Mountains of the Moon 
Several films in this catalog - 
XALA (director/writer:
Ousmane Sembene; screenwriter: from the book Xala by Ousmane Sembene;
“Black
Girl” (La Noire de…) is Ousmane Sembene’s first feature film. Made in
1966, it incorporates two of the elements that can be found in all of
his subsequent work: deep empathy for his female characters and outrage
over colonialism with its lingering impact in
a period of formal national independence.
The main character is Diouana, an impoverished young woman who is lured into taking a slave-like housekeeping job in France by a couple she meets in Dakar. Played by Mbissine Thérèse Diop, a nonprofessional, Diouana is first seen going door to door in the wealthy white quarters looking for a job. Eventually she learns that there is a special location on a downtown curb where prospective employers can pick out a domestic. Anybody who is familiar with hiring practices for gardeners, construction workers and other day laborers in places like Los Angeles or Long Island will be struck by the similarity.
The French couple promise Diouana the world. If she returns to Antibes with them, she will have no other duties except looking after their three children. In her spare time, she will be able to go sightseeing on the French Riviera. In the opening scene, we see her walking down the gangplank to meet her boss. In view of what awaits her, she might as well have been transported there in chains.
As soon as she arrives at the couple’s apartment, they demand that she serve as cook and maid as well. They keep her working every minute of the day and punish her when she doesn’t meet their expectations in a kind of racist version of Cinderella.
In some ways, Diouna is a kind of trophy brought back from Africa, like the mounted head of a slain beast. When her employers invite over a bunch of friends for a lunch of Senegalese-style rice that she is instructed to whip together on a moment’s notice, one of the men plants an uninvited kiss on her cheek and announces “Now I know what it feels like to kiss a Black!”
Diouna initially shows her gratitude to the couple by presenting them with an authentic tribal mask that they display on their living-room wall. After she decides that she can no longer work for them, she takes the mask back. This simple act dramatizes the refusal of the postcolonial subject to cooperate with their own subjugation. After despair drives Diouna to take her life, the French husband returns to Senegal with her belongings, including the mask and several week’s wages, with the intention of presenting them to her mother. When a local schoolteacher (played by Ousmane Sembene) translates his words into Wolof, her mother refuses to accept the money and throws it on the ground. Despite Sembene’s Marxist convictions, this is frequently how his films end–on a note of passive resistance in the face of palpable defeat.
In an interview contained in “Dialogues with Critics and Writers,” Sembene explains the importance of “refusal” in his work:
“In a given situation, there will always be characters who will say no. It would not be accurate to say that a whole people accepted or refused, but I work with types of characters and I am sympathetic with those who refuse. Some things are simply not to be accepted. Human beings reach greatness only to the extent that they refuse these things and assume themselves. In fact, when a human being refuses, he/she takes charge of himself/herself. For what you reject in one place will be conquered elsewhere with your own strength.”
Source: http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2006/10/
October 31 - Tsotsi
Tsotsi n. thug, gangster, hoodlum
Set amidst the sprawling Johannesburg township of Soweto - where survival is the primary objective - TSOTSI traces six days in the life of a ruthless young gang leader who ends up caring for a baby accidentally kidnapped during a car-jacking.
TSOTSI is a gritty and moving portrait of an angry young man living in a state of extreme urban deprivation. His world pumps with the raw energy of "Kwaito music" - the modern beat of the ghetto that reflects his troubled state of mind.
The film is a psychological thriller in which the protagonist is compelled to confront his own brutal nature and face the consequences of his actions. It puts a human face on both the victims and the perpetrators of violent crime and is ultimately a story of hope and a triumph of love over rage.
"Tsotsi" literally means "thug" or "gangster" in the street language of South Africa's townships and ghettos. "Kwaito" is South Africa's answer to American Hip Hop.
Longer Synopsis
In a shantytown on the edges of Johannesburg, South Africa, nineteen year old Tsotsi (Presley Chweneyagae) has repressed any memory of his past, including his real name: "Tsotsi" simply means "thug" or "gangster" in the street language of the ghetto.
Orphaned at an early age and compelled to claw his way to adulthood alone, Tsotsi has lived a life of extreme social and psychological deprivation. A feral being with scant regard for the feelings of others, he has hardened himself against any feelings of compassion. Ruled only by impulse and instinct, he is fuelled by the fear he instills in others. With no name, no past and no plan for the future, he exists only in an angry present. Tsotsi heads up his own posse of social misfits, Boston, a failed teacher (Mothusi Magano), Butcher, a cold-blooded assassin (Zenzo Ngqobe) and Aap, a dim-witted heavy (Kenneth Nkosi.)
