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UMM Home > Humanities
Division > Hasselmo
LTC > Film
Collection > Francophone
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Francophone Films
Films are listed alphabetically by the first word
of the film's title as it appears on the box. When
possible, the entry for a given film also includes the English
title. If you are unsure of the film's title, use the browser's
"Find" function to search for what you do know about the film:
the director's, or an actor's, name, a keyword from the English
title, etc. If you cannot find what you are looking for, ask
an LTC employee for assistance. You can search for more information
about a particular film using a very helpful resource, the
Internet Movie
Database. (Clicking will open it in a new window). At
the bottom is a list of the Francophone films that are kept
in Briggs Library. Films are subtitled in English unless otherwise
noted.To recommend a French African film that is not yet in
the LTC collection, send an email to Viktor Berberi, LTC Director:
berberiv@morris.umn.edu.
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Title: Afrique, je te plumerai
Country: Cameroon
Director:
Jean-Marie Teno
Year: 1992
Run
Time: 88 minutes
Acclaim/Award:
“A stinging rebuke of European colonialism..gives potent
evidence that the independence won from the French was more
ceremonial than substantial.”-San Francisco Chronicle
Summary: This is an overview of one hundred
years of cultural imperialism in Africa. Teno uses the country
Cameroon for a case study of the devastation of traditional
African societies by imposed colonial cultures.
Format:
VHS |
Title: Ali Zaoua: Prince of the Streets
Country: Morocco
Director: Nabil Ayouch
Starring: Mounim Kbab, Mustapha Hansali and Hicham Moussoune
Year: 2000
Run Time: 99 minutes
Acclaim/Award: Audience Award Best Feature Film at Amiens International Film Festival, Buster's Grand Prix award at Buster International Children's Film Festival, and many more.
Summary: Ali, Kwita, Omar and Boubker are a group of street urchins living on the hard streets of Casablanca. Their everyday lives are filled with violence, begging and indifference. In order to survive, they create a bond of friendship and family between them. The bond is cut short when Ali is senselessly killed at the beginning of the film; his life taken by a single act of a rival gang. Ali's friends decide not to report his death to the police, but rather to bury him "like a prince." Ali Zaoua captures the power of dreams and presence of hope in the harshest of circumstances.
Format: DVD |
Title: Bab'aziz
Country: Tunisia
Director:
Nacer Khemir
Year: 2008
Run
Time: 96 minutes
Acclaim/Award: Locarno Int'l Film Festival, Vancouver Int'l Film Festival, Sao Paulo Int'l Film Festival; "Like a poem filmed in radiant and incandescent colors... a wlecome return to the psychedelic and the purely visual" -San Francisco Bay Guardian
Summary: The Prince Who Contemplated His Soul is the story of a blind dervish named Bab'Aziz and his spirited granddaughter, Ishtar. Together they wander the desert in search of a great reunion of dervishes that takes place just once every thirty years.
Format:
DVD |
Title: Borom Sarret
Country: Senegal
Director:
Ousmane Sembène
Year: 1966
Run
Time: 20 minutes
Summary:
This film uses a mixture of documentary techniques and fiction
to tell the story of a young cart-driver in Dakar who is robbed
by a succession of dishonest passengers, and ends up having
his cart confiscated by the police, losing with it not only
his means of livelihood but his sole claim to self-respect in
an exploited and poverty-ridden community
Format:
VHS |
Title: Le Bouillon D'Awara
Country: France
Director: César Paes
Year: 1995
Run Time: 71 minutes
Summary: Awara Soup introduces us to what
must be one of the world's most multi-cultural communities,
a global village in the backcountry of French Guyana, an overseas
department of France perched on the edge of South America.
Three hundred years of world history intersect in Mana, a
town where 1500 people speak 13 different languages and live
together in remarkable harmony. The film's title comes form
a local specialty, a complex gumbo which symbolizes this polyglot
society.
Format: VHS |
Title: Ça twiste A Poponguine
Country: Senegal
Director: Moussa Sene Absa
Starring:Coura Ba, Jean-François
Balmer, Ousmane Bo, Abou Camara
Year: 1993
Run Time: 90 minutes
Acclaim/Award: “A sort of “African
Side Story,” deliciously light with moments of real
grace.”-Liberation (Paris)
Summary: The story takes place in a remote
beachside village where the local teenagers are divided into
rival cultural camps. This film celebrates young Africans’
ability to blend French and American culture into their own.
Format: VHS |
Title: Camp de Thiaroye English:
The Camp at Thiaroye
Country: Algeria/Senegal/Tunisia
Director: Ousmane Sembène
Starring: Sidiki Bakaba, Hamed Camara, Philippe
Chamelat
Year: 1987
Run Time: 152 minutes
Summary: In this semi-autobiographical film,
black soldiers help to defend France, but are detained in
prison camp before being repatriated home.
