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Movies from comedy to drama to your favorite Hollyweird Star.

I'd also put in a word for Ousmane Sembene ...

The late Senegalese writer ostensibly turned to film-making to make his work more accessible to African audiences.

I remember being shown Mandabi (The Money Order) as part of my induction into an anthropology degree programme. My wife was shown it before going to Nigeria to teach. It certainly captures the pace of rural life and the everyday frustration of dealing with bureaucracy.

Xala (impotence, I think, in Wolof) was famous as a novel before it was filmed. It deals with the corruption of post-colonial elites.

And Moolaade, one of his last films, is about genital mutilation. This is on DVD currently but I think the other two only show up occasionally on VHS. (I assume his work's more easily found in West Africa.)*

Not a barrel of laughs, then, but his narratives and characters always seem realistic and are involving without conceding to the feel-good conventions that we're used to.


* correction: I see the first two are out on Region 1 DVD, too.



Edits: 03/19/09 03/19/09

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