Keita creates a unique world where the West Africa of the 13th Century Sundjata Epic and the West Africa of today co-exist and interpenetrate. Director Dani Kouyatïr's frames his dramatization of the epic within the story of Mabo Keïta, contemporary boy from Burkina Faso, learning the history of his family. During the film, Mabo and his distant ancestor, Sundjata, engage in parallel quests to understand their destinies, to "know the meaning of...

The story of an idealistic young politician's rise and fall in a small town, "Tableau Ferraille" ("scrap heap") paints a picture of a corrupt post-colonial elite. Tableau Ferraille offers an intimate view of how modernization, at least as practiced in today's Africa, corrodes traditional communities and retards grassroots development. Like such past Senegalese masterpieces as Ousmane Sembene's Xala and Djibril Diop Mambety's Hyenas, it deplores a...

A story about a village teacher who introduces education for local self-development explores the relationships between progressive activists, entrenched social interests, traditional belief system and rural Africans. Sango Malo offers American viewers an intimate and engaging portrait of the complex social dynamic underlying economic and political change in a typical African village. It argues passionately that a populist education must be a key component...

This film is one of the most magical to come out of Africa--hardly surprising since Madagascar is unlike anywhere else on earth. Raymond Rajaonarivelo follows his epic first film on the Malagasy liberation struggle, Taba Taba, with a very different, poetic film exploring the relationship between traditional and modern concepts of human freedom. He writes: "In French magie and image are made from the same letters... In this film, there will be Magic...

A cross-section of gender-bending pioneers describe in their own words their lives as homosexual Africans in Abijan. Woubi Chéri is the first film to give African homosexuals a chance to describe their world in their own words. Often funny, sometimes ribald, but always real, this documentary introduces us to gender pioneers demanding their right to construct a distinct African homosexuality. One needs a new language to create a new world; therefore...

Ça Twiste à Poponguine is perhaps the most charming, fast-paced and accessible film in our Library of African Cinema collection. This bittersweet, coming of age story is a kind of African equivalent of George Lucas' American Graffiti, Spike Lee's Crooklyn or Godard's Masculin/Feminin. These Senegalese teenagers living it up on the beach may also remind less discriminating viewers of Annette Funicello and Frankie Avalon in Beach Blanket Bingo! Director...

The fable of an old African king and his wayward daughter is updated to present day Brussels to make provocative points about racism, tradition, class struggle, cultural identity and corruption. More than a decade ago Mweze Ngangura delighted the cinema world with one of the most accessible and entertaining African films ever made, La vie est belle, the rags to riches story of a Congolese musician played by soukous super star Papa Wemba. Now he returns...

RÉSUMÉ: Atiku utei, « le coeur du caribou », c'est la force d'un peuple et sa grande humilité. Les Innus ont marché à travers les tempêtes de la vie. Ils ont traversé des montagnes pour se nourrir de l'esprit du caribou. Ils puisaient en lui leur force, leur courage, leur savoir. Au son du tambour, l'appel de la forêt aiguise l'instinct. La poète au cœur du caribou entend la voix de Madiba, Nelson Mandela. Elle entend les tambours jaillir...

Daresalam is the first African feature film to focus on the civil wars convulsing the continent from Sierra Leone to Somalia. It provides compelling insights into how ordinary people around the world get swept up in extraordinary events. Its timeless story of two childhood friends turned into political foes personalizes the terrible costs of internecine strife. Daresalam is not only director Issa Serge Coelo's first feature but one of the first feature...

Il est des vies, des parcours, des destins qui sortent de l'ordinaire. Cette histoire-ci, par exemple. On se sent presque obligé de la raconter. Parce qu'elle est belle. Parce qu'elle dégage un vent d'optimisme et de liberté. Parce qu'elle démontre que rien n'est impossible. Parce que, si les événements futurs s'enchaînent au même rythme que ceux des dernières années, on reparlera de cette femme, née quelque part et qui a fait, de la Belgique,...