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Réou Takh, dir. Mahama Johnson Traoré, Senegal 1972
This programme is based on Notes pour une série télévisuelle de fiction sur l'histoire de l’Afrique noire (notes for a fictional television series on the history of Black Africa), an unrealised project by poet and playwright Abdoul War and filmmaker Med Hondo. In the late 1980s, War and Hondo began working on a script for a 28-episode pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial history of Africa inspired by the writing of Burkinabe historian and politician Joseph Ki Zerbo. The project, which they would never complete, was conceived as an ‘action of public salvation’ which is ‘imperative for all those who want to help Africa and who are convinced that a people, a peoples, cannot really face their future without having a vision of their own past. We cannot live with the memory of others. History is the collective memory of peoples.’
The films in this screening each allude to a different episode in War and Hondo’s planned series: Segu jango evokes the Bambara kingdom of Ségou; Réou Takh the slave trade; Sarraounia the historical figures of resistance to the colonists; Monangambé the struggle for independence in Angola; and E’ville the emblematic figure of the former Congolese Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba.
The screening is followed by a Q&A with Abdoul War.
Programme
Segu jango (The Legend of Ségou), dir. Mambaye Coulibaly, Mali 1989, 9 min., 35mm (digital transfer), French with English subtitles
An animated fiction about the Bambara kingdom of Ségou. The masters of knowledge inform the King of Ségou of the birth, during the winter, of a boy constituting a threat to his power.
An animated fiction about the Bambara kingdom of Ségou. The masters of knowledge inform the King of Ségou of the birth, during the winter, of a boy constituting a threat to his power.
Réou Takh, dir. Mahama Johnson Traoré, Senegal 1972, 46 min., 16mm (digital transfer), French with English subtitles
Réou Takh is the name given to Dakar by Senegalese from the countryside. A black American who wants to rediscover his roots travels to Senegal. One of the continent’s first films to depict the slave trade in Gorée, Réou Takh was banned in Senegal on its release.
Trailer for Sarraounia, dir. Med Hondo, Burkina Faso / France 1986, 3 min., 35mm
At the end of the 19th century, a troop of French officers and Sudanese mercenaries led by Voulet and Chanoine attempted to conquer Niger. Only Sarraounia, the legendary queen of the Aznas people of Niger, opposes the colonists.
Monangambé, dir. Sarah Maldoror, France / Angola / Algeria 1968, 20 min., 16mm (digital transfer), French with English subtitles
Monangambée deals with the torture of an Angolan resistance sympathiser by the Portuguese army.
Réou Takh is the name given to Dakar by Senegalese from the countryside. A black American who wants to rediscover his roots travels to Senegal. One of the continent’s first films to depict the slave trade in Gorée, Réou Takh was banned in Senegal on its release.
Trailer for Sarraounia, dir. Med Hondo, Burkina Faso / France 1986, 3 min., 35mm
At the end of the 19th century, a troop of French officers and Sudanese mercenaries led by Voulet and Chanoine attempted to conquer Niger. Only Sarraounia, the legendary queen of the Aznas people of Niger, opposes the colonists.
Monangambé, dir. Sarah Maldoror, France / Angola / Algeria 1968, 20 min., 16mm (digital transfer), French with English subtitles
Monangambée deals with the torture of an Angolan resistance sympathiser by the Portuguese army.
E’ville, dir. Nelson Makengo, Democratic Republic of Congo 2018, 12 min., digital, French with English subtitles
A layered film that superimposes musical atmospheres, sound archives, images and ghosts. Filmed within the abandoned ruins of a Gécamines mining facility, Makengo’s images are juxtaposed with the off-screen soundtrack of Patrice Lumumba’s final letter to his wife Pauline, written shortly before his assassination in E’Ville.
A layered film that superimposes musical atmospheres, sound archives, images and ghosts. Filmed within the abandoned ruins of a Gécamines mining facility, Makengo’s images are juxtaposed with the off-screen soundtrack of Patrice Lumumba’s final letter to his wife Pauline, written shortly before his assassination in E’Ville.
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no. 236848.