In anticipation of Simpson Center’s upcoming Katz Lecture featuring African director Abderrahmane Sissako, the Black Cinema Collective will be watching his Oscar nominated film TIMBUKTU on Scener.
This beautiful film meets the current social and political moment, poetically interrogating the complexities of humanity, extremism, and resistance. Come watch with us.
▷ ABOUT the FILM
TIMBUKTU, 2014 | 96 mins
The film explores the denizens of the city of Timbuktu, Mali, West Africa, who are living under strict sharia law around the year 2012 during the brief occupation by Ansar Dine. Islamic militants impose a regime of absurd living restrictions and real terror in the ancient Malian city. Just beyond the city in peaceful tent settlements of the dunes, the lives of a Malian cattle herder and his family are also threatened by fundamentalists after a tragic accident.
This film was also inspired by the true story of a young, unmarried couple who were stoned by Islamists in the northern region of Mali that was known as Aguel'hoc. During the summer of 2012, the couple was taken to the center of their village, placed in two holes that had been dug in the ground, and stoned to death in front of hundreds of witnesses.
Languages | Tamasheq, Bambara, Arabic, French, some English.
Subtitles | English
▷ ABOUT THE DIRECTOR
Abderrahmane Sissako (born 13 October 1961) is a Malian director and producer, born in Mauritania and trained in Moscow, Russia. Themes of his work include poverty, globalization, exile, interfaith tolerance, multiculturalism, and the displacement of peoples. His award-winning films include Life on Earth (1998), Waiting for Happiness (Heremakano - 2002), Bamako (2006), and Tiya’s Dream, (2008). In 2014 his film Timbuktu was selected to compete for the Palme d’Or in the main competition section at the Cannes Film Festival, winning the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury and the François Chalais Prize at Cannes. In 2015, the film was also nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film and a BAFTA Award for Best Film Not in the English Language at the British Academy Film Awards.
Sissako is regarded as one of the foremost thinkers on Global South cinema as well as one of Africa’s leading filmmakers sharing the uncommon achievement with the likes of Ousmane Sembène and Djibril Diop Mambety in bridging African cinema with international audiences. His “work is as unsparing and it is visually stunning in examining the global forces that shape African lives.” Sissako has also served as president of the Cannes Short Films and Cinefondation Jury.
He is married to the Ethiopian film director Maji-da Abdi.
▷ ABOUT SIMPSON CENTER KATZ LECTURE:
Abderrahmane Sissako In Conversation: “Africa Worlds / World Films,”
*Sissako* joins scholars of film and African Studies for a conversation on world cinema, post-colonialism, thinking ‘Africa’ beyond the confines of the continent, and in particular his 2014 film Timbuktu.
*Conversation will be in French and English.*
▷PANELISTS
Catherine M. Cole, Danny Hoffman, berette s macaulay, Sudhir Mahadevan, Jazmyn Scott, Richard Watts
More on the Simpson Center website.