Format: VHS |
Title: Ceddo
Country: Cameroon
Director:
Jean-Marie Téno
Starring: Tabate
Ndiaye, Moustapha Yade, Ismaila Diagne, Matoura Dia
Year:
1977
Run Time: 95 minutes
Summary:
The Ceddo try to preserve their traditional African culture
against the onslaught of Islam, Christianity, and the slave
trade. When King Demba War sides with the Muslims, the Ceddo
kidnap his daughter, Princess Dior Yacine, to protest their
forcible conversion to Islam. After trying to rescue the princess,
various heirs to the throne are killed, and the King dies from
a snake-bite.
Format: VHS |
Title: Chef!
Country: Cameroon
Director: Jean-Marie Téno
Year: 1999
Run Time: 98 minutes
Summary: Teno interviews a number of Cameroonian
human rights activists who denounce "a political culture
of irresponsibility granting those in power complete impunity
and no accountability." He investigates the case of Pius
Njawe, editor of an opposition news weekly, who was imprisoned
for ten months in the notorious Newbell prison simply for
asking if President Paul Biya had become ill at a football
match.
Format: VHS |
Title: Clando
Country: Senegal
Director: Ousmane Sembène
Starring: Avs Bodule Moukilo, Guillaume Nana,
Raphael de Chedjou, and Joseph Momo
Year: 1996
Run Time: 95 minutes
Summary: Clando tells the story of a former
computer programmer, Sobgui, whose life has collapsed after
his arrest and torture for minor involvement with an anti-government
student group. Reduced to drivinig a clando, or qypsy cab,
he eagerly accepts the opportunity to go to Germany to buy
some cabs and to search for Rigoberto, the long-lost prodigal
son of the taxi fleet owner. There he has an affair with a
young German human rights activist who convinces him that,
"if you don't change societ, society will change you." He
also sees how emigration has reduced Rigoberto to a penniless
drukard by denying him any meaningful social role. Together
they return to Cameroon with no clear strategy except that
they will wait no longer to take back their country.
Format: VHS |
Title: Dakan (Destiny)
Country: Guinea
Director:
Mohamed Camara
Year: 1987
Run
Time: 87 minutes
Acclaim/Award:
“Vibrant with a beautiful uninhibited attitude…A
look at a world yet to arrive, an ignored part of Africa, that
only asks to be filmed so that it can breathe.” –
Liberation (Paris)
Summary: Dakan will
inevitably be remembered as the first feature film on male homosexuality
from sub-Saharan Africa. While “coming out” may
have become prime time fare in the U.S., this film was met with
angry protests when it was shot in the director’s native
Guinea, and has generated heated debate among Africanists here
as well. Beyond its controversial topic, Dakan is a contemporary
African version of the age-old Romeo and Juliet conflict between
love and social conventions.
Format: DVD |
Title: Daughter of Keltoum (Bent Keltoum)
Country: France
Director: Mehdi Charef
Starring: Cylia Malki, Baya Belal and Jean-Roger Milo
Year: 2002
Run Time: 106 minutes
Acclaim/Award: Winner Kodak Award at Mons International Festival of Love Films
Summary: A 19 year-old Swiss woman travels to her birthplace - an isolated, barren Berber settlement in the mountainous desert landscape of Algeria - to find her biological mother, who she has never met. The perilous journey immerses her in a world virtually untouched by contemporary society, one that still clings to tribal mores and strict religious codes of conduct.
Format: DVD |
Title:Days of Glory French:Indigènes
Country:France
Director:Rachid Bouchareb
Year:2006
Run Time:120 minutes
Acclaim/Award: Nominated for a 2007 Oscar in Best Foreign Language Film of the Year, Nominated for a 2007 Critics Choice Award for Best Foreign Language Film.
Summary:During WWII, four North African men enlist in the French army to liberate that country from Nazi oppression, and to fight French discrimination.
Format: DVD |
Title: Divine Carcasse
Country:
Belgium/Benin
Director: Dominque Loreau
Year: 1998
Run Time: 57
minutes
Acclaim/Award: “A delightful
and whimsical look at use and reuse, at natural and spiritual
transformation, what might be called ‘recycling West Africa
style,’ in the ethnographic spirit of Jean Rouch.”
– Edna Bay, Emory University
Summary: Divine Carcasse traces the transformation of an automobile,
a quintessential disposable commodity of Western technology,
into a revered fetish object for a village of Fon people of
coastal Benin. A 1955 Peugeot arrives in Cotonou, the property
of a French philosophy teacher. When it breaks down repeatedly,
he gives it to his cook who hopes to use it to become a prosperous
taxi driver. At this point, the car enters a mixed world of
traditional beliefs and western entrepreneurship which is urban
Africa today. The cook comes to believe that the car is cursed
because of an affront to one of his ancestors. Even a “ghost
dance” ceremony fails to change his luck and he is forced
to see it for scrap.
Format: VHS |
Title: Le Collier Perdu de la Colombe (The Dove's Lost Necklace)
Country:
Tunisia
Director: Nacer Khemir
Starring: Navin Chowdhry, Walid Arakji, Ninar Esber, Noureddine Kasbaoui, Jamil Joudi
Year: 1991
Run Time: 90
minutes
Acclaim/Award: Winner Jury Prize Locarno Int'l Film Festival, Official Selection San Francisco Film Festival, Winner Best Screenplay Namur Film Festival
Summary: A visually ravishing folktale reminiscent of The Thousand and One Nights. While studying Arabic calligraphy from a grand master, Hassan comes across a fragment of rare manuscript. He sets off in search of the missing pieces, believing that once he finds them, they will reveal all the secrets of love.
