La Femme Au Couteau 1969

[Dona Vansoest]

Atthe first edition of the Festival panafricain du cinma et de la tlvision de Ouagadougou, held in Burkina Faso in 1969, La femme au couteau by Ivorian director/actor/writer Timit Bassori made its world premiere. In it, Bassori links Freudian motifs to a traditional African narrative structure. He plays the lead role himself. The classic film has recently been fully restored.

After a long stay in Europe, a young Ivorian intellectual returns to Ivory Coast. Back home, he not only has difficulty readjusting, but also struggles with serious sexual inhibition, stemming from his very strict upbringing. He is haunted by recurring visions of a woman brandishing a huge knife. Paralyzed with fear, he is unable to enter into a relationship with a woman. He tries everything to get rid of the visions, but nothing helps.

World Cinema Amsterdam is an initiative of and organised by theatre Rialto, who offers screenings all year round. The premiere programme of Rialto focusses on European and non-western independent films.

In La femme au couteau, a young man traumatized by his strict African upbringing returns home after a long stay in Europe. Once home, he has difficulty readjusting to the place where he grew up and experiences debilitating sexual inhibition, made manifest by recurring visions of a woman brandishing a huge knife. He turns to both traditional African medicine and Western psychoanalysis in search of a remedy. Most consider this to be the most accomplished film by Ivory Coast director Bassori, who also plays the lead role. (80 mins., 4K DCP)

ACCESSIBILITY

We strive to host inclusive, accessible events that enable all individuals, including individuals with disabilities, to engage fully. If you have questions about accessibility or require an accommodation such as CART captioning or ASL interpretation to participate in this event, please email access...@wexarts.org or call (614) 688-3890. Requests made by two weeks in advance will generally allow us to provide seamless access, but the Wexner Center for the Arts will make every effort to meet requests made after this date.

Djibril Diop Mamb\u00E9ty\u2019s Touki Bouki (Wolof for The Journey of the Hyena) tells the story of two young lovers, Mory and Anta, who want to escape post-colonial Dakar for the allure of Paris. Together, they set off on a motorcycle for a picaresque journey, but their plan encounters a range of obstacles. The film is surreal and naturalistic, frenetic and meditative, vivid and mystical. Although the film was not well-received in Senegal on initial release, it has since come to be recognised as a classic not only of Senegalese but of world cinema, and a fundamental postcolonial film. It was restored by the World Cinema Foundation in 2008, and selected as the 66th greatest film of all time by Sight and Sound magazine\u2019s 2022 global critics\u2019 poll. For more on the film, read this 2012 essay by Basia Cummings.

Kaddu Beykat (Serer for \u201CVoice of the Peasant\u201D), known also as Letter from My Village, was Safi Faye\u2019s feature-length film, shot in a docu-drama style. Faye reads a letter to a friend in voice-over as images are shown of her hometown, creating a narrative about a young man - Ngor - who is forced to go to and earn money in Senegal\u2019s capital, Dakar, after drought in the village affects its crop of groundnuts. The film stands in an important tradition of cinematic critiques of postcolonial Senegal \u2013 alongside the work of Mamb\u00E9ty and Semb\u00E8ne \u2013 that highlight neocolonial economic exploitation and new class struggles between workers and peasants and the new Senegalese bourgeoisie. The film was banned in Senegal but has since gone on to be seen as a classic of world cinema. For more on the film, see Rama Salla Dieng\u2019s essay on the film from earlier this year.

This double bill follows on from our screening of Ousmane Semb\u00E8ne\u2019s Mandabi (1968) at the start of this academic year. We also recommend visiting Raven Row\u2019s current exhibition, PerAnkh \u2013 The June Givanni PanAfrican Cinema Archive, including the free screenings hosted there. These include Semb\u00E8ne\u2019s Camp de Thiaroye [The Camp at Thiaroye] (1988), Julius-Am\u00E9d\u00E9e Laou\u2019s La vieille quimboiseuse et le majordome [The Old Sorceress and the Valet] (1987), and a double bill of Timit\u00E9 Bassori\u2019s La femme au couteau [The Woman with the Knife] (1969) and Faye\u2019s Selb\u00E9 et tant d\u2019autres [Selb\u00E9: One Among Many] (1983). Tickets can be booked on Eventbrite via the Raven Row website.

3a8082e126