Souleymane Cissé

March 31–April 17, 2022

An overdue tribute to one of the giants of world cinema, Malian director Souleymane Cissé, a former projectionist, jailed dissident, and fiercely antiauthoritarian, proudly African filmmaker whose work includes Brightness, The Wind, Baara, and The Young Girl.

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Brightness
The Young Girl
Baara
The Wind

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Past Films

The Young Girl
Souleymane Cissé
Mali, 1975
New Digital Restoration
Thursday, March 31 7 PM
Cissé’s recently restored first feature-length film, “the eternal story of a young girl who is raped, becomes pregnant, and is then abandoned[,] is agonizingly sad. . . . [The Young Girl] also represents the emergence of an absolutely singular cinematic composition” (Frédéric Bonnaud, La Biennale di Venezia).
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Baara
Souleymane Cissé
Mali, 1978
Sunday, April 3 7 PM
Introduction by Ruth Gebreyesus
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).
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The Wind
Souleymane Cissé
Mali, 1982
Sunday, April 10 7 PM
Cissé’s remarkable satire on Africa’s ruling class follows two college kids rebelling against military control and the establishment; it is by turns fierce, romantic, and ultimately hopeful.
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Brightness
Souleymane Cissé
Mali, 1987
Sunday, April 17 7 PM
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).
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Souleymane Cissé

March 31–April 17, 2022

In March 2020, BAMPFA was honored to host one of the giants of African cinema, Malian filmmaker Souleymane Cissé, with his film Brightness, at our last screening before the COVID-19 lockdown. We are pleased to once again present this landmark of cinema, as well as a new restoration of Cissé’s The Young Girl, The Wind, and Baara.

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 Young 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 Baara and The Wind offer similarly heady social and political critique, delivered...

Cissé noted that his most acclaimed work, Brightness, was “in part made in opposition to European ethnographic films.” He believes that “every nation has the right to be represented by the cinema.” 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 wrote. “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.”

—Jason Sanders, Film Notes Writer

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Organized by Film Curator Kathy Geritz. Cosponsored by the Center for African Studies.