Publisher’s description:
The 1970 colour full-lengh film Badou Boy, a south-Sahara “cops and robbers” movie, “it’s a part of my youthful years, many Africans empathizes with the amoral waif, the movie character that is so similar to me”, declared the director. Shot in 16mm, it won the gold medal at the MIFED of Milan and the golden Tanit at 1970 Cathage Festival.Read More »
Publisher’s description:
The satirical documentary Contras’ City (which stands for Contrast City) was shot on 16mm in 1968. It is one of the earliest African comic movie and an urban planning analysis of the “two Dakars”. It is considered the first African comedy. It is a satire on Dakar – a city in which styles and cultures are blended in a cosmopolitan small area. Mambety manipulates the classic documentary apparatus with the object of exploring social conflicts of the capital city.Read More »
Plot: Mamadi is struggling to complete a doctorate at a Parisian university after the government of his country has stopped paying his scholarship. Thanks to his acquaintances in the African community, he finds a job as night watchman in an underground car park. There, a French colleague, Franck, helps the friendly African academic getting around. However, the car park is also a meeting point for dubious characters, and when Mamadi accidentally wrecks a drug trafficking operation, Franck is really hard-pressed to put his pal and himself out of harm’s way. Wouldn’t Mamadi’s home country be the ideal place to escape the gangsters’ wrath?Read More »
On the one hand, there’s the desert eating away at the land. The endless dry season, the lack of water. On the other there’s the threat of war. The village well has run dry. The livestock is dying. Trusting their instinct, most of the villagers leave and head south. Rahne, the only literate one, decides to head east with his three children and Mouna, his wife. A few sheep, some goats and Chamelle, a dromedary, are their only riches. A tale of exodus, quest, hope and fatality. Rahne and his family travel across hostile lands under a lethal sun, walking endlessly onwards and frequently crossing paths with death. But “Sounds of sand” is also a parable about determination and eternity that takes us in the footsteps of Shasha, a nomad child full of the joys of life, whose tenacity and strength will conquer her father’s love.Read More »
This film, the first in what has become a semi-autobiographical trilogy for Smihi, follows the everyday experiences of Mohamed-Larbi Salmi against the changing Moroccan society. In 1950s Tangier, Larbi Salmi is a young, timid, pre-teen, boy, trying to make sense of the gentle religious upbringing of his father, the secular education offered him in French school, and his budding desires for the forbidden pleasures of the cinema and the women he meets through it. All the while the film offers a tapestry of fifties Tangier, an international zone marked by the influence of Arab, Berber, European and American histories. ‘This film is dedicated,’ Smihi has stated, ‘to all those in the Arab world who cry out, “long live our freedom, all of our freedoms.”’Read More »
An adultery drama set in a bourgeois family in Bamako, Mali, where tensions are rife within the household: Mimi, bored with the polygamy and routine of marriage, wants to leave Issa. She has a lover, Abba. How will all three cope with this?Read More »
Summary from the Rotterdam Film Festival:
Ali is the image of modern Africa. He happily returns from a football match on his motorbike but a nasty surprise is waiting for him at his parents’ home: he finds Haoua, his bride-to-be, waiting for him. The wedding is celebrated shortly afterwards and the two begin living together under the same roof. They are strangers but cannot stand each other. Haoua is the classic traditional woman who has just arrived from the village, God-fearing and faithful to the laws of tradition. Ali’s friends advise him to look for a second wife. He meets Henriette, an uninhibited and provocative city girl, the woman of his dreams. To meet Henriette’s constant requests, Ali ‘borrows’ some money from the coffers of commander Soleymane, but he is discovered and ends up in prison. Henriette is furious and leaves him, whilst Haoua cries for him in despair.Read More »
Summary from the IFFR website:
This Djerma legend concerns a cruel king who cunningly puts the wife of one of his subjects to the test. Her humble fisherman spouse is sent away with a ruse and given a ring, to return in a year’s time. Can the wife be faithful and the husband return the ring?Read More »
Quote:
Sudanese Film Group – Films by Suliman Elnour, Eltayeb Mahdi & Ibrahim Shaddad
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, a group of filmmakers working in the film department of the Ministry of Culture at the time published the magazine CINEMA. This group founded the Sudanese Film Group (SFG) in April 1989 in order to be able to act more independently of the state. Their aim was to be involved in all aspects of film production, screening and teaching and to maintain the Sudanese* passion for cinema. On 30 June 1989, however, the coup, which brought with it a distrust of all forms of art, ended all cultural endeavours. All civil society organisations were banned. In 2005 the firm hand of the state was finally loosened somewhat and SFG was able to register again.Read More »