Pan African Cinema Film Screening: Mandabi (1968)
Pan African Cinema Film Screening
Mandabi (1968) dir. Ousmane Sembene
OV [Wolof/French] with English subtitles
Ousmane Sembène is one the most influential and relevant figures of Pan African Cinema, his anti-colonial stance to tell stories beyond, exotic and paternalistic projections onto Africa and its people, makes his films so captivating and inspiring to many contemporary African film makers and beyond. He uses film as an access point where other forms of expression and communication do not reach the people, through visual storytelling he shows the lived realities of his home country and the diaspora and sheds light on the post colonial struggles of everyday people.
About the Film
Ibrahima Dieng, an illiterate and unemployed man living in Dakar with his two wives and seven children, receives a money order from his nephew, who has saved 25,000 francs sweeping the streets of Paris. The young man tells Ibrahima to give part of the money to his mother, save some money for his nephew, and keep a portion for himself.
What happens next is an absurd and frustrating bureaucratic odyssey as Ibrahima struggles to claim the money.