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BAMAKO |
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Director: Abderrahmane Sissako
Screenplay: Abderrahmane Sissako
Cast:
Mélé: Aïssa Maïga
Chaka: Tiécoura Traoré
Saramba: Maimouna Hélène Diarra
Falaï: Balla Habib Dembélé
Awards:
Jury Special Prize, Carthage Film Festival (2006)
Best Francophone Prize, Lumière Awards (2007)
Running time: 115’
Production: France, Mali, USA, 2006
Language: French and Bambara
Rating: Not Rated
Gauge: 35mm, DVD (color)
Genre: Drama
Distributor: New Yorker Films
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"A
less confident, more facile director might have tried
to force a connection between macroeconomics and a single
family’s plight, but Mr. Sissako’s sensibility
is too subtle for such shortcuts. Melé and Chaka
are beautiful and dignified… But they are hardly
the noble, suffering Africans of well-intentioned Hollywood
caricature. Not that subtlety is everything. Mr. Sissako
is trying to make a point, and to use whatever cinematic
means he has at hand to bring it home. The most striking
of these is a film within the film, a mock-spaghetti western
starring Danny Glover and the Palestinian filmmaker Elia
Suleiman that turns the prosecution’s brief into
a bloody allegory".
A.O. Scott, The New York Times |
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Over the course
of a few days, a trial pitting African civil society against
such international financial institutions as the World Bank
and the IMF has set a stage in the courtyard of a home in
Bamako, Mali. The trial’s examination of Africa’s
debt to the World Bank, which threatens Africa’s sovereignty
and continues to alienate and deprive her people, provides
a surreal contrast to the everyday life shared by families
whose homes surround the courtyard. As numerous trial witnesses
(schoolteachers, farmers, writers, etc…) air bracing
indictments against the multinational economic machinery that
haunts them, life in the courtyard presses forward. Chaka,
an unemployed married father, is preoccupied with the imminent
break up of his marriage to Melé, a popular Bamako
lounge singer. He is being harassed by a detective who accuses
him of stealing a gun. In the midst of the powerful testimonies
being made at the trial, the juxtaposition of Chake and Melé’s
story, as well as those of their neighbours, give a voice
to Africa’s silent majority and further fortifies Africa’s
case against the World Bank. Filled with warm colors and inspirational
music, Bamako voices Africa’s grievances in
an original and profoundly moving way: educating, and at the
same time, entertaining the audience.
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| PHOTO New Yorker
Films |
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