Tag: Africa

The Rise & Fall Of Comrade Zylo (Shkelqimi Dhe Renia E Shokut Zylo)

Posted on by Jeremy Clarke

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Comrade Demka (Donald Shehu) just can’t say no. It’s 1971, and he’s strongly in demand as a political speechwriter. As fast as he can churn out speeches, it seems, he’s asked to write more. His wife Zenepja (Xhoana Karaj) is fed up with him working all the time, feels he’s wasting his talent and anyway would rather he spent more time with her. And then, there’s Comrade Zylo (Aleks Seitaj), appropriating speeches Demka has written for others, such as the one on the tedious-sounding ‘Innovative Developing Elements in the spread of our culture throughout Albania’.

Watching Zylo read one of Demka’s speech through the circular windows of the auditorium doors, Demka listens to the praise for Zylo pouring from the mouth of Zylo’s wife Adila (Enisa Hysa). She’s impressed by the words her husband has written, unaware that Demka, not Zylo, actually wrote them. She’s less impressed, along with most of the audience, with the speech of committee chair Comrade Q (Petrit Malaj) – which Demka also wrote, on a tight deadline – going down rather less well. At the after-speech dance (with a traditional and very conservative Albanian folk band) she dances and flirts with Demka.

Q meanwhile, is less than happy, feeling that Demka could have written better for him. No sooner has he stormed off than Zylo, who clearly knows a good thing when he sees it, is asking Demka to come and work for him. He introduces Demka to one of his sons, the composer Diogenio (Samuel Vargu). Also in Zylo;’s circle are the playwright of The Storm Is Defeated, Adem Adashi (Amos Muji Zaharia), and his wife, the singer Cleopatra (Jorida Meta).

Zylo becomes obsessed with the potential effect of socialism on West Africa, and wants Demka to write him a speech for an upcoming conference there. The pair of them go to Africa on a delegation, accompanied by Cleopatra. There’s clearly something going on between Zylo and Cleopatra. No-one in the party pays any attention to the delegation, which proves something of a non-event. Except that it’s the beginning of the end for the career of Comrade Zylo.

The whole thing oscillates between a bureaucratic drama with Comrade Q, Zylo and various factions vying against each other to get ahead, an existentialist drama in which Demko struggles to write to deadline, a domestic drama in which Demko’s wife thinks he’s a great writer wasting his time on political speeches, and the occasionally very funny scene of satire about life in an Eastern Bloc socialist state.

Perhaps the best scene occurs when during a visit to a village, Zylo gets drunk at a gathering convened in his honour and starts talking about all men being equal, that they shouldn’t oppress their women like tyrants, and so forth. He starts waving his pistol about (not with the intent of discharging it, except maybe to put a bullet in the ceiling) while everyone around him is getting increasingly worried. He’s speaking out for an equality which can’t possibly exist under the current bureaucratic, socialist system, with its Party hierarchy, and it’s as if everyone is aware of the existing pecking order but him, the person in charge.

Overall, this is a film likely to make more sense or to appeal to those who have experienced life under a totalitarian leftist regime than those of us who haven’t.

The Rise & Fall Of Comrade Zylo premiered in the 26th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival.

Tallinn 2022 Kids Animation Programme – part 2

Posted on by Jeremy Clarke

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One of two hungry mice becomes trapped inside a large, circular cheese in Mouse House (Timon Leder, Slovenia/Croatia, 9 mins) and is able to gorge himself inside while his companion struggles unsuccessfully, stomach rumbling, to transport the cheese. Meanwhile, a cat prowls around. The cat is peripheral: this is not so much a game of cat and mouse as of mouse and cheese.

The deceptively simple plot of The Turnip (Piret Sigus/Silja Saarepuu, Estonia, 7 mins) involves the planting and the subsequent, less than successful pulling up of that vegetable. The human villagers are represented, often as close ups of feet, in relief, cut-out animation, that is to say somewhere between 2D and 3D, a technique heightened in the lengthy sequences of centipedes and other bugs under the earth interacting with the turnip prior to its extraction.

The lively visuals of Away From Home (Brunella De Cola, Italy, 6 mins) convey the idea of Africans wanting it to snow in Africa.

Letters From The Edge Of The Forest (Jelena Droz, Croatia, 12 mins) adopts the time-worn setting of a bunch of forest animals to question such prevalent values as selfishness and greed. When a squirrel proposes to write a letter, a visit to local owl sees the latter make it very clear that he, and only he, can perform this service. But eventually, he is talked round to the idea that if he were able to help other animals write letters free of charge, it would be a good thing for everybody.

The anthropomorphised crocodile of Lost Brain (Isabelle Favez, Switzerland, 7 mins) gets ill and stays home after getting caught in the rain outside. Thus, her world is turned into black and white with areas covered by inkblots. Suddenly, she is no longer able to find the key to open her front door. After venturing into such curiously satisfying visual conceits as a lampshade becoming a toaster, a tear falls on a piano key and she starts to compose music, which turns out to be part of her route out of her predicament. She is later seen in a park where trees resemble musical notes.

