Retrospectives

Souleymane Cissé

One of the most remarkable figures on Africa?s film scene is Souleymane Cissé (Bamako, Mali, 1940), an artist committed to the issues of his day, who struggles actively to contribute to the development of a true film industry in Africa. Coinciding with the presentation of his new and long-awaited film, Min yé (Tell Me Who You Are) at the recent Cannes Film Festival, the Granada Festival Cines del Sur pays tribute to him, an essential figure in the history of the cinemas of Sub-Saharan Africa.
  • Baara

    Baara (Baara)

    Souleymane Cissé

    A young rural man named Balla Diarra works as a porter in Bamako. One day he meets Balla Traoré, an engineer in charge of a textile factory. When Traoré finds out that Diarra has been arrested, he pays the bond and gives him a job at the factory. While Diarra tries to get used to the hard work, the engineer attempts to put into practice the enlightened policies he saw while he was in Europe.
    Baara criticises the job instability of African cities at the end of the 1970s, exposes the greed and corruption of the elite business class and reflects the growing social consciousness of the workers there.

    1978. 16 mm. Color. 93’

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  • Brightness

    Brightness (Yeelen)

    Souleymane Cissé

    Based on a traditional Malian legend, Brightness follows the path of Niamankoro, a young man of the Bambara ethnicity, who is hidden by his mother to prevent Soma, the boy’s father, from killing him. Soma, an old witch doctor, claims that the boy does not meet the religious precepts, but the truth hiding behind this lie is that Soma cannot accept that his son might someday become his equal.
    Yeelen is thus a journey of initiation, a decisive point between childhood and adulthood, which will force the young man to dominate the forces that surround him and that will inevitably lead to a confrontation with his father.

    MALI 1987. 35 mm. Color. 105’

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  • Cinq jours d’une vie

    Cinq jours d’une vie (Cinq jours d’une vie)

    Souleymane Cissé

    N’tji, a young man like many others, realizes that studying at the Koranic school his uncle has sent him to does not exactly provide him with job opportunities for later in life. So he drops out and starts wandering the streets until he finally decides to commit a robbery. However, he is arrested and sentenced to three years in prison.
    Five Days in a Life is the story of an ordinary man. It is a statement about a deeply-rooted institution in Muslim societies, Koranic schools. The film points out the futility of such schools, as they do not prepare young people for their future, with the resulting harmful effects on both the individual and society as a whole.

    MALI 1972. 35 mm. B&W. 50’

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  • Den Muso

    Den Muso (Den Muso)

    Souleymane Cissé

    Malamine Diaby runs a factory and has an employee named Sekou. After the owner refuses to give him a pay rise, the young man leaves the company. With no full-time work, Sekou dedicates his time to flirting with women. One night when he goes out, he meets Tenin, Diaby’s daughter, a young girl who became mute after catching meningitis at the age of six. Sekou wins her over, with disastrous consequences for the young girl.
    A portrait of Malian society and the deep inequalities among its people, Den Muda offers a critical view of the director’s country of birth and once again takes up the themes of social injustice and oppression in the workplace.

    MALI 1975, 16 mm Color 85’

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  • Souleymane Cissé

    Souleymane Cissé (Souleymane Cissé)

    Rithy Panh

    In 1964, André S. Labarthe, a critic for Cahiers du cinéma and Janine Bazin, the wife of André Bazin, created a series of portraits of filmmakers for the French National Broadcasting Company (ORTF), inspired by the lengthy interviews published in the journal. The idea was to commission documentaries on well-respected filmmakers, to be made by young filmmakers. Under the title “Cinéastes de notre temps” the series was aired until 1972. In 1979, the TV channel La Sept took the programme up again with a new title: “Cinéma, de notre temps”. As part of this new series a young Cambodian filmmaker Rithy Panh, created an episode about Souleymane Cissé, who had recently achieved international recognition for his film Yeelen, (Brightness) when it took the Jury Prize at the 1987 Festival at Cannes.

    FRANCE 1991. DVD. Color. 60’

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  • The time

    The time (Waati)

    Souleymane Cissé

    Nandi is a black South African girl living under the rule of apartheid. Violence, desperate energy, a wild passion for learning and liberation through knowledge, encounters of love and compassion. The convulsive present of Africa, its past made of misery and magic, its future, "inevitably better" meet on Nandi's path. We follow her from childhood to reaching adulthood, among the landscapes and figures in her life, as she goes through South Africa, Ivory Coast, Mali and Namibia "where the earth seems to have originated". Little by little, Nandi discovers her continent and her own reality as an African woman.

    MALI 1995. 35 mm. Color. 140’

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  • The wind

    The wind (Finye)

    Souleymane Cissé

    In an African city today, this film tells the love story of two adolescents in revolt. Bâ is the grandson of Kansaye, a descendant of a traditional chief. Batrou is the daughter of a representative of the new elite, the military governor Sangaré, whom they will both confront. Bâ and Batrou, part of an entire generation of students who reject the established order and question their fathers’ society, participate in the demonstrations against the corruption of governor Sangaré and are arrested.
    A spirited, sympathetic portrait of a society in transition, Finye defines the director’s central philosophical premise: that the ethnographic approach or seemingly modern view of African culture is no more valid that the traditional metaphysical view.

    MALI 1982. 35 mm. Color. 102’

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