Idrissa Ouedraogo – Samba Traoré (1992)


Quote:
Samba Traoré had left his village years ago to seek his fortune in the big city. He has found only unemployment and rootlessness. As the film begins, he is part of a filling station holdup in which his partner is killed but Samba Traoré, determined, takes the money at gunpoint.
He returns to his village, hides the money, and lets out that he has been successful and now wants to live at home. He resumes old friendships. He marries. His impulses run away with him as opportunities arise to spend more and more of the money. At first people just think he did well in the city. Then they think he did amazingly well. Then they think that they never dreamed anyone could make so much money. Finally his trail becomes so obvious that the police hear of him.
Like many of the film makers that Joan and I really admire, Idrissa Ouédraogo is a humanist. He is not primarily concerned with plot, but with people. The plot of Samba Traoré is rudimentary. It’s only there because at each turn of the plot the context in which his characters live changes and so they act and express new sides of themselves. We come to see them with great subtlety. Samba Traoré himself, for example, is sometimes generous in sharing with his friends, but he overreacts with possessiveness when his girlfriend is visited by an old boyfriend. At other times he might be anywhere in between these extremes. One doesn’t find these differences contradictory; one is moved and amazed at how richly complex people are.
Ouédraogo draws these portraits sharply. When Samba Traoré attacks the boyfriend or the service station operator, there is no motive of personal malice or vindictiveness or greed or brutality; his motive is simply that his own needs come first and he is accordingly direct and practical but relentless.
Ouédraogo is constantly aware of the physical landscape in which his characters live. He photographs the details of the people, of the countryside, and of the village with loving respect. He seems to be saying, “Look at these ordinary things. These people are living in paradise.”
Samba Traoré is a fine film, entertaining and touching, within the great humanist tradition. but with a distinctively African way of thought and expression.
William P. Coleman.



Samba Traore.mkv General Container: Matroska Runtime: 1h 21mn Size: 1.11 GiB Video Codec: x264 Resolution: 700x452 ~> 763x452 Aspect ratio: 1.690 Frame rate: 25.000 fps Bit rate: 1 700 Kbps BPP: 0.215 Audio #1: 2.0ch AC-3 @ 224 Kbps
https://nitro.download/view/55EF1932E6BF852/Samba_Traore.mkv
Language(s):More, French
Subtitles:English, French, Spanish, Italian sub/idx