The Best Old Movies on a Big Screen This Week: NYC Repertory Cinema Picks, May 10-16
Directed by Moustapha Alassane
The wonderfully dexterous artist Alassane (who was born in Niger in 1942 and died in Burkina Faso in 2015) made films in a variety of genres, including Westerns, crime dramas, works of magical realism, and ethnographic documentary-fiction hybrids. His greatest treasures, however, also further include the first-ever animated films to emerge from Sub-Saharan Africa, of which the first North American retrospective of Alassane’s films gives a joyful sampling.
Alassane studied with Norman McLaren in Canada, then returned to Niger and developed a playful, subtly satiric style of poking fun at cultural (and often neocolonial) norms through hand-drawn and Claymation renderings of colorful protagonists. His favorite being to offer onscreen was the frog, whose species appears in multitudes in the great works Bon Voyage Sim and its later counterpart Kokoa. Yet he could beautifully render human beings as well, as evidenced in the gently and fluidly musical Samba le grand, the first-ever all-color African animated film to be adapted from a preexisting source text. In it, the warrior Samba Gana performs feats of spectacular derring-do with the ultimate aim of winning the heart of a female ruler named Aliatou Bari who has been riven by sadness. He conquers myriad enemies (human and serpentine alike) until discovering that the greatest—perhaps impossible—challenge lies in conquering a human heart. The film’s puppets are both finely detailed and lightweight, with their jerky flights of movement suggesting an immortality for them that transcends their tale.
Samba le grand’s cast of characters additionally features a troubadour griot, and the film’s narration is spoken in French by none other than Jean Rouch. The work will screen at MoMA together with Alassane’s earlier live-action staging of conflicts between gods and men called Toula, or the Water Genie. Its May 13th screening will be presented by Mahen Bonetti, who is the Founder and Executive Director of the African Film Festival. Aaron Cutler (May 13, 6:30pm; May 14, 3:30pm at MoMA’s Alassane retrospective)