One night, during an alcohol-fueled evening at a local shebeen (illicit liquor bar) Tsotsi is put under pressure by a drunken Boston to reveal something of his past; or at the very least, his real name. But Tsotsi reveals nothing. The questions evoke painful, long repressed memories that Tsotsi would prefer to keep buried. Still, Boston keeps asking. The other gang members sense a rising anger in Tsotsi and try to stop the interrogation, but Boston keeps pushing, prodding, digging. Suddenly, Tsotsi lashes out with his fists and beats Boston's face to a pulp. The violence is brief but extreme.
Tsotsi turns and flees into the night. He runs wildly, desperate to escape the pain of unwelcome images rising in his mind. By the time he stops running he has crossed from the shantytown into the more affluent suburbs of the city. He collapses under a tree. It is raining hard. A woman in a driveway is struggling to open her motorised gate with a faulty electronic remote. Tsotsi draws his gun. It's an easy opportunity for an impromptu car jacking. As he races away in the woman's silver BMW, he hears the cry of a child. There's a 3 month old baby in the back of the car. Tsotsi loses control of the vehicle and crashes to a stop on the verge of a deserted road. The car is a write-off.
Tsotsi staggers from the vehicle. The baby is screaming. Tsotsi walks away. Then he turns back. The baby calms slightly when Tsotsi looks at it. This unsettles him. He hesitates. An unfamiliar feeling stirs within him: an impulse other than his pure instinct for personal survival. Suddenly, he gathers up the infant, shoves it into a large shopping bag and heads for the shantytown on foot. Tsotsi does not reveal to anyone that he has the child. He hides it from his gang. At first he thinks he can care for it alone. Keep it in his shack. Feed it on condensed milk. But he soon realizes that he cannot cope. The baby screams constantly and his attempts to feed it fail miserably.
At the community water tap, Tsotsi selects a young woman with a baby of her own and secretly follows her back to her home. Forcing his way in behind her, he makes the terrified woman breastfeed "his" baby at gunpoint.
The young mother, Miriam (Terry Pheto), is only a few years older
than Tsotsi. She has recently lost her husband to violent crime and
lives alone with her baby, making ends meet as a seamstress. At first
Miriam is very frightened by Tsotsi. But gradually she takes on the
role of both mother to the baby and mentor to the desensitized young
gangster. As their relationship tentatively progresses, Tsotsi is
compelled to confront his own violent nature and to reveal his past.
Source: http://www.tsotsi.com/english/index.php?m1=film
November 7 - THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS
This highly political film about the Algerian struggle for independence from France took "Best Film" honors at the 1966 Venice Film Festival. The bulk of the film is shot in flashback, presented as the memories of Ali (Brahim Haggiag),
a leading member of the Algerian Front de Liberation Nationale (FLN),
when finally captured by the French in 1957. Three years earlier, Ali
was a petty thief who joined the secretive organization in order to
help rid the Casbah of vice associated with the colonial government.
The film traces the rebels' struggle and the increasingly extreme
measures taken by the French government to quell what soon becomes a
nationwide revolt. After the flashback, Ali and the last of the FLN
leaders are killed, and the film takes on a more general focus, leading
to the declaration of Algerian independence in 1962. Director Gillo Pontecorvo's
careful re-creation of a complicated guerrilla struggle presents a
rather partisan view of some complex social and political issues, which
got the film banned in France for many years. That should not come as a
surprise, for La Battaglia di Algeri was subsidized by the Algerian government and -- with the exception of Jean Martin and Tommaso Neri as French officers -- the cast was entirely Algerian as well. At least three versions exist, running 135, 125, and 120 minutes.Source: http://www.allmovie.com/cg/avg.dll
November 14 - Hyenas
Twenty years after his astonishing first film, Touki Bouki, Djibril Diop
Mambety brings us a second feature, Hyenas, as provocative as his first.
He adapts a timeless parable of human greed into a biting satire of today's
Africa - betraying the hopes of independence for the false promises of Western
materialism. Mambety has even been called the avatar of a new mood sweeping the
continent - "Afro-pessimism."Hyenas had a long and unexpected gestation. Years ago, when Mambety was living in Dakar's port district, a beautiful prostitute would descend from high society each Friday night to treat the poor of the quarter to a lavish meal. They named her Linguère (Unique Queen in Wolof) Ramatou (the red bird of the dead in Egyptian mythology.) Suddenly, one Friday she didn't appear and Mambety decided to invent a history for her. He imagined her to be the sole survivor of an outcast family slaughtered by a superstitious village which still lived in fear of her return.
Mambety only discovered an ending for his story years later when he saw Ingrid Bergman in a film version of Frederich Dürrenmatt's celebrated play, The Visit of the Old Woman. In this reclusive Swiss master's bitter tale of a wealthy, aged prostitute's vengeance against the man who betrayed her, Mambety recognized the fate of Linguère Ramatou. In appreciation he dedicated his African adaptation to "the great Frederich."