Format: DVD |
Title: Emitai
Country: Senegal
Director: Ousmane Sembène
Starring: Pierre Blanchard, Robert Fontaine,
Michel Remaudeau
Year: 1971
Run Time: 101 minutes
Summary: As World War II is going on in Europe,
a conflict arises between the French and the Diola-speaking
tribe of Africa, prompting the village women to organize their
men to sit beneath a tree to pray.
Format: VHS |
Title: Femmes Aux Yeux Ouverts
Country: Togo
Director: Anne-Laure Folly
Year: 1994
Run Time: 52 minutes
Acclaim/Award: none
Summary: This is a film about African women.
We meet a woman active in the movement against female genital
mutilation. She explains why in Africa it is easier to oppose
this practice as a health issue rather than a women’s
rights issue.
Format: VHS |
Title: Finzan
Country: Mali
Director: Cheick Oumar Sissoko
Starring:Oumar Namory Keita, Koti, Diarrah
Siongo
Year: 1990
Run Time: 107 minutes
Acclaim/Award: “Sissoko shows a sure
hand..Finzan evokes furious sympathy for the plight of African
women.”-Variety
Summary: The story of two women’s rebellion.
Their desire to control their own lives threatens the traditions
of male supremacy in the village.
Format: VHS |
Title: La Genese English:
Genesis
Country: Mali
Director: Cheick Oumar Sissoko
Starring: Sotigui Kouyaté, Salif Keita,
Balla Moussa Keita, Fatoumata Diawara, and Maimouna Hélène
Diarra
Year: 1999
Run Time: 102 minutes
Summary: Inspired by the Holy Book of Genesis,
this film tells the power struggle between two families: a
clan of herders led by Jacob and another clan of hunters fronted
by his brother Esau. Caught in the crossfire is their cousin,
Hamor and his tribe of farmers.
Format: VHS |
Title: Le Gone du Chaâba
Country: France
Director: Christophe Ruggia
Year: 1997
Run Time: 105 minutes
Acclaim/Award: Grand Prix Festival de Cannes
Junior 1997
Summary: To French authorities, Chaâba
is a slum. Over 21 families have come here from Algeria to
escape civil-war since the 1960's. The real story, though,
is of the children who must fight for an education and stability
in the new country. Omar is one of the lucky ones, though:
he enjoys education and will find assimilation easy. But his
friend Hacene is less secure, and begins to side with those
who accuse Omar of being a disgrace to his identity, of selling
out and becoming French. Then comes the news that Chaâba
is to be torn down.
Format: DVD |
Title: Guelwaar
Country: Senegal
Director: Ousmane Sembène
Starring: Omar Seck, Ndiawar Diop, Mame Ndoumbe
Diop
Year: 1993
Run Time: 115 minutes
Acclaim/Award:
Summary: The film explores the heterogenous
nature of identities formulated by multiple histories of internal
and external colonizations. Using our analytical premise of
being, becoming and belonging, the film presents a picture
of Africa as a culturally diverse and hybrid place where processes
of enunciating and performing subjectivity are characterized
by contradictions.
Format: VHS |
Title: Guimba the Tyrant
Country: Mali/Burkina Faso
Director: Cheick Oumar Sissoko
Starring: Falabo issa Traore, Bala Moussa
Keita and Habib Dembele
Year: 1995
Run Time: 93 minutes
Acclaim/Award: Winner of the Grand Prize
at FESPACO
Summary: Set in the mythical kingdom of ancient
Mali, Guimba tells the story of a despot who uses his dark
magical powers to rule the kingdom.
Format: VHS |
Title:Halfaouine Boy of the Terraces Original Title:Asfour Stah
Country:France/Tunisia
Director:Férid Boughedir
Starring: Selim Boughedir, Mustapha Adouani and Rabia Ben Abdallah
Year: 1990
Run Time: 98 Minutes
Acclaim/Award: Won the 1990 Tanit d'Or, nominated for the 1991 Céasar in Best First Work, won the 1990 Goldan Palm, won the 1991 Audience Award.
Summary: A coming-of-age comedy/drama set in Tunisia. Twelve-year-old Noura is an impressionable boy who must learn to reconcile two conflicting worlds - the loving world of Moslem women and the vastly different, harsher world of men - while also dealing with his own budding sexuality.
Format: DVD |
Title: Honey & Ashes French: Miel et Cendres
Country: Switzerland/Tunisia
Director: Nadia Farès
Starring: Nozha Khouadra, Samia Mzali and Amel Hedhili
Year: 1996
Acclaim/Award: Winner of the Sky Prize, "A compelling examination of female desires" San Francisico International Film Festival
Summary: Honey & Ashes is about three women who live in a North African Islamic country. Each has a different life. Leila is a headstrong, intelligent student. Naima is a doctor with a young daughter, and Amina is a housewife also with a daughter.
