Atlantics (and other African film)
Jan. 10th, 2020 11:03 pmTwitter told me, "Mati Diop’s Atlantics is a Senegalese ghost story about love."
And when I Googled, I got results like
The Brattle showed it tonight [as part of its "(Some of) The Best of 2019" series], and when I searched the Brattle's Twitter for an announcement to RT to ask my friends if they were interested in going, I got IndieWire's "‘Atlantics’ Review: Mati Diop’s Dazzling Ghost Story About the Refugee Crisis — Cannes." So, yeah, not so much a romantic cuddle-watch film.
***
At dinner with![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
bironic before the film tonight, she mentioned she had never seen a Senegalese film before, and I said I wasn't sure I had seen any African film before -- except Rafiki, the Kenyan lesbian film (Afro bubble gum!).
She named various films, including Queen of Katwe which I regretfully still haven't seen. (Though I Googled it just now to remind myself which country it's set in [Uganda] and the director, Mira Nair, is Indian-American, which felt familiar, like I Googled when it came out and learned it wasn't directed by an African. So it doesn't count as a movie by an African, which is how I'm defining "African film.")
In this listing of African films, she mentioned something about South Africa, and I was like, "Oh, right! Ari and I saw Son of Man when SBL/AAR was last in Boston!" That film (a retelling of the Jesus story in a fictionalized contemporary South Africa) and ensuing learnings was honestly probably the highlight of AAR/SBL 2017. The white South African dude who led the discussion afterward (Gerald West) basically talked about all the cultural references his black South African students told him about when they discussed the film in class (you can read most of that in the opening chapter of the book of essays about the film.)
I also wondered if I Am Not a Witch was actually African (I Googled after I got home, and it was written and directed by the Zambian-Welsh woman Rungano Nyoni, so yes).
And when I Googled, I got results like
- The Undefeated: 'Atlantics' haunts its audience with a Senegalese story of love, class, and capitalism
- IndieWire: 'Atlantics': How Mati Diop Turned Senegalese Folklore into a Feminist Mood Piece
The Brattle showed it tonight [as part of its "(Some of) The Best of 2019" series], and when I searched the Brattle's Twitter for an announcement to RT to ask my friends if they were interested in going, I got IndieWire's "‘Atlantics’ Review: Mati Diop’s Dazzling Ghost Story About the Refugee Crisis — Cannes." So, yeah, not so much a romantic cuddle-watch film.
***
At dinner with
bironic before the film tonight, she mentioned she had never seen a Senegalese film before, and I said I wasn't sure I had seen any African film before -- except Rafiki, the Kenyan lesbian film (Afro bubble gum!).She named various films, including Queen of Katwe which I regretfully still haven't seen. (Though I Googled it just now to remind myself which country it's set in [Uganda] and the director, Mira Nair, is Indian-American, which felt familiar, like I Googled when it came out and learned it wasn't directed by an African. So it doesn't count as a movie by an African, which is how I'm defining "African film.")
In this listing of African films, she mentioned something about South Africa, and I was like, "Oh, right! Ari and I saw Son of Man when SBL/AAR was last in Boston!" That film (a retelling of the Jesus story in a fictionalized contemporary South Africa) and ensuing learnings was honestly probably the highlight of AAR/SBL 2017. The white South African dude who led the discussion afterward (Gerald West) basically talked about all the cultural references his black South African students told him about when they discussed the film in class (you can read most of that in the opening chapter of the book of essays about the film.)
I also wondered if I Am Not a Witch was actually African (I Googled after I got home, and it was written and directed by the Zambian-Welsh woman Rungano Nyoni, so yes).