In Mambety's version, Linguère Ramatou was a beautiful, spirited but poor young woman from the sleepy village of Colobane who had fallen in love with a young man, Dramaan Drameh. When she became pregnant with his child, he denied paternity and bribed two men to say they had slept with her, so he could marry a wealthy wife. Driven from the village, her ideals shattered, Linguhre was forced into prostitution and has miraculously become the richest woman in the world, "as rich as the World Bank."
Mambety parallels the fate of Colobane in the intervening years with that of Africa, languishing in the decaying shell of the colonial past instead of building a vibrant new society. Dramaan runs a dilapidated bar/general store under the watchful eye of his avaricious wife where the corrupt and indolent townsfolk drown their ennui in cheap wine.
When Linguère Ramatou finally returns, she offers the impoverished village a trillion dollars - if they will destroy the man who destroyed her. She says: "The world made a whore of me, I want to turn the world into a whorehouse. You can't walk in the jungle with a ticket for the zoo. If you want to share the lion's feast, then you must be a lion yourself."
Although initially outraged, the villagers are easily seduced by the air conditioners, refrigerators and television sets Linguhre showers on them. In a stunning visual metaphor, Mambety represents "consumer society" as a garish amusement park where even the stars have been replaced by fireworks. Like today's African bourgeoisie, Colobane becomes a "credit junkie," dependent on foreign debt. In the film's climax, the townspeople literally consume Dramaan, leaving only his clothes behind like hyenas.
Linguère's revenge can be seen as symbolic retribution for centuries of African (not to say European) patriarchy. But even she realizes her victory is hollow. She has claimed that money would allow her to abolish time, to buy back the youth and love stolen from her. But her pursuit of power and possessions has left her cold and lifeless, "half-metal," as Dramaan rather ungallantly remarks when he sees her gold leg. With his murder, Linguhre metaphorically descends into her grave. Only Dramaan, when he finally recognizes the futility of his past desires, is freed from illusion to confront reality with calm and dignity.
Towards the end of both his feature films, Mambety interjects a quintessentially Senegalese image - a bright sea glistening with possibility next to the dusty, windswept barrenness of the Sahel. But in Hyenas, an altogether grimmer film, the final shot is of bulldozer tracks relentlessly erasing the past, a lone baobab tree standing amid the endless texts of post-modernity. Any Senegalese would understand the story's conclusion. Colobane (which was Mambety's actual birthplace) is today a notoriously sleazy market and transit point on the edge of Dakar.
While Touki Bouki reminded many filmgoers of the Godard of Pierrot le Fou, Hyenas may suggest the Pasolini of Medea or Teorema. Mambety creates a stylized, fabular world structured around an implacable logic, the logic of the marketplace, the "reign of the hyena." Mambety's 1994 short Le Franc confirms his stature as Africa's master of magic realism. Manthia Diawara of New York University, describes the 1992 premiere of Hyenas as "the entry of an auteurist viewpoint into African cinema. Mambety was to Carthage '92 what John Ford and Orson Welles had been to Cannes."
Source: http://www.newsreel.org/nav/title.asp?tc=CN0045
November 28 - Zan Boko
Gaston Kaboré's film Zan Boko explores the conflict between tradition and
modernity, a central theme in many contemporary African films, such as Keita
and Ta
Dona. It tells the poignant story of a village family swept up in the
current tide of urbanization. In doing so, Zan Boko expertly reveals the
transformation of an agrarian, subsistence society into an industrialized
commodity economy. Zan Boko is also one of the first African films to
explore the impact of the mass media in changing an oral society into one where
information is packaged and sold. The film provides viewers with a unique
opportunity to see our own televised civilization through the eyes of the
traditional societies it is replacing.Source: http://www.newsreel.org/nav/title.asp?tc=CN0111
December 5 - LUMUMBA
Patrice Lumumba was a passionate advocate for freedom in colonial
Africa, and when the Belgian Congo was granted independent (and was
later renamed Zaire), Lumumba was the new nation's first prime
minister. However, Lumumba's dream of freedom and dignity for the
people of the Congo made him a controversial and dangerous figure, and
this biographical drama explores his short, tumultuous life. We first
encounter Lumumba (Eriq Ebouaney)
in the late 1950's, when his National Congo Movement is gaining
widespread public support, despite opposition from the nation's
political leaders. Hoping to avoid a violent overthrow, the Belgian
government begins negotiations with the NCM to turn rule of the Congo
over to the citizens, and Lumumba and his political party are swept
into power during the nation's first independent election. However,
Lumumba's desire to bring a peaceful and orderly transfer of power soon
earns him enemies of all political stripes. Militant advocates for
freedom demand that white Belgian officers of the nation's military be
replaced with African soldiers at once, while Belgian colonists are met
with violence, sparking a revolt by the white settlers that leads to a
bloody civil war. Lumumba was directed and co-written by Raoul Peck, who previously directed the acclaimed documentary Lumumba: Death of a Prophet.Source: http://www.allmovie.com/cg/avg.dll