Senegalese and French director Ramata-Toulaye Sy is only the second Black woman to make it into Competition in Cannes. Her debut feature, Banel & Adama, which had its debut Saturday, follows in the footsteps of Mati Diop’s 2019 Atlantics.
Sy draws on her roots in the Fulani, or Peul, culture of the Futa region in northern Senegal for her magic-realist film about a young couple whose passion brings chaos to their remote rural community. “The people of Futa have the reputation of being very dignified and sticking to their community,” says Sy, who was born and grew up in France. “I was raised in the Fulani tradition at home and French culture outside.”
Inspiration for Banel & Adama came from a desire to create a tragic African heroine on par with Pierre Corneille’s Médée or Jean Racine’s Phèdre. “We don’t really have these mythical, tragic characters, or we do,...
Sy draws on her roots in the Fulani, or Peul, culture of the Futa region in northern Senegal for her magic-realist film about a young couple whose passion brings chaos to their remote rural community. “The people of Futa have the reputation of being very dignified and sticking to their community,” says Sy, who was born and grew up in France. “I was raised in the Fulani tradition at home and French culture outside.”
Inspiration for Banel & Adama came from a desire to create a tragic African heroine on par with Pierre Corneille’s Médée or Jean Racine’s Phèdre. “We don’t really have these mythical, tragic characters, or we do,...
- 5/20/2023
- by Melanie Goodfellow
- Deadline Film + TV
A Straub-Huillet Companion is a series of short essays on the films of Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet, subject of a Mubi retrospective. Straub-Huillet's Fortini/Cani (1976) is showing on Mubi from July 3 – August 1, 2019. The boy I was experienced no conflict between paternal and maternal tradition. What touched his imagination in Judaism was not the incomprehensible rites in the synagogue to which his father occasionally took him. His first knowledge of a lack of love and curiosity came with the certainty that his father did not believe in those rituals and pious gestures. When he was introduced to his father’s relatives or acquaintances who wore the tallit on their shoulders as if dressed for a secret ceremony he sensed in them not faith but rather a reproach, as if they expressed a difference he could not yet decipher. — Franco Fortini, The Dogs of the SinaiThe IMDb lists Fortini/Cani as Straub-Huillet’s first “documentary” feature.
- 7/4/2019
- MUBI
A Straub-Huillet Companion is a series of short essays on the films of Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet, subject of a Mubi retrospective. Straub-Huillet's Eyes Do Not Want to Close at All Times, or, Perhaps One Day Rome Will Allow Herself to Choose in Her Turn (1970) is showing on Mubi from May 27 – June 26, 2019.Whether defeated viewers silently making their way to the exit after the first fifteen minutes or indignant critics taking an axe to the film in (once upon a time) major print publications, detractors of Straub-Huillet frequently bemoan what they see as the duo’s hatred of the audience. Straub, on the contrary, claimed that these were popular-minded films intended for workers and not intellectuals (i.e. to be shown in factories). It is obvious that the verbal density alone of many of the directors' “historical” films—most famously their 1969 adaptation of Pierre Corneille’s Othon—pushes stupefied viewers unfamiliar with the texts,...
- 5/29/2019
- MUBI
Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveriesNEWShttps://tribecafilm.com/stories/tribeca-2017-jury-awardsFilmmaker Ricky D'Ambrose, who has made several excellent video interviews with directors for the Notebook, is kickstarting his feature debut, Notes on an Appearance. Above is a beguiling, cryptic teaser for the project. The Tribeca Film Festival wrapped last week (read our coverage) and the many awards have been announced, including Keep the Change for U.S. Narrative, Son of Sofia for International Narrative, Bobby Jene for Documentary, and Treehugger : Wawona for the immersive storytelling Storyscapes Award.Recommended VIEWINGSpeaking of Tribeca, the festival hosted a The Godfather and The Godfather: Part II reunion and on-stage conversation with director Francis Ford Coppola, Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, and more. Lucky for us, they broadcast and recorded the whole thing.Bill and Turner Ross's stellar documentary 45365, winner of the Grand Jury Prize at SXSW in 2009, is now free to stream online.
- 5/3/2017
- MUBI
I'm drawn to Straub-Huillet’s usage of direct quotations rather than adapting or interpreting original material for a film. To me this is, among other things, a very straightforward and concrete way of highlighting that people are much less original than they are often assumed to be. (I think that Danièle Huillet once said this, but she was certainly not the first one.) It might be worth being reminded of this, especially today, in a time where we see and seek constant innovation and renewal everywhere while nothing really changes at the core. But for Straub-Huillet, quotation is also about something else. Every film of theirs is a documentation of their loving relationship to a preexisting text, artwork, or artist. The films are more genuinely about the work of the other and less about the couple's so-called vision. Quotation, to Straub-Huillet, is an act of respect, one...
