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African Studies Program Summer Film Festival
A Glimpse into Silent Spaces: Forests, Rooftops, and Prisons
7:30 pm, Thursday, June 30 through Thursday, July 14, 2005
Room 1230 Grainger Hall
975 University Avenue, Madison
Silence de la forêt (Forest) June 30, 7 :30 pm
93 minutes, 2003, Cameroon / Central African Republic/Gabon
Directors: Bassek ba Kobhio and Didier Ouénangaré. In Diaka, French and
Sango with English subtitles.
Hunter-gatherers in the Central African Republic, the BaAka (also called
Pygmies) have been exploited and demeaned by Europeans and by other
Africans. In this film a European-educated African, Gonaba, who believes he
should liberate the BaAka, discovers that the road to enlightenment can
lead into, as well as out of, the forest.
Bab el-oued city July 7, 7:30 pm
93 minutes, 1994, Algeria. Director: Merzak Allouache. In Arabic with
English Subtitles.
Boualem is a young man who works the local bakerys graveyard shift in the
Bab El-Oued district of Algiers. One morning, shortly after the bloody
riots of October, 1988, he commits an unthinking act which jeopardizes the
entire district: Unable to stand the noise from one of the many rooftop
loudspeakers broadcasting the propaganda of a local fundamentalist group,
he rips the speaker out and throws it away. The extremists, led by Said,
regard this act as deliberately provocative and aim to make an example of
the culprit.
Karmen Geï July 14, 7:30 pm
82 minutes, 2001, Senegal. Director: Joseph Gaï Ramaka,. In French and
Wolof with English Subtitles.
Karmen Geï is about the infinite desire for freedom and the laws,
conventions, languages, the human limitations which constrain that
desire. Karmen transgresses every convention legal, cultural and
moral. In one of his boldest strokes, director Joseph Gaï Ramaka makes
Karmen bisexual. She escapes from prison through her lesbian relationship
with the warden. Then she wrecks the marriage and career of a police
officer by making him her lover and co-conspirator in a smuggling
ring. This film goes beyond tourist exoticism; Karmen Geï possesses a
sexual magnetism thats more femme vivre than fatale.
These events are free and open to the public.
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