied by self reflexivity, Djibril Diop-Mambety did what any artist needs to do: he tried to produce the most impressive film that has ever been shown in cinema.

Touki Bouki illustrates young people's desire for freedom within postcolonial realities that turn the ‘post' upside down. Mory and Anta, who are travelling on a motorbike through Dakar while they actually desire to live in Paris, are among the coolest and most fascinating lovers in the history of cinema.

* Thanks to Annett Busch from Munich for her invaluable help in the compilation of the films.