3 International Films Shown in October
Three films by contemporary Senegalese director Moussa Sene Absa will be shown in
October as part of an international film mini-festival.
Films will be shown Monday through Wednesday, Oct. 1-3, at 7 p.m. in Multi-media
Room A of the Ruth Ann Musick Library. Admission is free and open to the public. For
more information, call Dr. Erin Hippolyte at (304) 367-4598 or e-mail her at ehippolyte@fairmontstate.edu.
OCTOBER 1
"Ca twiste a Poponguin" (Moussa Sene Absa / Senegal / 1993)
Set during the weeks before Christmas 1964 in a seaside village, local teenagers
are divided into rival cultural camps. The "Ins" (or Inseparables) have adopted the
names of French pop stars --Johnny Halliday, Sylvie Vartan, "Clo Clo" and Eddie Mitchell.
Their clique attends school, has a female auxiliary, exchanges fervent love poetry
-- but they don't own a record player. The Kings, on the other hand, style themselves
after African American Rhythm and Blues legends -- Otis Redding, Ray Charles and James
Brown. They work as fishermen and don't have any girls, but they do have a record
player. The story of their rivalry is told through the memories of Bacc, a husky-voiced,
street-smart little boy who acts as a messenger for the older kids.
OCTOBER 2
"Tableau Ferraill" (Moussa Sene Absa / Senegal / 1997)
In a film based on his own neighborhood, Moussa Sene Absa dissects the social chaos
engulfing much of Africa through the story of an idealistic young politician's rise
and fall. "Tableau Ferraill" offers an intimate view of how modernization, at least
as practiced in today's Africa, corrodes traditional communities and retards grassroots
development. The film contrasts two possible development paths for Africa: one towards
self-reliance and social cohesion, the other towards self-interest and social chaos.
In "Tableau Ferraille," Daam, a well-intentioned but vacillating European-trained
politician, must choose between these two social paradigms clearly exemplified by
his two wives. In an unexpectedly feminist ending, the devoted wife leaves her dozing
husband, marches majestically to the beach where the film began, commandeers a launch
and sails towards the open sea.
OCTOBER 3
"Ainsi Meurent les Anges / So Angels Di" (Moussa Sene Absa / Senegal / 2001)
Moussa Sene Abs's latest work pushes the formal boundaries of African cinema to explore
the complex interplay of history and psychology in contemporary Africa. Mory, a troubled
Senegalese poet (played by writer/director Moussa Sene Absa himself) is living outside
Paris with his French wife and their children. We watch his marriage fall apart under
cross-cultural pressures, specifically his father's demand that he take a second wife
in Senegal. Homeless in winter, separated from his children, his poems scattered over
a Paris street, Mory returns to Senegal, penniless and with uncertain prospects.
For more information on African film, visit California Newsreel's collection of film
and video for social change since 1968, especially the Library of African cinema:
http://www.newsreel.org/.
