Afterimage: Souleymane Cissé

March 12–15, 2020

BAMPFA is honored to host one of the giants of African cinema, Malian filmmaker Souleymane Cissé, who presents three of his films and is joined in conversation by Nigerian writer and scholar Akin Adesokan.

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Brightness
Baara
The Wind

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Past Films

CANCELED: The Wind
- Sunday, March 15 7 PM
Souleymane Cissé
Mali, 1982
All film screenings and public programs at BAMPFA have been cancelled through March 29. Learn more

Cissé’s remarkable satire on Africa’s ruling class follows two college kids rebelling against military control and the establishment, and is by turns fierce, romantic, and ultimately hopeful.

Souleymane Cissé and Akin Adesokan in Conversation
CANCELED: Baara
- Saturday, March 14 5 PM
Souleymane Cissé
Mali, 1978
All film screenings and public programs at BAMPFA have been cancelled through March 29. Learn more

The unlikely friendship between a young worker from the countryside and a progressive factory engineer leads to the triggering of political and class fault lines in Cissé’s searing drama. “Cissé makes explicit the infrastructure of corruption” (New Yorker).

Souleymane Cissé and Akin Adesokan in Conversation
Brightness
- Thursday, March 12 7 PM
Souleymane Cissé
Mali, 1987
A young warrior/seer must overcome his own father to gain the knowledge of the ancients in this visionary reimagining of Mandé creation myths and oral tales. “Not only the most beautifully photographed African film ever, but also the best African film ever made” (Film Comment).

Souleymane Cissé and Akin Adesokan in Conversation

Afterimage: Souleymane Cissé

March 12–15, 2020

BAMPFA is honored to host one of the giants of African cinema, Malian filmmaker Souleymane Cissé. Born in Bamako in 1940, Cissé began his career as a film projectionist, later studying at the VGIK film school in Moscow before returning to Mali to work on newsreels for the country’s Ministry of Information. His searing 1975 feature debut, The Girl, was the first full-length film shot in his native language of Bambara; a fearless depiction of rape and powerlessness, it was banned by the authorities, and Cissé was jailed. His later works such as Baara and The Wind offer similarly heady social and political critique, delivered with visual panache and in narratives that weave Marxist thought with more ancient, traditional themes.

His most acclaimed work, Brightness, was “in part made in opposition to European ethnographic films,” Cissé noted. Proudly African, Cissé aims his films toward...

His most acclaimed work, Brightness, was “in part made in opposition to European ethnographic films,” Cissé noted. Proudly African, Cissé aims his films toward Malians first, so that they can understand the grace of their countrymen in the face of the reality—and the corruption—they encounter daily. “Damu is the Bambara term for the positive impression that is left by the sight of a person or a thing,” he has said. “Damu is perhaps what grace is. When you see man living, you observe all that he is, all that surrounds him . . . you have to depict him with damu.”

Cissé is joined in conversation on three evenings by Nigerian writer and scholar Akin Adesokan, an associate professor of comparative literature and of film and media studies at Indiana University.

— Jason Sanders, Film Notes Writer

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Afterimage: Filmmakers and Critics in Conversation is made possible by generous funding from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association®.

Afterimage: Souleymane Cissé

March 12–15, 2020

Past Films

CANCELED: The Wind

CANCELED: Baara

Brightness