This screening features films on the theme Debt, Dependency, and City Stories. Enslavement and colonization established persisting structures of economic dispossession, instituting dependency and debt as both historical and contemporary obstacles to the autonomous flourishing of the African continent and diaspora. Le Franc (1994) Djibril Diop Mambéty unleashed his exuberant and poignant cinema against the craven conditions of neocolonialism and financial deprivation on the African continent. Le Franc (1994) is one part of an unfinished trilogy dedicated to the minoritized experiences he always championed as meaningful and revelatory. The protagonist is a penniless musician, Marigo—played with lanky, languid charm by Dieye Ma Dieye—whose anarchic trek through Dakar with a lottery ticket in hand unfolds as both a deeply moving journey and an indictment of the colonially imposed CFA franc monetary system. Director: Djibril Diop Mambéty De cierta manera (One Way or Another) 1974/1977 Working in revolutionary Cuba, the fearless Sara Gómez upheld but also expanded the state’s vision of liberation to fully address ongoing issues of racialized economic disparity and marginalization in her hybrid documentary De cierta manera (1974/1977). Blending stark documentary footage and a knotted fictional love story, her monumental film is a lucid examination of education, labor, poverty, racism, sexism, and popular religion from the perspective of an Afro-Cubana. Director: Sara Gómez
New York City, NY; NYC