A-Z Films
DIRECTED BY KHADY SYLLA AND CHARLIE VAN DAMME
SENEGAL AND BELGIUM / 2008 / WOLOF AND FRENCH WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES / 48 MIN
SYNOPSIS
In a voice-over, we hear the thoughts of Amy, a girl from a rural area of Senegal who works as a domestic for a well-to-do family in Dakar. She complains about her employer, who continuously criticizes her and gets on her case, and she talks about her dream of one day opening her own eatery. Meanwhile, we see her sweep the pavement, prepare the food and clean the house. The contrast with her vast and barren native region is enormous. In Dakar, some 150,000 young women work as housekeepers for families whose daughters can go to school. "Why does the emancipation of some result in the servitude of others?" Amy wonders. The filmmakers interview other young maids who dream of going to school, and they film a woman who shouts her furious lyrics straight into the camera in rapper-like fashion: "I keep your houses squeaky clean, but you all think I'm dirty!" In a dramatized scene in a slum, the women demonstrate how they'd like to deal with a woman who doesn't pay her housekeeper enough. In response to the situation, the filmmakers make an appeal to change the rules of the world economy.
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DIRECTOR AND CAST
Director: Khady Sylla and Charlie Van Damme
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GENRES
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WAALO FENDO: WHERE THE EARTH FREEZES
DIRECTED BY MOHAMMED SOUDANI
SENGAL AND SWITZERLAND / 1998 / WOLOF WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES / 65 MIN
SYNOPSIS
Milan, like Paris or Stuttgart, and like many other European cities, is the theater of the drama of immigration. Demba reconstructs his story and that of his brother Yaro, both Senegalese immigrants in Italy, in a long and fragmentary flashback that begins with Yaro’s murder and recounts their departure from the village, arrival in Europe, the work they find selling lighters and picking tomatoes in the south of Italy: the stages every “non-EEC citizen” goes through in Italy. It is a story of immigration like so many others but that most people are unaware of. Waalo Fendo illustrates the dehumanization faced by so many immigrants all over the world.
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DIRECTOR AND CAST
Director: Mohammed Soudani
Starring: Saidou Moussa Ba
Starring: Oumar Ba
Starring: Baara N'Gom
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GENRES
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White Lies Trailer - ArtMattan Films
WHITE LIES
Directed by Dana Rotberg | 2013 | New Zealand | 96mins | Drama | English and Maori with English subtitles.
SYNOPSIS
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Based on a novel by Whale Rider writer Witi Ihimaera, White Lies - New Zealand's entry in the 2014 Oscar competition for best foreign-language film - is an intense drama that explores with great humanity and sensitivity such difficult topics as race relations, skin bleaching and motherhood. Paraiti is the healer and midwife of her rural, Maori people - she believes in life. But new laws in force are prohibiting unlicensed healers, making the practice of much Maori medicine illegal. She gets approached by Maraea, the servant of a wealthy woman, Rebecca, who seeks her knowledge and assistance in order to hide a secret which could destroy Rebecca’s position in European settler society. This compelling story tackles moral dilemmas, exploring the nature of identity, societal attitudes to the roles of women and the tension between Western and traditional Maori medicine. |
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Official Selection Toronto International Film Festival 2013 |
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DIRECTOR
Director: Dana Rotberg
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GENRES
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WHITE LIKE THE MOON
DIRECTED BY MARINA GONZALEZ PALMIER
U.S.A. / 2001 / ENGLISH / 23 MIN
SYNOPSIS
A Mexican-American girl struggles to keep her identity when her mother forces her to bleach her skin. White Like the Moon is a revealing film about a dilemma not very well known outside Latino communities; that of the myth of the light skin superiority in Indigenous and Indigenous descendant communities.
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DIRECTOR AND CAST
Director: Marina Gonzalez Palmier
Starring: Misha Aziz
Starring: Diana Burbano
Starring: Crystal Leah Chacon
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GENRES
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WHITE LIKE THE MOON
DIRECTED BY MARINA GONZALEZ PALMIER
U.S.A. / 2001 / ENGLISH / 23 MIN
SYNOPSIS
A Mexican-American girl struggles to keep her identity when her mother forces her to bleach her skin. White Like the Moon is a revealing film about a dilemma not very well known outside Latino communities; that of the myth of the light skin superiority in Indigenous and Indigenous descendant communities.
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DIRECTOR AND CAST
Director: Marina Gonzalez Palmier
Starring: Misha Aziz
Starring: Diana Burbano
Starring: Crystal Leah Chacon
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GENRES
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Demba is an African who has fled an oppressive regime in his own country and is seeking asylum in Paris. One night he encounters Lucien, a policeman from the Caribbean, who speaks to him in the voice of the dominant class. But in his country Demba is a professor of History and Geography while Lucien left school early to help his mother, a cleaning lady.
“YAFA Le Pardon” explores the social and economic dynamics at work in their relationship as they seek to understand each other, aided by Welcome, a Baule Komian who does not hesitate to officiate as the parties meet on the Quai de l’Oise, in the centre of Paris.
Directed by Christian Lara, France, 2019, 85 Minutes, drama, French with English subtitles
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ABOUT DIRECTOR CHRISTIAN LARA
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