Harvard Film Archive

Premieres

November 12 (Friday) 7 pm
November 13 (Saturday) 7 pm
November 14 (Sunday) 6 pm

Le Franc

Directed by Djibril Diop Mambéty
Senegal 1994 color, 35mm, 45 min.
With Dieye Ma Dieye, Aminta Fall, Demba Bâ
Wolof with English subtitles

The first film in what was to be Mambéty’s planned trilogy Tales of Little People, Le Franc is a richly textured and vibrantly musical fable of life in Senegal. When a penniless, Chaplinesque musician wins the lottery, he begins a difficult journey across Dakar. Beautifully photographed in color, in a style that recalls the experimental 1920’s Soviet cinema and shifts fluidly from the real to the surreal to the near-documentary, Mambéty’s cautionary tale is a sweet satire on Senegal’s social and economic contradictions. Featuring an infectious soundtrack of French, English, and Arabic music.

Screens with "Le Franc"
November 12 (Friday) 7 pm
November 13 (Saturday) 7 pm
November 14 (Sunday) 6 pm

The Little Girl Who Sold the Sun

Directed by Djibril Diop Mambéty
Switzerland/France/Senegal 1999, color, 35mm, 45 min.
Wolof with English subtitles
With Lissa Baléra, Taïrou M’Baye

Tragically, Mambéty died in Paris during postproduction on this masterpiece, the second film in his planned trilogy. Shot on the streets of Dakar, Mambéty’s titular heroine is street-kid Sili, a physically deformed, hugely self-empowered newspaper seller, determined to make a better life for herself and her grandmother, a street singer. Undeterred by her metal crutches and the abuse of other paperboys, Sili perseveres with a mixture of charm, intelligence, and integrity. In this "hymn to the courage of street children," the humanity presented is so piercingly, immediately moving it becomes holy and surreal.

November 20 (Saturday) 7 pm
November 21 (Sunday) 8:30 pm
November 23 (Tuesday) 8:30 pm
November 24 (Wednesday) 8:30 pm
There will be a series of Mambéty films screening in February at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. call 723-4567 for details.

Regret to Inform

Directed by Barbara Sonneborn
USA 1999, color, 35mm, 72 min.

More than 20 years after her husband was killed in combat, writer/director Barbara Sonneborn travels to Vietnam and around the United States documenting the anguish and torment of war widows on both sides of the conflict, all of whom have suffered tremendous loss. As the agent of her own catharsis, Sonneborn visits the site of her husband’s death and listens to Vietnamese women who lost not only their husbands, but their children, homes, and identities. The filmmaker strikes a delicate balance in presenting both sides of the story. That it is the same tragic story from all perspectives may in fact be the most enlightening aspect of this film.

November 20 (Saturday) 8:30 pm
November 21 (Sunday) 7 pm
November 24 (Wednesday) 7 pm
November 27 (Saturday) 4 pm
Assistant Director and long time Herzog collaborator Herb Golder will be present on Saturday, November 20 and Sunday, November 21 to introduce and discuss the film.
Co-sponsored by the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard

Wings of Hope

Directed by Werner Herzog
Germany 1999 color, 16mm on video, 74 min.
German with English subtitles

In 1971, a plane with 92 passengers aboard disappeared into the Peruvian jungle without a trace. After ten days, the intensive search was abandoned. On the twelfth day, Juliane Koepcke, a seventeen-year-old girl, emerged. Wings of Hope is a documentary about the sole survivor of a plane crash in the Amazon, a young girl who was hurled into the void from a falling plane, survived her fall from two miles in the sky, and then walked, near death, for eleven days out of the deepest jungle. It is the story of the triumph of human intelligence over brute nature and the chronicle of a miracle.

November 27 (Saturday) 9 pm

Lola and Billy the Kid

Directed by Kutlug Ataman
Lola & Bilidkid Germany 1999, color, 35mm, 91 min.
German with English Subtitles
With Baki Davrak, Brdal Yildiz

Kutlug Ataman’s highly charged thriller takes us into the shadowy world of Berlin’s gay Turkish émigrés, who live lives of constant double jeopardy due to the extreme homophobia within their own ethnic culture and from German xenophobes as well. This compelling film is at once a tale of family tragedy and a rare look at Berlin’s notable Turkish immigrant transvestite community. Kutlug Ataman began his filmmaking career in Turkey but left after being detained and tortured for shooting Super-8 footage of political events leading up to the 1980 coup.