Thursday 20th Nov, 5pm, Julian Study Centre, UEA

In partnership with Film Africa, BFI and introduced by the wonderful Keith Shiri (Lead Curator at Film Africa), this screening was in memory of the legendary Malian director Souleymane Cisse. Read the concept note here and explore the curated material linked to this event below. World Cinema Spotlights would also like to acknowledge that this event was made possible with the support and hard work of co-organiser, Mariagiulia Grassilli (Postdoctoral Researcher at UEA).

---

Interview with Keith Shiri

---

Music, Magic, and the Mythic:
The Dynamics of Visual and Aural Discourse in Souleymane Cissé’s Yeelen
by Alexander Fisher (2012)

Abstract
Souleymane Cissé’s Yeelen is widely regarded as international in its address; yet it transposes oral
storytelling techniques into cinematic form to depict a power struggle within the covert cult of the komo, a Bambara initiation society unfamiliar to most non-Bambara viewers. This paper demonstrates how the film negotiates this address via music, which interpellates the international spectator by eliciting a greater identification with the protagonists than that determined at a visual level, while encoding a verisimilitude to rituals that may otherwise be read as the superstitious practices of ‘the other’. In this way, music and image in Yeelen operate as parallel, though often overlapping, discourses, bridging the gap between the film’s culturally specific narrative and formal components, and its international spectators.