Format: DVD |
Title: Hyenas
Country: Senegal
Director: Djibril Diop Mambéty
Starring: Mansour Diouf and Ami Diakhate
Year: 1992
Run Time: 113 minutes
Acclaim/Award: Given three and a half stars
from the New York Post and New York Daily News
Summary: A forgotten act of cruelty comes
back thirty years later to haunt a respected man.
Format: VHS |
Title: Incendies
Country: Canada/France/
Director: Denis Villeneuve
Starring: Lubna Azabal, Mélissa Désormeaux-Poulin, Maxim Gaudette
Year: 2010
Run Time: 130 minutes
Acclaim/Award: Academy Award Nominee 2010 Best Foreign Language Film
Summary: Twins journey to the Middle East to discover their family history and fulfill their dead mother's last wishes, only to make a shocking discovery.
Format: Blu-ray & DVD |
Title: Jesus of Montreal French:
Jésus de Montréal
Country: Canada
Director: Denys Arcano
Starring: Lothaire Bluteau, Catherine Wilkening,
Johanne-Marie Tremblay, Robert Lepage, Gilles Pelletier and
Rémy Girard
Year: 1990
RunTime: 2 hours and 1minute
Acclaim/Award: “Profoundly moving and
savagely funny.”-Leonard Maltin
Summary: The story of an out of work actor
who updates the staid verson of The Passion Play and reinterprets
the famous play.
Format: VHS |
Title: Karmen Gei
Director: Joseph Gaï Ramaka
Starring: Djeïnaba Diop Gaï, Magaye Niang
Year:2001
Run Time:86 minutes
Summary:A loose retelling of the opera "Carmen", filmed in Senegal.
Format: DVD |
Title: Kirikou and the Sorceress
Director: Michel Ocelot
Starring: Doudou Gueye Thiaw, Maimouna N'Diaye, Awa Sène Sarr
Year:1998
Run Time:74 minutes
Summary:Kirikou and the Sorceress (French: Kirikou et la sorcière) is a 1998 Franco-Belgian traditional animation feature film written and directed by Michel Ocelot. Loosely based on a West African folk tale, it tells of how a newborn boy saves his village by ridding them of the evil witch Karaba. It was so successful that it was followed by a midquel, Kirikou et les bêtes sauvages, released in 2005, and adapted into a stage musical, Kirikou et Karaba, first performed in 2007.
Format: DVD |
Title: Krik? Krak! Tales of a Nightmare
Country: Haiti
Director: Jac Avila
Year: 1988
Run Time: 82 minutes
Acclaim/Award: Called "outstanding film of
the year" by the London Film Festival.
Summary: A forgotten act of cruelty comes
back thirty years later to haunt a respected man.
Format: VHS |
Title: Madame Brouette
Country:
Senegal
Director: Moussa Sene Absa
Year: 2002
Run Time: 104
minutes
Acclaim/Award: Montreal World Film
Festival, Berlin International Film Festival, San Sebastian
Film Festival, Rotterdam Film Festival, and London International
Film Festival
Summary: Mati is a spunky
street vendor and single mother known though out the village
as Madame Brouette, a proud and independent woman who defies
the male-centered traditions of her culture with hopes of leading
a dignified life. Having escaped from a violent marriage, she
dreams of riding about the world of abuse that surrounds her
by opening a café. Fate steps in when she meets and falls
in love with Naago, a smooth talking charmer who happens to
be a crooked cop. When the neighborhood awakens to the sound
of bullets and Naago is found dead, all fingers point to Mati.
Part detective story, part fable, this rhythmic tale of passion,
ambition and betrayal is a gem of new African cinema.
Format:
DVD |
Title: Making Of
Country:Tunisia
Director: Nouri Bouzid
Starring: Lotfi Abdelli, Afef Ben Mahmoud and Fatima Ben Saïdane
Year: 2006
Run Time: 120 minutes
Acclaim/Award: Winner of Best Screenplay at the Tribeca Film Festival
Summary:The making of a martyr, the making of a man, and the making of a film. Bahta is 25, Tunisian, a hothead who excels at break-dancing. When he thinks a woman he likes may be seeing another man, his injured pride mixes with his Arab anger at Western insults to Islam, so he gets in trouble with the cops. For sanctuary, two men take him to the home of an older man, a teacher who is a tombstone calligrapher. The teacher slowly brings Bahta to understand the promise of martyrdom, playing on his desire for manhood. Occasionally, the actor playing Bahta breaks out of his role to complain to the director, who must coax him back. Is Bahta on his way to manhood, suicide, martyrdom, and murder?
Format: DVD |
Title: Mandabi
Country: Senegal
Director: Ousmane Sembène
Starring: Makhouradia Gueye, Ynousse N'Diaye,
Isseu Niang
Year: 1968
Run Time: 90 minutes
Summary:A money order from a relative in
Paris throws the life of a Senegalese family man out of order.
