{"id":4195,"date":"2010-03-02T23:40:21","date_gmt":"2010-03-03T04:40:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/?p=4195"},"modified":"2010-03-02T22:23:48","modified_gmt":"2010-03-03T03:23:48","slug":"saaraba-1988-amadou-saalum-seck","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/archives\/4195","title":{"rendered":"Saaraba (1988, Amadou Saalum Seck)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>CA Newsreel has blurbs by <a href=\"\/journal\/archives\/tag\/jonathan-demme\">Jonathan Demme<\/a> and <a href=\"\/journal\/archives\/tag\/charles-burnett\">Charles Burnett<\/a>, so this was seen when it came out even if it hasn&#8217;t been seen since.  &#8220;<em>Saaraba<\/em> presents an unsparing indictment of a corrupt older generation intoxicated with Western consumerism and of alienated urban youth addicted to drugs, sex and millenarian politics.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Good looking movie, with more traditionally beautiful shots than in countryman Ousmane Sembene&#8217;s 1970&#8217;s movies (I haven&#8217;t seen his only 80&#8217;s film yet).  At the time we were watching it, I thought I liked it pretty well.  Katy was glad to be watching African movies again.  We could both follow the story without any problems.  But a couple days later we realized neither of us could remember anything about it.  <em>Saaraba<\/em> had vanished!  Now, a couple weeks later, my blogging task is hopeless.  If not for Jonathan Demme&#8217;s pull-quote and this amazing screen-shot I took, the movie may cease to exist.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/journal\/image10\/saaraba2.jpg\" alt=\"image\"><\/p>\n<p>Well that&#8217;s not completely true.  I can tell you it opens with our hero Tamsir returning to Dakar after years spent abroad, determined to live a proper African existence and reject the West.  He has a pothead friend and likes a girl named Lissa.  She&#8217;s promised by her parents to marry a fat man (&#8220;the MP&#8221;), but things go sour when Tamsir knocks her up.  Either her dad or his dad needs to perform a sacrifice to save the herd (really don&#8217;t remember this part).  T&#8217;s dad dies at some point.  Demba, the cool dude shown above, spends the whole movie trying to fix his motorcycle so he can ride away to Saaraba (paradise), but I think he rides into a ditch and gets killed&#8230; or does he kill Tamsir&#8217;s dad?  No, I am almost sure Demba dies.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/journal\/image10\/saaraba1.jpg\" alt=\"image\"><\/p>\n<p>The writer\/director&#8217;s only listed film.  Some of the crew was German.  IMDB lists no acting credits, but I looked some of them up and found a couple Sembene crossovers: Elhadj Abdoulaye Seck of <em><a href=\"\/journal\/archives\/454\">Xala<\/a><\/em> and Omar Seck of <em><a href=\"\/journal\/archives\/532\">Guelwaar<\/a><\/em>.  The American University, whatever that is, says this was the director&#8217;s thesis film.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>CA Newsreel has blurbs by Jonathan Demme and Charles Burnett, so this was seen when it came out even if it hasn&#8217;t been seen since. &#8220;Saaraba presents an unsparing indictment of a corrupt older generation intoxicated with Western consumerism and of alienated urban youth addicted to drugs, sex and millenarian politics.&#8221; Good looking movie, with [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[357,42,667],"class_list":["post-4195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie","tag-1980s","tag-africa","tag-senegal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4195","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=4195"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4195\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4291,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4195\/revisions\/4291"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}