Screen/Society--French & Francophone Film Festival--"Timbuktu"

Monday, September 14, 2015 - 3:00pm to 4:45pm
Screen/Society--French & Francophone Film Festival--"Timbuktu"

Timbuktu

(Abderrahmane Sissako, 2014, 97 min, France/Mauritania, in Arabic, Bambara, French, English, Songhay, and Tamasheq w/ English subtitles, Color, Blu-Ray)

-- Introduced by visiting scholar Amadou Fofana (African Cinema specialist, Humanities Writ Large); Q&A to follow!

Abderrahmane Sissako's new film looks at the terror and humiliation of occupation with an uncommonly serene eye. We are in the ancient Malian city of Timbuktu, where foreign jihadists are enforcing bans against sports, music, loafing, and bare-headed women. Sissako gracefully pivots between multiple characters, some of whom are seen only fleetingly while others, like the Tuareg family living in the hills near the city, we come to know intimately. Visually, Timbuktu is a series of wonders and Sissako's becalmed and sensitive eye for beauty intensifies the absurdity and horror of the film's quietly unfolding tragedy. 

--"A transcendent political poem as intellectually rigorous as it is beautiful." --Philadelphia Inquirer 

Cost: Free and open to the public

Sponsors: The Center for French and Francophone Studies, the Program in the Arts of the Moving Image (AMI) and the Department of Romance Studies.

Bryan Center Griffith Film Theater