Been meaning to watch this ever since the Criterion released the Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project. Vancouver's Cinematheque was screening this so why not check it out on the big screen.

I went home and checked out the extras on the Criterion Channel. Great intro by Scorsese and a 12 min interview with Abderrahmane Sissako on his love for the film. Sissako calls Djibril Diop Mambéty the greatest African filmmaker.

The main plot is essentially the "two young lovers wanting to break out of their one-horse town" plot however because this is Senegal and the young protagonists are attempting to leave Africa for Europe (specifically Paris), this becomes about something greater... a poetic study colonialism and migration. Really powerful editing…

Film #1 in the 30 Countries Challenge: Senegal

This may be the first African film that I have seen, and I now feel immensely upset for having overlooked the films of this continent. Touki Bouki, also known as Journey of the Hyena, is a very static filma about post-colonial feelings in Senegal. The films two main protagonists, Mory and Anta, are university students that have become disillusioned by life in Senegal and seek change. They feel that it would be a great adventure to go to France, and the majority of the film consists of their exploits as they attempt to find enough money to leave Senegal.

The film is shot with unflinching realism, and the camera never shies away…

A ironia mordaz, as situações surreais e a desconstrução de uma narrativa tradicional manifestam-se em cada enquadramento. Significativamente, o filme se abre e se fecha com a imagem de um menino que guia um rebanho para o matadouro ao som de uma flauta: cena que contém o movimento e a imobilidade, transmitindo a ideia de um tempo congelado, de um espaço do qual não se pode fugir.

E, de fato, entre estas duas cenas toma forma a utopia de dois jovens com perspectivas de vida diferentes. Ambos apaixonam-se, mas sua cara metade é Paris, intensamente evocada pela canção de Joséphine Baker, na qual o nome da cidade é repetido de uma forma obsessiva, irônica e trágica, que dá somente a…

The bull-horned skull-mounted motorcycle riding cowherd Mory and the university student Anta are both fed up with life in Senegal; they dream of raising enough money to go to Paris. Touki Bouki is a 70s African film inspired by French New Wave, and jump cuts, imagery juxtaposition, and artsy forms of storytelling that come with the terrain. Sympathy is on its side surely, but rarely I’ve felt this shut out by a film before. My relationship with French New Wave can at best be described as ‘difficult’ or ‘complicated’ already, but Touki Bouki truly took the movement’s elements I have the most trouble with and made them its foundation and its centrepieces: (1) inaccessible blank slate main characters, (2) a…

I am put in mind of Hoop Dreams here, simply because it was that film that made me think of the false hopes of leaving behind you the travails of your past. In this film, disaffected youths seek escape, but unlike the implications I rejected while considering Hoop Dreams, their dreams involve returning in glory. Again, despite not having anything in common with Mory or Anta, I find I sympathize greatly. The only ways I can imagine being back among the middle class subrural sanitized Americans of Cullman, Alabama, is as some sort of conquering hero returned from afar, apotheosed.

This film is clearly intended as a comedy. There's even an offensive homosexual stereotype thrown in for good measure. But…