Moolaadé

Moolaade is a present-day story of the impact that female genital mutilation has on one African village that lives very much according to tradition, yet has been touched by communication from the outside world. It's a simple, yet gripping, story, beautifully and creatively filmed. The people come across as thoroughly real people (in spite of the fact, or because, several of the actors are not professionals), yet the story is presented in such a way that each element, abstracted and beautifully caught by the camera, is isolated from whatever else is happening. It is filmed in an Africa language (and occasionally in French) so most viewers have to depend on subtitles, which appear at times to be abstracts of what has actually been said. Because the subtitles are short, they are readable and tend to reinforce the simplicity and directness of the story. It is a film with a message, educational but also a feast for the eyes.

Ousmane Sembene is a colossus among African filmmakers. He is what Kurosawa and Ray are to Asia. At 82, this man is making films on women's problems, on colonialism, on human rights without losing sight of African culture.

"Moolaade" deals with rebellion by African women against female circumcision, a tradition upheld by elders, Muslim and animist, in a swathe of countries across Saharan and sub-Saharan Africa. Interestingly, the film is an uprising within the social traditions that allow the husband full powers over his wives and acceptance of other social codes to whip his wife in public into submission. How many women (and feminist) directors who preach about female emancipation would have dared to make a film on this subject in Africa? The subject could cause riots in countries such as Egypt. Sembene is more feminist than women and I admire this veteran for this and other films he has made. He graphically shows how women are deprived of sexual pleasures through this practice and how thousands die during the crude operation.

"Moolaade" deals with other aspects of Africa as well. It comments on the adherence to traditional values that are good--six women get protection through a code word and piece of cloth tied in front of the entrance to the house. It comments on materialism (including a bread vendor with a good heart for the oppressed who is called a "mercenary" by the women who claim to know the meaning of the word) that pervades pristine African villages (the return of a native from Europe and the increasing dependence on radios for entertainment and information).

Sembene's cinema is not stylish--its style stems from its simplicity and its humane values. Sembene's films allow non-Africans to get inside the world of the real Africa far removed from the world of the Mandelas, constant hunger and the epidemic of AIDS that the media underlines as Africa today. Sembene's film is not history, it is Africa today. The performances are as close to reality as you could get.

At the end of the film shown at the recent Dubai Film Festival, I could not but marvel at a man concerned not at making great cinema for arts' sake but using it creatively to improve the human condition of a slice of humanity the world (and the media) prefers to ignore.

This is my first experience watching a film made in Africa. What a wonderful film to begin with! Moolade is one of the best films I have seen in recent times. It is a social commentary on the position of women in many parts of the African continent focusing on female genital mutilation (circumcision) called as "purification". The movie is tightly scripted, full of subtle, thought-provoking observations of the familial and social order in an unnamed African community. The director patiently tells the story of a woman (Colle) who is against female circumcision and offers a protection (Moolade) to four little girls who escape the ritual and seek shelter from her. The men in the community are unable to comprehend or handle her actions and the change it would bring in the community. They see her actions as a threat to the status quo and to the traditions. Ancient or modern, many traditions are based on superstitions and worse yet, are harmful to people. There is absolutely no question that female circumcision is a horrific practice that is not only physically harmful to women but also one of the worst forms of oppression. How deep this rot has spread in the community is lucidly depicted in the movie. The men in the community are unable to think outside the traditions and the women, especially Colle, end up paying a steep price for them to learn and grow.

Some scenes in the movie were very powerful and disturbing - the female circumcision (the actual process happens off screen), the scene where Colle's husband f**ks her (she is cut), the climax and the denouement. However, the movie proceeds at a relaxed pace in tune with life in the community, and always has interesting things to say. I was fascinated by the culture and the people that were in the movie, outside of the issues of female oppression. The movie is also backed by strong performances, particularly from Fatoumata Coulibaly, who portrays Colle with an interesting blend of resolution and motherliness - a powerful performance in a powerful film.

DO NOT MISS! 9 out of 10

Six girls from a rural village in Burkina Faso escape from a 'purification' ceremony, the female circumcision ritual that is still practiced in 34 of the 58 nations in the African Union. Two head for the city. The other four know of a woman in the village who, some years earlier, had prevented her own daughter from being cut. They run to her home, where she is the second of three wives of a man whose brother is a figure in the town's power structure. To protect them, she pronounces a moolaadé, an unbreakable spell of sanctuary that can only be dissolved by her word, and which is marked simply by stretching some colored strands of yarn across the enclave's doorway.

This is the narrative set up of Ousmane Sembene's latest film, Moolaadé, which had its Philadelphia debut in a packed (literally sitting in the aisles) auditorium at the International House cinema last week. How will the townspeople react to this open rebellion against female genital mutilation? How will the men who govern the town respond? What about the women who actually perform these ceremonies, presented in the film virtually as a coven of witches dressed entirely in red? And, especially, what about the town's other women? Will Collé Gallo Ardo Sy recant the mooladé? Will the village ever again be the same?

