Fuck TarzanShow
1. Atlantique / Atlantics (Mati Diop, 2019, France/SENEGAL/Belgium
2. North African shorts 25+17+23= 65m
a) Brotherhood (Meryam Joobeur, 2018, TUNISIA/Canada/Qatar/Sweden)
b) Nefta Football Club (Yves Piat, 2018, France/TUNISIA/ALGERIA)
c) Yed Ellouh / Wooden Hand (Kaouther Ben Hania, 2013, TUNISIA/France)
3. Who Killed Captain Alex? (Nabwana I.G.G., 2010, UGANDA)
4. Hors la loi / Outside the Law (Rachid Bouchareb, 2010, France/ALGERIA/Belgium/TUNISIA/Italy)
5. Afrique, je te plumerai / Africa, I Will Fleece You (Jean-Marie Téno, 1992, CAMEROON/France/Germany)
6. Toula ou Le génie des eaux / Toula or the Water Spirit (Moustapha Alassane/Anna Soehring, 1974, NIGER/West Germany)
7. Mercenary Fighters (Riki Shelach Nissimoff, 1988, SOUTH AFRICA/United States)
a) L'ami y'a bon / The Colonial Friend (Rachid Bouchareb, 2004, France/Germany/ALGERIA)
b) Bon voyage, Sim (Moustapha Alassane, 1966, NIGER)
c) Samba le grand (Moustapha Alassane, 1977, NIGER)
d) Kokoa (Moustapha Alassane, 1985*, NIGER)
e) Le jeu / The Game (Abderrahmane Sissako, 1991, Soviet Union/MAURITANIA)
f) Pumzi (Wanuria Kahiu, 2009, SOUTH AFRICA/KENYA)
g) Le damier / The Draughstmen Clash (Balufu Bakupa-Kanyinda, 1996, France/ZAIRE/GABON)
Bouchareb's short b/w animation is related to elements in some of his features - it involves the Thiaroye massacre, a seminal event in the history of the whole continent that appears in many films, most notably Sembene's Camp de Thiaroye. This is a powerful if brief history lesson told primitively but effectively. The three Alassane animations are respectively a VERY simple story about corruption on the part of a leader, a mythical quest narrative, and a boxing match between stop-motion animals - Samba le grand was probably my favorite but none were very good or very bad really. Le jeu contrasts kids playing with toy guns and men playing with real guns fairly effectively. Pumzi is a beautiful 'scope science fiction short about a woman in a far-future post-apocalyptic environment where everybody lives underground finding a viable seed in the outside, and trying - against orders - to take it out into the wastelands and let it sprout and flower. My favorite of this bunch easily, with quite high production values. Le damier is a mostly amusing piece about a President-for-Life who can't find anybody to play checkers (draughts) with and finally meets his match, with inevitable - less comic - results.
10. West Indies (Med Hondo, 1979, France/ALGERIA/MAURITANIA)
I was knocked out by Hondo's first feature Soleil Ô when I saw it as part of this challenge last year, and liked his Sarrounia a lot as well, so this was something I was really looking forward to. The two other features - especially the first - have their difficulties for those not all that knowledgeable about colonial history or Mauritania, but this one is on another level and I really didn't know what I was watching much of the time. Thankfully the frame of the film outside the narrative - the staging, production and music specifically, as this is a theatrical musical of a sort, are all pretty interesting and make this fairly watchable, but I'm not really sure in the end what to think of it. It's a dialogue between the colonialists - both white and black, the slaves and later "free" inhabitants of Martinique (and I think some other colonies/countries), the military, and the French government, over the place of blacks in French and colonial/island/African society over 400 years, told often in music and rhyme, and seeming to flit between particularly historical moments in ways that often perplexed me. I'm not sure what to compare it to or how to go further in explaining or getting at it; in some respects I guess this feels a bit like Peter Watkins, particularly La commune but that's not really saying much. I also watched this too late after driving all day, so there's that, but I think even under the best of situations this would have been a challenge. In any case more proof that Hondo was one of the most original and complicated of African filmmakers, and I look forward to seeing more (when will that be possible?) and returning to this someday armed with more knowledge.
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