Maluala takes us into a palenque, a settlement of escaped slaves hidden somewhere in Cuba's eastern mountains, where discord is sown between black "kings" by clever subversives working for the Spanish government.

"Sergio Giral is the best known of the Black Cuban directors and his previous films were historical observations of the period of slavery in Cuba, the gradual rise of rebellion against colonial traditions, and the ultimate freedom that resulted. Maluala is the most striking addition to this genre. The action takes place during the last century in the region of Maluala. Gallo, the black chieftain, together with his cohort, Coba, present a petition for land and liberty to the colonial government. Governor Escudero offers liberty if the rebellious villages will be dismantled and their men offer themselves in surrender. He promises that they will be freed shortly thereafter. Three chieftains agree, but Gallo and Coba refuse…. Giral has mounted Maluala with colorful ritual and acting. Samuel Claxton, as Gallo, is highly stylized in the heroic tradition. It is an absorbing adventure film wrought from historical events which appear violent, but Giral constantly implants into every image the necessity for unity among people in order to combat man's seemingly casual desire to subjugate mankind, in the struggle for power and undefined ambition." ~ San Francisco Film Festival, 1980

“The historically lucid intrigues of Maluala (1979), where the Afrocentric leadership of fugitive palenque communities is pitted against each other COINTELPRO-style by Spanish colonists, is one of those Cuban films that were forged in a righteous, red-hot ferment but still found the courage and wit to ask questions about the society around them.”
~ Gary Dauphin, The Village Voice

Best Actress, Valenciennes Film Festival 2000

35mm rental: $300
video rental: $90
video sale: $195
DVD sale: $295
DVD also includes Bonus film Waalo Fendo: Where the Earth Freezes

“Not surprisingly, there's wariness on both sides. But Willie Boy (Norman Beaton), the proud, wryly philosophical captain of the Conquistadors, is intent on accepting the invitation. Meanwhile, the captain of the Sneddington Cricket Club, the innocent but overweeningly self-satisfied Derek (Nicholas Farell), is confident of a handy Sunday afternoon victory.

Obviously, the possibilities, both comic and serious, in this cultural exchange are endless, and the filmmakers seem not to have missed any of them. But, for all the film's abundant humor, Ove, said to be Britain's first black film maker, and the Oxford-educated Phillips, never let us forget that racial tensions lurk beneath the occasion's sure of good will. In the end, Playing Away’s pleasures are subtle and genuine.” - Los Angeles Times

Director: Daniel Kollo Sanou
From: Burkina Faso
Year: 2003 Minutes: 90
Language: French/Moore with English subtitlessubtitles
Genre: Comedy
Award: Bronze Stallion of Yenenga award – FESPACO 2005

Sogo Sanou, a.k.a. Tasuma, is a former French soldier, a part of the African troops better known as “tiralleurs senegalais” who fought in the French wars in Europe and its colonial territories. He was a soldier in the wars of Indochina and Algeria. Although an honored veteran, Tasuma spends decades painfully waiting for his small pension, an amount that in his native Burkina Faso represents a fortune even though it will equal only a small fraction of the amount paid to his French counterparts.

In a scene that takes us back to another African classic, THE MONEY ORDER by Ousmane Sembene, Tasuma impulsively buys a treadmill for the women in his village with the money expected from his future pension payment, although he doesn’t know exactly when it will come through. The money does not arrive and our hero is in trouble and out of patience. With his old rifle he walks into the pension plan administrator’s office and demands his money. He ends up in jail and it is up to the women of the village to come down to the city to free Tasuma. TASUMA, THE FIGHTER, is a portrait of a bureaucratic adventure that, even 60 years after World War II and 44 years after the independence movement in Africa, is not yet solved.

As Kollo Daniel Sanou, the director of Tasuma, points out: “The story of Tasuma is also the narration of a historic mismatch, that of the particular status of those former combatants of the African troupes in the French Army”.

Through the creative use of various art forms including theater, poetry, songs and art, Time and Judgement establishes a connection between a biblical prophecy with the times we are living in, leading toward the final confrontation between the heart and money - the heart symbolizing love and life, and money symbolizing greed and lust for power.

35mm rental: $400
video rental: $140
video sale: $195
DVD sale: $295
DVD also includes Bonus Documentary Gulpilil: One Red Blood