Country:Senegal

Director:Alain Gomis

Program:African Panorama

Summary:

This film has already gained classic status with its elegant self reflexive example of African cinema: seen through a child's attempts to understand the world ("When I shut my eyes, are people still there?").

Country:Senegal

Director:Sokhna Amar

Program:African Panorama

Summary:

For ten years she has kept it a secret that she was raped when she was young. In this short experimental documentary, a Senegalese woman tells her story. Tranquil images of the sea and a man in a small boat accompany her account. These images contrast starkly with what is told, but they are a fitting illustration. As a whole, the film is an urgent appeal to show respect for women.

Country:Senegal

Director:As Thiam

Program:African Panorama

Summary:

This is the first film by the elder Thiam who has been a writer and storyteller for years and longed to apply his energies to the film medium. Samba and his wife, Coumba are a blind couple. They have earned their living by singing in the streets of Dakar for 35 years. One day, a bus strike forces them to walk their way through the fields to get to the city. They sing, argue, and fight as all old couples do. In the quiet of a flourishing nature, they try to picture what the world looks like. Until at last they come across a magic whistle...

Country:Senegal

Director:Khady Sylla

Program:African Panorama

Summary:

Khady Sylla originally attempted to film a documentary about homeless psychiatric patients who roam the streets of Dakar, but the images were overexposed and unusable. But Sylla returned to the subject when she encountered Aminta Ngom who spends her days confined to the courtyard of her family’s house.

Country:Senegal

Director:Adams Sie

Program:African Panorama

Summary:

Sum Sum is Senegalese liquor that reportedly “makes the sun shine in your head”, but above all causes serious personal and social problems. The traditionally distilled beverage is extremely addictive and can even become lethal. The many addicts in Senegal are jestingly called “Sum Sum Saba” which basically means “disciples of Sum Sum”. The booze is sold illegally in poor neighbourhood, where the addicts mostly live in the streets.

Country:Senegal

Director:Cheikh N’Diaye

Program:African Panorama

Summary:

Two young Dakar men, Nalla and Sory have nothing in common except their love of wrestling. Following different career paths, Nalla is serious and ambitious, so too about his wrestling—despite resistance from his well-to-do family. Sory, on the other hand, is spiralling downward in a life of petty crime and gambling. Their stories intersect in a nuanced look on the Senegalese captial and the world of wrestling. This is the first feature film from Cheikh N’Diaye who has completed several documentaries over the last decade.

Country:Switzerland, Senegal, Mali

Director:Pierre –Yves Borgeaud

Summary:

A musical road movie which follows Senegalese singer Youssou N'Dour's historical journey tracing the trail left by slaves and the jazz music they created. Youssou N'Dour's challenge is to bring back to Africa a jazz repertoire of his own songs to perform a concert in Gorée, the island that today symbolizes the slave trade and stands to honour its victims. From Atlanta to New Orleans, from New York to Bordeaux and Luxembourg, the songs are transformed, immersed in jazz and gospel.

Country:Senegal

Director:Ababacar Samb-Makharam

Summary:

This was the first film by Sub-Saharan pioneer director Samb-Makharam who would later gain enormous fame with Jom. The film set the tone for the Return to the Native Land theme with the incisive parallel commentary that questions the otherwise silent images as we observe them. The result is a sharp and witty essay that captures the double view of Africa from within and without. A young Senegalese scholarship holder has returned from France. What has he learned? What has he forgotten?

Country:Senegal

Director:Ousmane Sembene

Summary:

Moolaadé is a rousing Brechtian spectacle that feels like an oral history of a distinctly unpleasant topic: the all-too-common practice of female genital mutilation, still held by many in 39 African countries, under the auspices of Islamic tradition. Set in a colorful Burkina Faso village dotted with immense, man-tall anthills, four small girls resist “purification,” or going under the knife. A powerful woman takes the girls into her home, stringing a rope across her doorway that symbolizes the “moolaadé,” or traditional protection, against the patriarchs.

Country:Senegal

Director:Ousmane Sembene

Summary:

With Faat Kiné (2000) Sembene has for the first time since Black Girl a woman as his main character. Here he deals directly with the intersection of gender politics and neo-colonial politics: Faat Kiné's treatment by men who only want to take advantage of her becomes a mirror for the inadequacies of the patriarchal society. Faat Kine's steadfastness and ultimate triumph reflect Sembène's enduring optimism and his belief that Africans must become both self-sufficient and socially responsible. Sembene has said: "Africa's society and economy are held together today by women.