About

Badou Boy 1970

'A film that anticipates the director's fanciful 1973 film Touki-Bouki, Badou Boy is an acerbically humorous portrait of Dakar, Senegal's capital. Dramatizing the inevitable clash of the iconoclast and the powers that be, the film takes the viewer on a wild chase through the streets of Dakar. Badou Boy, who usually spends his time loitering on city buses, is forced to outrun an overweight policeman nicknamed "The Black Dragon." As in his other films, Mambety uses a swarm of colorful characters and improbable situations to create a vibrant romp in the big city.' African Film Festival.

4K digital restoration by The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project and Cineteca di Bologna at L’Immagine Ritrovata and L’Image Retrouvée laboratories in association with Teemour Mambéty. Restoration funded by the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation. This restoration is part of the African Film Heritage Project, an initiative created by The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project, the Pan African Federation of Filmmakers and UNESCO – in collaboration with Cineteca di Bologna – to help locate, restore, and disseminate African cinema.

56 minutes | Ages 15+

Parlons Grand-mère (Let's Talk, Grandmother) 1989

'Fifteen years after making Touki Bouki, Djibril Diop Mambéty returned to depict the two things that mattered most to him: cinema and children. In this production, Idrissa Ouédraogo is recorded shooting his second feature, Yaaba. And beyond this sensitive tribute, we are also introduced to a nation, Burkina Faso, which remains the only country in West Africa to have developed a film industry of its own, under the aegis of Thomas Sankara, with indigenous production companies, financial support support for directing and distributing. Thus, Djibril Diop Mambéty uses his depiction of Ouédraogo shooting a story about a grandmother and two kids to establish a visual connection between the Africa of his day and the theme of childhood, his other great passion. Mambéty has set up a Dakar-based foundation named Yaadikone to support children and encourage nature conservation. The name is a tribute to a ‘Senegalese Robin Hood’ who fought colonialism and injustice of all sorts. The foundation continues to defend children’s rights and organize one-off events designed to promote children and place them in the public eye. To this extent, Parlons grand-mère is more of a cinematic poem than a documentary film. It is truly a manifesto for film-making, for children and for Africa.' Vincent Adatte, Il Cinema Ritrovato

34 minutes | Ages 15+