He deals with corruption, greed, problematic family members,
the locals and the changing from his traditional way of living
to a more modern one.
Format: VHS |
Title: Monday’s Girls
Country: Nigeria
Director: Ngozi Onwurah
Year: 1993
Run Time: 50 minutes
Acclaim/Award: “A film that grips and
moves…A shot in the arm for ethnographic television.”-Time
In (London)
Summary: This is an up-to-the-minute look
at tradition in today’s changing Africa. It examines
the women’s initiation ceremony of the Niger River delta
through two young women.
Format: VHS |
Title: Mon oncle Antoine English:
My Uncle Antoine
Country: Canada
Director: Claude Jutra
Starring: Jacques Gagnon and Jean Duceppe
Year: 1971
Run Time: 104 minutes
Acclaim/Award: Canadian Academy Award Winner
of Best Feature, Best Director and Best Screenplay
Summary: This is the story of a 15-year-old
boy in a small, economically depressed mining town filmed
in the backwoods of Quebec using many of the local inhabitants.
Format: VHS |
Title: La Noire de…
Country: Senegal
Director: Ousmane Sembène
Starring: Mbissine Thérèse
Diop, Anne-Marie Jelinik, Robert Fontaine
Year: 1965
Run Time: 60 minutes
Summary: A Senegalese woman is eager to find
a better life abroad. She takes a job as a governess for a
French family, but finds her duties reduced to those of a
maid after the family moves from Dakar to the south of France.
Format: VHS |
Title: La Petite Vendeuse de Soleil
Country: Senegal/Switzerland
Director: Djibril diop Mambety
Year: 1999
Run Time:45 minutes
Acclaim/Award: “The humanity Mambety
shows is so piercingly, immediately moving in its angelic matter
of factness, it’s holy and surreal.” – San
Francisco Examiner
Summary: Mambety uses the simple tale of a crippled, yet resilient,
little girl fighting for her economic independence against an
unjust marketplace as a metaphor for Africa’s struggle
to survive in an increasingly globalized economy. Sili Laam
refuses to accept the role the world has assigned her; as a
result, her self-reliant vision has the effect of transforming
the reality around her. In the final shot, her tormentors literally
disappear and the only sound we here are the determined footsteps
into the future.
Format: VHS |
Title: Pièces d'identités
Country: Belgium/Congo
Director: Mweze Ngangura
Starring: Jean-Louis Daulne,Gérard
Essomba, Herbert Flack
Year: 1998
Run Time: 93 minutes
Acclaim/Award: "A dash of gentle Congolese/Belgian
charisma, part comedy, drama, thriller and romance." --Los
Angeles Times
Summary: A Zairian king arrives in Brussels
in search of his long-lost daughter.
Format: VHS |
Title: Quartier Mozart
Country: Cameroon
Director: Jean-Pierre Bekolo
Starring: Serge Amougou, Sandrine Ola'a,
Jimmy Biyong
Year: 1992
Run Time: 80minutes
Acclaim/Award: "An exotic and erotic blend
of magic and machismo that offers a sharp social satire."
-Philadelphia Inquirer
Summary: The story of the not-very-sentimental
education of a young schoolgirl known as Queen of the 'Hood.
Maman Thekla, the local sorceress, helps her enter the body
of a young man, My Guy, so she can discover for herself the
real "sexual politics" or the quarter.
Format: VHS |
Title: Rachida
Country: Algeria
Director: Yamina Bachir-Chouikh
Starring: Ibtissem Djouadi, Bahia Rachedi, Rachida Messaoui En
Year: 2002
Run Time: 100 minutes
Acclaim/Award: Cannes, Un Certain Regard; Best First Film Mexico City Int'l Contemporary Film Festival; "An urgent attack on wanton Islamic terrorism in Algeria"-Boston Phoenix
Summary: A look at terrorism in Algeria through the eyes of Rachida, a teacher in one of the school districts. She becomes the target of terrorists when she refuses to place a bomb in her classroom.
Format: DVD |
Title: Raja
Country: France/Morocco
Director: Jacques Doillon
Starring: Ilham Abdelwahed, Hassan Khissal, Oum El Aid Ait Youss, Zineb Ochita
Year: 2003
Run Time: 112 minutes
Acclaim/Award: Winner Cannes Film Festival, Winner Venice Film Festival, Winner Marrakech Int' Film Festival, Winner Best Actress Marrakech Int'l Film Festival, Official Selection New York Film Festival, Official Selection Toronto Int'l Film Festival
Summary: A cross-cultural drama about a wealthy middle-aged Frenchman's yearning for a nineteen year old local girl. His attempt to seduce her, and their mutual attempt at manipulation, are fractured by their gross disparity of income, age and cultural sophistication.
