LEADING AFRICAN FILMMAKER
OUSMANE SEMBÈNE TO SCREEN MOOLAADÉ,
2004 WINNER AT CANNES

SOUTH HADLEY – Senegalese filmmaker Ousmane Sembène, one of the most prominent figures in African cinema, will visit the campus of Mount Holyoke College on October 19 to screen his most recent film, Moolaadé. The screening, at 7 pm in Gamble Auditorium of the Art Building, will be the first showing at an academic institution for Moolaadé, which won the Un Certain Regarde prize at this year's Cannes Film Festival. A question-and-answer session will follow the screening.

A conversation with Sembene will be offered on October 20 at 4 pm in the New York Room of Mary Woolley Hall. Both the conversation and screening are free and open to the public, and both venues are accessible by wheelchair.

Moolaadé tells the story of four young girls in a small village in Senegal who revolt against the tradition of female genital mutilation. They seek the help of a woman in the village who offers them "moolaadé," or "protection," against their seizure by the male elders of the village. Protection of the weak is also a powerful tradition, and those who violate its protections face a penalty of death.

"The film is constructed on the tension between these two conflicting values," said Samba Gadjigo, an MHC professor of French who is Sembène's biographer and provided the English and French subtitles for the film. Moolaadé supports the world community in its condemnation of female genital mutilation as barbaric, and is also more broadly "a metaphor for women's liberation and the liberation of African peoples," Gadjigo said. He added that women's issues and the emancipation of African peoples have long been the concern of Sembène, who dedicated Moolaadé to “mothers, women who fight for the abolition of this leftover of a time past.” He is making his third visit to Mount Holyoke.

Sembène's appearances at MHC are sponsored by the offices of the dean of the faculty and the dean of the college; the Center for Global Initiatives; the Weissman Center for Leadership and the Liberal Arts; the Hubbell Fund; the departments of women's studies, French, earth and environment, and film studies; the Smith College department of art; the Hampshire College program in film, photography, and video; the University of Massachusetts department of anthropology, and the Five College African Studies Council.