Playful travelogue doc of Dakar. Strange, and the humor and political content are mostly lost on us, a couple continents and decades removed. Ubu says it’s considered Africa’s first comedy film.<\/p>\n
![](\"\/journal\/image16\/mambety1.jpg\")
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Uncredited description of this film online:<\/p>\n
Djibril Diop Mambety’s deeply ironic and biting commentary on the divided city that was Dakar in 1969: on the one hand, colonial, affluent and pompous, on the other, indigenous, poor but genuine.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Would make good marathon viewing with other wry short travel docs: Vigo’s \u00c0 Propos de Nice<\/a><\/em>, Varda’s Du Cot\u00e9 de la C\u00f4te<\/a><\/em>, Lindsay Anderson’s O Dreamland<\/a><\/em>, Ivens’s A Valpara\u00c3\u00adso<\/a><\/em>, Marker’s Sunday in Peking<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n
Woman looking at French magazines at the newsstand:<\/em>
\n<\/p>\n
–
\nBadou Boy<\/em> (1970)<\/strong><\/p>\nAdventures of the Badou Boy, a thief who helps run a bus service while dodging the ineffectual Officer Al. There’s also a blind musician, a hat-and-cane fancyman (played by the director) and Badou’s white-hatted buddy Moussa, who I think helps him escape Al at the end. Or maybe Badou is caught – there are flash-forwards, so I’m not always sure where we are.<\/p>\n
Officer Al:<\/em>
\n<\/p>\n
Voices are fully overdubbed. Music and effects and voices sometimes seem to be working against the picture, instead of with it. That’s not a complaint – since Contras City<\/em> opens with a classy symphonic song which then warps and slows to a halt, it’s clear that Mambety is purposely screwing around with sound possibilities. It’s also clear that he’d been watching some French New Wave pictures.<\/p>\n
Also playing with the camera – here focus is on the driver’s hand instead of Badou:<\/em>
\n<\/p>\n
Our festival of Senegalese movies got stalled after this. Contras City<\/em> made Katy sleepy, and she was having none of Badou Boy<\/em>.<\/p>\n
Maybe not as New-Wave-influenced as I thought… Mambety:<\/p>\n
It’s the way I dream. To do that, one must have a mad belief that everything is possible–you have to be mad to the point of being irresponsible. Because I know that cinema must be reinvented, reinvented each time, and whoever ventures into cinema also has a share in its reinvention.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Mark Cousins:<\/p>\n
[Its] sonic complexity, its state of the nation-ness, its Joycean wandering, its allegorical fun, convinced me that Badou Boy<\/em> is undisputedly a lost classic. It is as important to African cinema as, say, Le Sang d’un poete<\/a><\/em> is to French cinema – perhaps more so. It reveals the origins of the aesthetic confidence, the joy in mocking, filming and thinking that can be seen in Touki Bouki<\/a><\/em>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Two by Djibril Diop Mambety Contras City (1968) Playful travelogue doc of Dakar. Strange, and the humor and political content are mostly lost on us, a couple continents and decades removed. Ubu says it’s considered Africa’s first comedy film. Uncredited description of this film online: Djibril Diop Mambety’s deeply ironic and biting commentary on the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[410,42,1037,93,667,21],"class_list":["post-11046","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie","tag-1960s","tag-africa","tag-djibril-diop-mambety","tag-documentary","tag-senegal","tag-shorts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11046","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11046"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11046\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11068,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11046\/revisions\/11068"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11046"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11046"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11046"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}