Format: DVD |
Title: The Road To Love
Country: France
Director: Remi Lange
Starring: Karim Tarek, Riyad Echahi, Mustapha Khaddar, Sihem Benamoune and Farid Tali
Year: 2002
Run Time: 70 minutes
Acclaim/Award: Freedom Award Winner Los Angeles Outfest, Jury Award Best Feature Film Seattle GLFF, Honorable Mention New York NewFest 2003. "The Road to Love...uncovers the complicated and often contradictory attitudes toward homosexuality in Islam." - New York Times
Summary: This romantic drama follows a young and apparently straight French-Algerian student, Karim, on a sociological quest to find gay Muslims. Through his investigations, the likable and handsome Karim meets a number of gay Arabs, from self-focused Youssef to sexually aggessive Mustapha. But it is handsome flight attendant Farid who leaves a lasting impression. While the friendship between Karim and Farid slowly intensifies, Karim is forced to confront the fact that his investigation will not only reveal the fascinating history and culture of gay Muslims, but also his own homosexuality.
Format: DVD |
Title: Saaraba
Country: Senegal
Director: Amadou Saalum Seck
Year: 1988
Run Time: 86 minutes
Acclaim/Award: “Should be seen by anyone
interested in new directions in world cinema. A distinctive
independent voice.”-Director, Charles Burnett
Summary: Saaraba is a word for a mythical
place free of the misery and contradictions of daily existence.
Seck uses this as a metaphor for the dreams and disillusionment
of Senegal and Africa in the decades since independence.
Format: VHS |
Title: Sango Malo
Country: Cameroon/Burkina Faso
Director: Bassek ba Kobhio
Starring: Jean Abanda, Epaye Monny Akwa,
Daniel Bakang
Year: 1991
Run Time: 94 minutes
Acclaim/Award: “A valuable look at
the realities of village life…The director shines with
a lively script and complex characters.”-Variety
Summary: The tale of two school teachers’
and two philosophies of education.
Format: VHS |
Title: Satin Rouge
Country: France/Tunisia
Director: Raja Amari
Starring: Hiam Abbass, Hend El Fahem and Maher Kamoun
Year:2002
Run Time: 100 minutes
Acclaim/Award: Won the 2002 Public Prize for the Best African Film, won the 2002 New Director's Showcase Award, won the 2002 Holden Award for Best Script, won the 2002 Prize of the City of Torino Award.
Summary: After the death of her husband, Lilia's life revolves solely around her teenage daughter, Salma. Whilst looking for Salma late one night, Lilia stumbles upon a belly dance cabaret and though initially reserved and taken aback by the culture of the place, Lilia gets consistently drawn back to it. She befriends one of the belly dancers and is encouraged into dancing for the audience. Lilia also starts a romance with one of the cabaret's musicians, who unbeknown to both of them, is also romancing Salma.
Format: DVD |
Title: Scent of a Green Papaya
Vietnamese: Mui Du Du Xanh
Country: Vietnam
Director: Tran Anh Hung
Starring: Tran Nu Yen Khe, Truong Thi Loc,
Nguyen Anh Hoa, Vuon Hoa Hoi and Lu Man San
Year: 1993
Run Time: 104 minutes
Acclaim/Award: Academy Award and Winner of
the Cannes Film Festival
Summary: A love story set in Vietnam in the
1950’s and 1960’s, this is the story of a shy
peasant girl who comes to Saigon at the age of ten as a household
servant.
Format: VHS, in Vietnamese with English subtitles |
Title: Le Silence de la Foret
Country: Central African Republic,
Cameroon, Gabon
Director: n/a
Year:
2003
Run Time: 93minutes
Acclaim/Award:
“"This beautifully made pic is a powerful African
production, a fascinating excursion into a little-seen world.
The film develops into an unusual journey of discovery. Impeccably
made, with a high level of technical expertise." -Variety
Summary: In a fascinating twist on the old
story of Westerners' encounters with "exotic" African
cultures, La Silence de la Foret focuses instead on what happens
when a European-educated African interacts with the mythic rainforest
people incorrectly and pejoratively known as "pygmies"(they
would more accurately be called the Biaka). It is about the
difficulty for even the most well-intentioned person to know
and respect the "other".
Format:
VHS |
Title: The Silences of the Palace
Country: Tunisia
Director: Moufida Tlatli
Starring: Amel Hedhili, Hend Sabri, Najia
Ouerghi and Ghalia Lacroix
Year: 1996
Run Time: 127 minutes
Acclaim/Award: “Stunning.”-Boston
Globe
Summary: The story is set in the shimmering
reflection of royal life before the revolution. A young servant
girl is misused by her masters and wooed by the rebel.
Format: VHS |
Title: Sugar Cane Alley French:
Rue Cases-Nègres
Country: France/Martinique
Director: Euzhan Palcy
Starring: Garry Cadenat, Darling Legitimus,
Douta Seck and Joby Bernabe
Year: 1985
RunTime: 107 minutes
Acclaim/Award: Winner of Best Actress Venice
Film Festival and the French Cesar Award for Best First Film
Summary: The story takes place on a sugar
cane plantation where an 11-year-old orphan who wins a scholarship
at a school in the city. His grandmother is willing to sacrifice
everything for his chance at an education and an escape from
the fields.
