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Moolaadé
(15)
Written, Directed and Produced by Ousmane Sembene
Winner: Best Film, Cannes Film Festival 2004
Screened at FACT from 9th-12th September 2005
Reviewed by
Deserving WINNER of last year’s Cannes Film festival? Certainly,
this gently political drama-doc’ offers a decent first dose of enlightenment
through art on the now globally-contentious issues raised. 'MOOLAADE'
- pop-capitalised English subtitles explain - means ‘PROTECTION’,
both spiritual and physical, from
the dangers of Female Genital Cutting (FGC) - at least within the context
of remote Senegalese village life. So after decades of political lobbying
by activists based here even - in Liverpool, there was in fact always
an organic get-out clause for village-isolated girls? Fact or Fiction?
How might Moolaadé lead us?
Both easily shot and naturally performed for the sense of real
time; real life that Africa’s best pictures have gained recognition
for, Moolaadé’s intimate lenses directly reveal clean and
cheerful remote domesticity. Only softly, softly, does Sembene squeeze
the harmony out of villagers’ shopping, cleaning, laughing, child-rearing
routines; with the distant (though urgent) pounding of drums. An Elder
Man’s translation to gathered women (‘They are looking for
human beings – those who’ve run from purification’)
at once chases life into the plot’s primary dilemmas: Female Genital
Cutting as a tradition warranting safeguarding? Men as the stubborn holders
of knowledge and therefore power?
Heroine 'Collé' - whom the film’s four girl-escapees run
to based on a rumour she had successfully guarded her own daughter from
the ‘cutting’ ritual - defends the girls against the powers
of red-robed female circumcisers whilst demonstrating special strength
as she allows a threatened male order to burn every radio in sight whilst
publicly flogging her. Viewers, surely, are directed to specify which
‘special’ cultural practices must be condemned as mutilating.
Perhaps most usefully, Sembene allows Collé, to reaffirm confidence
in her now teenage daughter Amsatou before the film closes; that remaining
uncut makes her no lesser bride potential,
even for the village’s gift-bearing Prince, newly returned from
France. So despite this treatment’s glossing-over of the prominent
role village Matriarchs reportedly
play in the continued practice of FGC as well as the film's de-emphasis
of modern Senegal’s disassociation with more extreme cuttings and
their effects, it seems fair to conclude that Moolaadé delivers
a warm and helpful, minimally-voyeuristic contribution to this most silenced
subject.
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