Film Screening:

Si-Gueriki, The Queen Mother
(Idrissou Mora Kpai, 2002, 62 min, Benin/France/Germany, French with English subtitles, color, DVD)

-- Q&A to follow with director and Duke Visiting Assistant Professor Idrissou Mora Kpai!

Si-Gueriki, the Queen Mother offers an insider's view into a Wassangari tribal village in Benin, where the women work and the men idle under trees. Everything is seen through the amused, respectful eyes of returning expat Idrissou Mora-Kpai, who had moved to Germany to study filmmaking. Mora Kpai visits his village, after having spent ten years in Europe, intending to recount the life of his proud warrior father, now deceased. But his initial intention is overturned when, for the first time, he gets to know his mother and discovers she is not the lowly vassal he thought. During his childhood, she was just one of his father’s wives, a shadow in the house; today she bears the title “Si-Gueriki”, she is the queen mother.

With this intimate and personal film, Mora Kpai casts an eye – from the inside and the outside at the same time – on his origins and his culture.

Cost: Free and Open to the Public!

Sponsors: The Program in Women's Studies, the Program in the Arts of the Moving Image (AMI), the Center for Documentary Studies (CDS), and the International Comparative Studies Program (ICS).