The second of three programmes of Kids Animation shorts plays in the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival.

The Woman King

Posted on by Jeremy Clarke

Outside of the Greek myth of the Amazons, we don’t really think of armies as being made up of women rather than men prior to the last few decades, yet historically this actually occurred in a West African country, the Kingdom of Dahomey (further info: National Geographic; Wikipedia) between the middle of the 17th and the end of the 19th centuries. These warrior women are the subject of this film, which takes place in 1823.

A prologue shows a small unit of the women in action under their General Nansica (an unforgettable Viola Davis) as they attack and slaughter a unit of (male) soldiers from the neighbouring Oyo kingdom who have invaded one of their villages. These women are fearsome indeed and fly in the face of the representational norm female or military.

After this compelling, action-packed opening, the narrative shifts to follow rebellious, young Dahomey girl Nawi (Thusu Mbedo) whose traditionalist father attempts to marry her off to an older man. She takes an immediate dislike to this proposed husband and refuses the match. So her father instead takes her to the king’s palace to become a slave to King Ghezo (John Boyega). At least, that’s what you assume her fate will be, but once inside the gates she and numerous other newcomers have the option to train as soldiers for Nansica who puts her under a trusted lieutenant Izogie (Lashana Lynch, the black female 007 from No Time To Die, Cary Joji Fukunaga, 2021).

Following the template of Full Metal Jacket (Stanley Kubrick, 1987), the film observes the training of these women into full-fledged fearsome fighting machines (even if this episode doesn’t quite equal Kubrickian rigour in its execution). There is also much introspection on the part of Nawi whose independence gets her into trouble with Nansica’s chain of command but whose initiative (in the manner of so many characters in individualism-oriented, Hollywood films) ultimately proves an asset.

This is the time of the slave trade, with black nations selling members of their neighbouring countries – those captured in war, for instance – to profiteering white westerners. It would be tempting to try and paint Dahomey as not taking part in this, and indeed much is made both of the warrior women freeing slaves and of a Westernised, black man travelling with the slavers forced to come to terms with the evils of the trade. This may be a case of playing fast and loose with the truth.

This is a story about black people, specifically women. This means that, without relying on the often ridiculous, historical inaccuracies of colour-blind casting, it provides black actresses (most of the cast) with some spectacularly good parts and enables their delivery of some memorable performances. Moreover, the extraordinary women depicted here actually existed in history; the fact that a halfway decent movie has been made about them is a cause for celebration.

The Woman King is out in cinemas in the UK on Friday, October 7th.

Watch the film trailer below. (Please note that the irritating, ill-judged pop soundtrack is not representative of the film):

Talking About Trees

Posted on by Jack Hawkins

Sudan has been in a near-consecutive string of conflicts since its independence in 1956. The deadliest of these was the Second Sudanese Civil War, which raged from 1983 to 2005 and ended with the creation of South Sudan, which would have its own civil war from 2013 to February 2020, causing a further 383,000 deaths. This miasma of death and dictatorship crushed infrastructure and erased culture that wasn’t overtly Islamic. Consequently, Sudan has been without a film industry since the military coup of 1989.

Amidst this narrative of chaos, however, has been the Sudanese Film Group (SFG), led by four retired filmmakers – Shaddad, Suliman Ibrahim, Eltayeb Mahdi and Manar Al-Hilo. They’re an affable, insouciant bunch whose bond has seen – as they humorously catalogue – ‘three democracies and three dictatorships’. The true soul of their friendship, though, is an existential passion for cinema, and Talking About Trees documents their struggle to share it with the Omdurman community.

To do this, they aim to host a series of free public film screenings that, after consulting the locals, will kick-off with a showing of Django Unchained – a solid choice. Their venue is dusty, gutted and decrepit, but the old pals’ easygoing stoicism very much subscribes to the maxim of “where there’s a will, there’s a way”; until, that is, they notify the local government, which is a hive of venality, incompetence and Islamic fundamentalism.

The men’s quiet struggle is observed rather than investigated. Director and cinematographer Suhaib Gasmelbari steps back from his subjects, framing shot after beautiful shot with an almost tableau effect; the only life in them coming from the men’s energy and ambition.

Despite the injustice of it all, Talking About Trees isn’t here to appeal or campaign. It is an unassuming work with an organic, engaging humanity. Alas, thanks to a mindless, authoritarian regime, it seems the Sudanese Film Group will struggle to move beyond their dark, dusty storeroom trove of 16mm cameras and Bunuel tapes, and the locals, who have a combined literacy rate of 47%, will continue to be failed by their government.

Talking About Trees is available on DVD and VOD on Monday, April 27.