All these questions are literally put on the table in the first ten minutes of this remarkable motion picture, beautifully filmed & amazingly acted, full of agitprop theatrics & yet as tightly & deeply scripted – I mean this literally – as any Shakespearean tragedy. That's a combination that is uniquely the signature of Africa's master film maker, Ousmane Sembene.

Had Sembene not been drafted into the French army in his native Senegal at the age of 15 in 1939, he might not have joined the Free French forces fighting the Nazis in '42 & thus might not have ended up after the war in France, working on the docks in Marseilles, where he wrote and published his first novel, Le Docker noir in 1956. It was not usual in the 1950s that a man of his class background in Senegal – not a member of any tribal elite – even learned to read, let alone became a critically & financially successful intellectual on a world scale. Which must be why Sembene made a conscious decision to study film at the All Russia State Institute for Cinematography founded by Eisenstein & at Gorki Studios in Moscow. In 1966, three years after returning to Senegal, the then-43-year-old Sembene released La Noire de . . ., the first feature-length motion picture produced in Sub-Saharan Africa. His films, which can stand up alongside the best of Bergman, Kurosawa or Godard, are intended for audiences who will see them sitting on dirt floors in African villages.

Feminist themes are common in Sembene's work. Ceddo, my favorite of the three earlier pictures of Sembene's that I've seen, looks at Islamic imperialism in Sub-Saharan Africa precisely in terms of what it meant for the role of women in the tribes. Colonialism, contemporary issues of globalization, modernity & identity are all heightened when viewed through the lens of gender relations. Addressing one must mean addressing all & nobody is in a better position to do so than someone whose identity is both defined & constrained by her gender. On a continent where the ratio of resources to human beings would render an economic determinist suicidal, Sembene has come up with a particularly radical prescription – the path through globalization has to proceed through feminism first.

'The West is never my reference,' Sembene says in the Q&A period that follows the picture. He's explaining why it's not a problem that his work tends to be put into a third-world ghetto at European film festivals, even though it plays to packed houses, enthusiastic audiences & consistently wins prizes. Moolaadé, for example, won the Un Certain Regard award this year at Cannes & was relegated to the Planet Africa series at Turin.

Yet, in fact, Moolaadé is very much about the confrontation of rural Africa with the forces of globalization. The girls who flee their mutilation do so because they've seen the consequences – dead sisters, maimed women – up close & personal. The city – urbanization – is the refuge that two seek (and when they don't get there, the consequences are grave). The men in the village respond first by banning radios – one sees here an economy that built around bread and the access to batteries – which are piled outside of the local mosque (where they are left on to play music & some news throughout the entire film up to their climactic scene). When tensions & actions escalate & the men in the village coerce Collé's husband into whipping her in public, the person who steps in to stop the violence is the itinerant shopkeeper, Mercenaire, expelled from the military & living by cheating everybody with a smile in return for his shiny western goods – batteries most of all – who steps in to protect her. And when, finally, the women of the entire village, save for the mutilating witches, revolt against the men, it is the French-schooled son of the chief who lets it be known that he not only is willing to marry a woman who is bilakoro, uncircumcised, but will go beyond the ban against radios, even to the point of having television. What ultimately rescues the women is not just courage & solidarity – the victory comes at a heavy cost – but modernity itself. It is precisely the inability of the village to seal itself off from the influences of history, whether in the form of TV, radio, condoms or AIDS posters, that the women's victory will not be overturned.

This is a movie that you should not miss. This is the type of movie that has the potential to change the world. I know that may sound cliché and cheesy, but it's the truth. The movie comes from Senegal and deals with the still common practice of female circumcision.

This masterpiece has been created by Ousmane Sembene, the 81-year old father of African cinema. Besides having such a powerful a surprisingly applicable theme, it is artfully filmed. The fact that it is created by someone who has lived in Africa making movies his entire life is reason enough to see this movie. Although there are many films are about Africa, there are very few that capture Africa as it really is. Sembene is a master of it.

Then there's the colorful story. It's hard to believe that this type of lifestyle is still very common in parts of Africa. The urgency of this message will captivate you. It may make you appreciate living in a country like the US, that seems to have come so far when it comes to woman's rights, but even more than that, it will hopefully create a common tie across the board knowing that every human desires and deserves their right to life. The humanity of this film is painfully clear. There's no avoiding a change of heart and mind. All this said, Senegal has some difficultly finding actors that can handle the depth of this subject. But don't let that take anything away from your experience. It's possible the most empowering movie I've this this year or any.