JGPACA Film Club has landed. Each month we screen a film related to the archive and give the chance (before and after) for attendees to engage with selected materials from the archive and discuss Pan African film culture.
For our second JGPACA Film Club we are delighted to be screening two short films by the visionary Senegalese filmmaker Djibril Diop Mambety. Regarded as one of the most important figures in African cinema, Mambety's work offers a visual language of probing critique without didacticism. Best known for his first full length feature 'Touki Bouki' - a surreal and poetic treatise on life, love and politics in post-independence Senegal - we have chosen his final two short films for tonights programme, Le Franc (1994) and La Petite Vendeuse de Soleil (1999). These films were part of a proposed triology entitled 'Stories of Everyday People' which sought to understand contemporary life in Senegal through the lens of those on the margins of society.
Le Franc is a classical farce which follows a down-and-out musician who unexpectedly wins the lottery and sets out to claim his prize. As he imagines a new life unencumbered by material need, we join the character on a hilarious journey which at once comments on the continued reliance on French economic systems in Senegal and on the perils of individualism and avarice.
La Petite Vendeuse de Soleil is a magical realist tale which follows a small girl who decides to help her grandmother make a living by selling 'le Soleil' newspaper across Dakar. Despite becoming a target of attacks from rival newspaper sellers, she is determined to continue working and prove her strength and resilience. This deceptively simple and deeply humane work was Mambety's last film and shows how people with disabilities in Senegal refuse the role of the victim.
As a living archive we invite audiences to form an interactive relationship with items within our archive on display at our events, using them as tools to spark discussions on the films we will view together.