Format: VHS |
Title: Ta Dona
Country: Mali
Director: Adama Drabo
Starring: Djeneba Diawara, Balla Moussa Keita,
Diarrah Sanogo
Year: 1991
Run Time: 100 minutes
Summary: The story of the quest for secret
knowledge by a young Bambara man. Here the hero is not a 13th
century warrior but a modern agricultural expert in the Ministry
of Rivers and Forests.
Format: VHS |
Title: Taafe Fanga
Coutnry: Mali
Director: Adama Drabo
Starring: Fanta Berete, Ramate Drabo, Ibrahim
Koïta
Year: 1997
Run Time: 95 minutes
Summary: A tale of comic revolution in which
women’s and men’s roles are reversed. The story
is structured around the core Dogon belief that cosmogony,
myth, history and the present interpenetrate or repeat themselves
continually to bring primal forces back into proper balance.
Format: VHS |
Title: Tableau Ferraille
Country: Senegal
Director: Moussa Sene Absa
Starring: Ismaël Lô, Ndèye
Fatou Ndaw, and Thierno Ndiaye
Year: 1998
Run Time: 85 minutes
Summary: Tells the story of an idealistic
young politician's rise and fall. Daam, a well-intentioned
but vacillating European-trained politician must choose between
two social paradigms exemplified by his two wives. The first,
Gagnesiri, is the village beauty, who waits patiently for
Daam. Unfortunately, they are unable to conceive a child,
so Daam takes European-educated Kiné, who is eager
to get ahead by marrying a politician. Daam becomes involved
in a shady business deal with Président, a local businessman;
when the details are made public, he is forced out in disgrace.
Format: VHS |
Title: La Tête dans les Nuages
Country: Cameroon
Director:
Jean-Marie Teno
Year: 1994
Run
Time: 98 minutes
Summary: Teno
investigates the ties between Cameroon's kleptocratic government
and its unproductive economy in this movie. The government controlled
formal sector, like its colonial predecessor, is essentially
parasitical. We meet two college-educated young people, Irene
and Jackie, who can only find paying jobs in the burgeoning
informal sector which increasingly only supplies the daily subsistence
needs of most people. Teno concludes that Cameroon's economy
is like a man with his feet in trash and his head in the clouds
with nothing but chaos in between.
Format:
VHS |
Title: Le Thé Au Harem D’Archimèdes English: Tea in the Harem
Director: Mehdi Charef
Starring: Rémi Martin and Kader Boukhanef
Year: 1985
Run Time: 107 minutes
Summary: Madjid, a son of Algerian immigrants, and his friend Pat are condemned to spend their youth in the dreary concrete blocks of a Parisian suburb.
Format: DVD |
Title: These Hands
Country:Tanzania
Director: Flora M'mbugu-Schelling
Year: 1992
Run Time: 45 minutes
Acclaim/Award: "An exceptional documentary...A
hallucinatory voyage" -Liberation (Paris)
Summary: A day in the life of Mozambican
women refugees working in a quarry outside Dar es Salaam.
Format: VHS |
Title: Three Tales from Senegal
Country: Senegal
Director:
Djibril Diop Mambéty/Mansour Sora Wade
Starring:
Dieye Ma Dieye, Youssou N'Dour
Year: 1994,1992,1990
Run Time: 82 minutes
Acclaim/Award:
“"A comedic, well-told and visually poetic story."
-San Fransisco Bay Guardian
Summary: The
three Senagalese shorts in this brief video anthology adapt
the ancient African art of storytelling to a modern medium and
a modern setting. The first one Le Franc, tells
about our hero Marigo, an African Charlie Chaplin,
whose dreams of being a musician help him survivie in a world
of bureaucratic red-tape, urban decay and economic chaos. Picc
Mi (Little Bird) is a touching fable revealing the
exploitation of children in Africa's teeming cities. Fary
l'Anesse (Fary, the Donkey) is about a man who finally
finds his "perfect" woman, but finds out she is a
donkey.
Format: VHS |
Title: Touki Bouki
Country: Senegal
Director: Djibril Diop Mambéty
Starring: Christoph Colomb, Ousseynou Diop,
Aminata Fall
Year: 1973
Run Time: 85 minutes
Acclaim/Award: “Tears up the screen
with fantasies of African modernity never before seen in film
or literature.”-NYU
Summary: The story of two young lovers who
long to escape to Paris.
Format: VHS |
Title: Udju Azul Di Yonta
Country: Guinea-Bissau
Director: Flora Gomes
Starring: Jorge Quintino Biague, Marcelo
Cabral, Jacquelina Camara
Year: 1991
Run Time: 990 minutes
Acclaim/Award: “A richly shaded vision
of post-colonial African society.”-New York Times
Summary: The story of three people so in
love with their dreams that they miss the real opportunities
life offers.
Format: VHS |
Title: La Vie Est belle
Country: Zaire
Director: Mweze Ngangura and Benoît
Lamy
Starring: Papa Wemba, Bibi Krubwa, Kanko
Kasongo
Year: 1987
Run Time: 85 minutes
Acclaim/Award: “ A genial musical comedy
offering a good look at Zaire.”-New York Times
Summary: The story of a poor rural musician
who realizes that to succeed in today’s music world
he must go to the city and break into radio and television.
