February 22, 8pm
Camp de Thiaroye. 1987.
Senegal/Algeria/Tunisia.
Written and directed by Ousmane Sembène and Thierno Faty Sow. With Ibrahim Sane, Sijiri Bakaba, and Mohamed Camara. Born in Casamance, Senegal, Sembène was drafted into the French Army in 1939; in 1942 he joined the Free French Forces and helped to liberate France in 1944. After the war he became a dockworker in Marseilles, an author, and then a filmmaker. Camp de Thiaroye records what happened to the African soldiers who, after having fought for Europe in World War II, were placed in internment camps. Print courtesy New Yorker Films. In Wolof and French with English subtitles. 152 min.

March 1, 8pm
Sambizanga. 1972.
Congo/Angola/France.
Directed by Sarah Maldoror. Written by Maldoror, Mario de Andrade, and Maurice Pons, from the novel La vraie vie de Domingos Xavier by Luandino Vieira. With Domingos Oliveira, Elisa Andrade, and Dino Abelino. Maldoror, an African and Caribbean filmmaker born in France, is a political activist deeply committed to the struggle of women. Cowritten by her husband Mario de Andrade (a leader in the struggle for Angolan independence), Sambizanga is based on a true event: the sudden arrest and incarceration of a husband and father and the effect of his disappearance on his wife and child. Print courtesy New Yorker Films. In Portuguese with English subtitles. 102 min.

March 8, 8:15pm
Der Leone have sept cabeças (The Lion Has Seven Heads). 1970.
Italy/France/Brazil/Congo.
Directed and coedited by Glauber Rocha. Written by Rocha and Gianni Amico. With Jean-Pierre Léaud, Giulio Brogi, Baiak, and Gabriele Tinti. Rocha, one of the seminal forces of Brazil’s "Cinema Nôvo", made this flamboyant agitprop of a movie about colonialism in Africa with a multilingual and multinational cast. Puppet dictators, a singing ex-Nazi, a mysterious blonde, a sadistic missionary, and a Portuguese mercenary all contribute to this fantasia about the rape of a continent. Print courtesy New Yorker Films. In several languages with English subtitles. 103 min.

March 15, 6pm
Caméra d’Afrique (Twenty Years of African Cinema). 1983.
France/Tunisia.
Written, directed, and produced by Férid Boughedir. Soon after the independence of their countries, African filmmakers took hold of the camera that had been forbidden them for so long. With neither financial means nor a technical infrastructure, filmmakers created an indigenous cinema that transformed their societies. Boughedir, a filmmaker, journalist, and university professor, enriches this documentary with film clips and illuminating interviews with such important directors as Ousmane Sembène (Senegal), Med Hondo (Mauritania), and Ola Balogun (Nigeria). In French with English subtitles. 95 min.

8pm:
Borom sarret. 1966.
Senegal.
Written and directed by Ousmane Sembène. A short but critical piece of African filmmaking, Sembène’s first film is a paragon in both its location shooting and its social and humanitarian concerns. It is as much a portrait of poverty as it is a narrative of a hapless young cart driver in Dakar. Print courtesy MoMA’s Circulating Film and Video Library. In French with English subtitles. 20 min.

The screening of Borom sarret will be followed by a panel on African cinema, with Laurence Kardish, Senior Curator, Department of Film and Media, The Museum of Modern Art, Tunisian filmmaker and critic Férid Boughedir, Pearl Bowser, Director and Founder of African Diaspora Images, and Elvis Mitchell, film critic for The New York Times.


April 12, 8pm
Mirt sost shi amit (Harvest 3000 Years). 1975.
Ethiopia/USA.
Written, edited, and produced by Haile Gerima. With Harege-Weyn Tafere, Melaku Makonen, Kasu Asfaw, Adane Melaku, and Worke Kasa. Gerima, born in Gonder, Ethiopia, interrupted his film studies at UCLA to return home to make his first feature, a docudrama about the struggle of a peasant family for existence on land owned by a rich and unproductive man. The struggle, according to Gerima, who cast the film with nonprofessionals, "is symbolic of the new movement sweeping through all Africa, where the harvest of centuries of oppression is the mass’s feeling of freedom to overturn class tyranny." Print courtesy Mypheduh Films, Washington D.C. In Amharic with English subtitles. 150 min.


April 19, 8pm
Soleil O. 1970.
Mauritania/France.
Written and directed by Med Hondo. With Robert Liensol, Théo Légitimus, and Ambroise M’Bia. Hondo writes that "Soleil O took four and a half years to make, and it was realized in bits and pieces. The title refers to a song intoned by slaves on ships from Dahomey (now Benin) to Haiti. The film begins with an expressionistic look at the civilization of Africa before Christianity and the culture of colonialism. Then there is a sudden flash-forward to the present. A black man arrives in Paris to find work and encounters all sorts of prejudice and becomes aware of his own origins." Print courtesy New Yorker Films. In French with English subtitles. 105 min.

April 26, 8pm
La Petite vendeuse de soleil (The Little Girl Who Sold the Sun). 1999. Senegal/Switzerland/France.
Written and directed by Djibril Diop Mambéty. With Lissa Balera, Tayerou M’Baye, and Oumy Samb. The little girl is Sili Lam, a twelve-year-old paraplegic living in Dakar, Senegal, and the "sun" that she hopes to sell is one of the city’s dailies. Determined to wrest the hawking of newspapers from the monopoly of teenage boys, Sili becomes the first female street vendor of the paper. This is the second and last of what was to be a trilogy, Tales of the Little People, which Mambéty had hoped to complete before his untimely death in 1998. Print courtesy California Newsreel. In Wolof with English subtitles. 45 min.

La Vie sur terre (Life on Earth). 1999.
Mali/France.
Written and directed by Abderrahmane Sissako. With Sissako, Nana Baby, Mohamed Sissako, and Bourama Coulibaly. Sissako’s luminous fictional documentary about life in Sokolo, his father’s village in southeast Mali, is perhaps the most successful film from the international series 2000 vue par (2000 As Seen By), which presented works by outstanding filmmakers who were asked to imagine the last day of the century in their native lands. Print courtesy Wellspring, New York. In French and Bambara with English subtitles. 61 min.

May 3, 8pm
Lumumba: La mort du prophète (Lumumba: Death of a Prophet). 1992. France/Germany/Switzerland.
Written and directed by Raoul Peck. A documentary about African political leader Patrice Lumumba, who was Prime Minister of Zaire (now Congo) when he was assassinated in 1961. Print courtesy California Newsreel. 69 min.

The film program is organized by Laurence Kardish (MoMA) with Okwui Enwezor and Mark Nash. Screenings take place in the Roy and Niuta Titus Theater 1. Admission is pay-what-you-wish.
For information, call 212.708.9400