- 2/7/2017
- MUBI
In his one-man show “Laugh Whore,” Mario Cantone looked back in anger at his New York stage debut. He got stuck playing a rustic in one of Shakespeare’s comedies, and night after night in Central Park he could not get the audiences at the Delacorte Theatre to laugh at anything he said. And night after night, he wanted to scream out at them, “You try making f—ing 400-year-old jokes work!” David Ives’ solution to making 400-year-old jokes work is to rewrite the 17th-century comedy “Le Menteur,” by Pierre Corneille, the famous playwright whose many plays you’ve probably never seen.
- 1/27/2017
- by Robert Hofler
- The Wrap
Jacques Rancière, Philippe Lafosse and the public in conversation about Straub-Huillet after a screening of From the Clouds to the Resistance and Workers, Peasants
Monday, February 16, 2004, Jean Vigo Cinema, Nice, France
Above: From the Clouds to the Resistance.
Philippe Lafosse: It seemed interesting to us, after having seen twelve films by Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet and talked about them together, to ask another viewer, a philosopher and cinephile, to talk to us about these filmmakers. Jacques Rancière is with us this evening to tackle a subject that we’ve entitled “Politics and Aesthetics in the Straubs’ Films,” knowing that we could then look into other points.
Jacques Ranciere: First, a word apropos the “and” of “Politics and Aesthetics”: this doesn’t mean that there’s art on the one hand and politics on the other, or that there would be a formal procedure on the one hand and political messages on the other.
Monday, February 16, 2004, Jean Vigo Cinema, Nice, France
Above: From the Clouds to the Resistance.
Philippe Lafosse: It seemed interesting to us, after having seen twelve films by Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet and talked about them together, to ask another viewer, a philosopher and cinephile, to talk to us about these filmmakers. Jacques Rancière is with us this evening to tackle a subject that we’ve entitled “Politics and Aesthetics in the Straubs’ Films,” knowing that we could then look into other points.
Jacques Ranciere: First, a word apropos the “and” of “Politics and Aesthetics”: this doesn’t mean that there’s art on the one hand and politics on the other, or that there would be a formal procedure on the one hand and political messages on the other.
- 11/7/2011
- MUBI
Off-Broadway’s been a busy bee. While the Great White Way readies itself for Sunday’s Tony Awards, New York’s smaller venues hosted a series of openings this week, including the four reviewed by our critics. Check out the highlights below, and comeback Sunday for our live blog of the 2011 Tonys, which air at 8 p.m. on CBS.
The Shaggs: Philosophy of the World: EW senior writer Clark Collis dubs The Shaggs, which he gives a B, “something rather special.” He writes that where the musical fails as a standard jukebox tuner that sensationalizes the ups-and-downs of its subject (in this case,...
The Shaggs: Philosophy of the World: EW senior writer Clark Collis dubs The Shaggs, which he gives a B, “something rather special.” He writes that where the musical fails as a standard jukebox tuner that sensationalizes the ups-and-downs of its subject (in this case,...
- 6/10/2011
- by Aubry D'Arminio
- EW.com - PopWatch
With 2010 only a week over, it already feels like best-of and top-ten lists have been pouring in for months, and we’re already tired of them: the ranking, the exclusions (and inclusions), the rules and the qualifiers. Some people got to see films at festivals, others only catch movies on video; and the ability for us, or any publication, to come up with a system to fairly determine who saw what when and what they thought was the best seems an impossible feat. That doesn’t stop most people from doing it, but we liked the fantasy double features we did last year and for our 3rd Writers Poll we thought we'd do it again.
I asked our contributors to pick a single new film they saw in 2010—in theaters or at a festival—and creatively pair it with an old film they saw in 2010 to create a unique double feature.
I asked our contributors to pick a single new film they saw in 2010—in theaters or at a festival—and creatively pair it with an old film they saw in 2010 to create a unique double feature.
- 1/10/2011
- MUBI
Signature Theatre Company has announced the final production for their 20th Anniversary 2010-2011 Season, celebrating the work of Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize-winner Tony Kushner. Joining the previously announced first New York Revival of Parts 1 and 2 of Angels In America: A Gay Fantasia On National Themes and the New York premiere of The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide To Capitalism And Socialism With A Key To The Scriptures will be The Illusion, Kushner's freely adapted version of Pierre Corneille's L'Illusion Comique, directed by Tony Award-winner Michael Mayer. The production will be presented in Spring, 2011 at the Peter Norton Space, (555 West 42nd Street, between 10th and 11th Avenues). Dates and casting will be announced at a later date.
- 4/1/2010
- BroadwayWorld.com
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