Format: VHS |
Title: La Vie sur terre
Country: Mali/Mauritania
Director: Abderrrahmane Sissako
Starring: Nana Baby, Bourama Coulibaly, Keita
Bina Gaousso
Year: 1998
Run Time: 61 minutes
Acclaim/Award: “Luminous, poetic, reflective
and pointed.”-Village Voice
Summary: A fictional documentary of daily
life in the village of Sokolo that reminds us that much of
the world’s population still travels on foot, by bicycle
or donkey cart.
Format: VHS |
Title: Viva Laldjérie
Country: Algiers
Director: Nadir Moknèche
Starring: Lubna Azabal, Biyouna, Nadia Kaci
Year: 2006
Run Time: 113 minutes
Acclaim/Award: Official Selection, Thesaloniki Film Festival; "By turns farcical, personality-rich, and profoundly observant" -Village Voice
Summary: This moie portrays three women living in today's Algeria between modern society and Islamic fundamentalism, self-determination and dependence.
Format: DVD |
Title: Wanderers of the Desert
Country: France
Director: Nacer Khemir
Starring: Nacer Khemir, Soufiane Makni and Noureddine Kasbaoui
Year: 1986
Run Time: 95 minutes
Acclaim/Award: Golden Montgolfiere award won by Nacer Khemir at the Nantes Three Continents Festival. Golden Palm Award won by Nacer Khemir at the Valencia Festival of Mediterranean Cinema.
Summary: A teacher is assigned to a remote desert village that is obsessed with a mysterious buried treasure and whose children are cursed to wander the desert.
Format: DVD |
Title: Wend Kuuni
Country: Burkina Faso
Director: Gaston Kaboré
Starring: Serge Yanogo, Rosine Yanogo, Joseph
Nikiema
Year: 1982
Run Time: 70 minutes
Acclaim/Award: “ A gentle fable recalling
a time of peace and plenty.”-New York Times
Summary: A mute, memoryless child is found
under a tree by a peddler. He is adopted by the peddler’s
village who in gratitude rename him “God’s gift.
We learn how bigotry and cruelty drove him to discover compassion
of his adopted village.
Format: VHS |
Title: Woubi Cheri
Country: Ivory Coast
Director: Philip Brooks and Laurent Bocahut
Year: 1998
Run Time: 62 minutes
Acclaim/Award: “Woubi Cheri is one
of those rare documentaries which explores souls and lives.”-Libération
Summary: This film gives African homosexuals
a chance to describe their world in their own words.
Format: VHS |
Title: Xala
Country: Senegal
Director: Ousmane Sembène
Starring: Fatim Diagne, Makhouredia Gueye,
Thierno Leye
Year: 1974
Run Time: 123 minutes
Summary:It is the dawn of Senegal's independence
from France, but as the citizens celebrate in the streets
we soon become aware that only the faces have changed. White
money still controls the government. One official, Aboucader
Beye, known by the title "El Hadji," takes advantage of some
of that money to marry his third wife, to the sorrow and chagrin
of his first two wives and the resentment of his nationalist
daughter. But he discovers on his wedding night that he has
been struck with a "xala," a curse of impotence.
Format: VHS |
Title: Yeelen
Country: Mali/Burkina Faso
Director: Souleymane Cissé
Starring: Balla Moussa Keita, Issaka Kane
and Soumba Traoure
Year: 1987
Run Time: 105 minutes
Acclaim/Award: “Conceivably the greatest
African film ever made….not to be missed.”-Chicago
Reader
Summary: This is the adaption of an ancient
oral legend from Mali. Set in the powerful Mali Empire of
the 13th century, a young warrior must confront an evil sorcerer
who is also his father.
Format: DVD |
| Francophone Films Located in the Library
|
Title: Black and White in Color
Country: Ivory Coast/France/West Germany/Switzerland
Directed by: Jean-Jacques Annaud
Year:
1976
Starring: Jean Carmet, Jacques Dufilho,
Catherine Rouvel
Summary: French colonists
in Africa, several months behind in the news, find themselves
at war with their German neighbors. Deciding that they must
do their proper duty and fight the Germans, they promptly conscript
the local native population. Issuing them boots and rifles,
the French attempt to make "proper" soldiers out of the Africans.
A young, idealistic French geographer seems to be the only rational
person in the town, and he takes over control of the "war" after
several bungles on the part of the others.
Run time:
90 min.
Format: VHS
Library
Call Number: PN1997.B56 |
Title: Chocolat
Country:
Cameroon/France/West Germany
Directed by:
Claire Denis
Year: 1988
Starring:
Isaach De Bankolé, Giulia Boschi, François
Cluzet
Summary: A young French woman returns
to the vast silence of West Africa to contemplate her childhood
days in a colonial outpost in Cameroon. Her strongest memories
are of the family's houseboy, Protée - a man of great
nobility, intelligence and beauty - and the intricate nature
of relationships in a racist society.
Run time:
105 min.
Format: VHS
Library
Call Number: PN1997.C47 1990 |
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