UID:
kobvindex_ZLB13809580
Format:
(26 Min.)
Content:
Based on a play by Wolé Soyinka, The Strong Breed, So Be It offers an emotionally searing allegory of present-day Africa's bloody internecine convulsions. Michael, an idealistic foreign doctor (Martinican star Alex Descas), has had little success bringing the promises of modernity to a dusty village of the damned in the Sahel. His lover, Sunma, a teacher and native of the place, has no illusions about the village, believing it to be "a world which will cannibalize its children" (according to a Wolof incantation) in a futile effort to compensate for human powerlessness. She simply wants to live and love - and leave before the killing starts. But Michael is transfixed; he stays and tries, ineffectively, to prevent the villagers from sacrificing a mentally disturbed mute boy he has befriended. Perhaps Michael sees in himself, even in his hope for scientific progress, a reflection of the villagers' own horror at human fate. Director Gai Ramaka has described the origins of this African Heart of Darkness: "I had to make this film to exorcize the terror of this continent, trapped inside me and driving me, so that on that day I will not be able to say, 'I did not know.'" (California Newsreel)
Note:
Wolof und franz., mit engl., Untertiteln
In:
Africa dreaming : four short films on love from Namibia, Mozambique, Senegal, Tunisia ; [Video], San Francisco, [ca. 2003], (2003)
Language:
Wolof
Author information:
Ribeiro, João Ubaldo
Author information:
Soyinka, Wole
Author information:
Couto, Mia
