From The Canopy BLOG

YELEEN

I watched a beautiful, powerful Malian movie about a shamanic rivalry between father and son, with the imagination and mystic like the Lord of Rings with a more realistic ancient West African setting. It is superbly filmed with amazing backdrops of the fertile yet sun-beaten outer fringes of the Sahara that is the land of the Bambara, now Mali. It is slow but it brings out the emotions and tensions at moments. The son, together with his mother, was cast away by a proud, unforgiving father (I haven't quite figured out the real reason why...maybe they broke an ancient protocol!). The son inherited his father’s wizardry and became his arch rival without knowing it. They each held two holy relics, which like "the force" in Star Wars, could be used for good or for evil. This story showed no good or no evil, just two shades of light. In his quest to seek the truth, the son helped a rival tribe defeat another and cured the chief's youngest wife’s inability to reproduce (and in the process deflowered her!). A combination of sheer innocence and impressive courage and fortitude earned him respect and made the adventure that bit more troublesome. The father was all vengeful, threatening to floor every village he passed if they dared protect his son from his wrath! With the aid of a magic pole, wielded with burden by two seemingly possessed servants, he was lead like a magnet to the fateful showdown with his son. Sounds like the kind of stuff The Good, The Bad and The Ugly are made of! There is a fantastic scene where village elders congregate and a holy site of the...people and exchange riddles and tales with amazing wit, and with repeated interludes of songs.

Made in 1987, I'm surprised they haven't made movies like this ever since! The story may have an animist flavour and hence would not be terribly inspiring to a very Christian/Muslim continent, but we should look beyond the literal and celebrate the colour and wonder of good old African storytelling. The rate at which these stories and folklore are getting printed is not fast enough to capture the fast declining tales past down by word of mouth from our ancestors. In the name of the good book we should be encouraging wisdom and wealth of knowledge rather than shunning it to suit our prejudices. We lose our identity by turning a blind eye to the need of reforming education to teach about the traditional ways in a less pretentious (complying with a rigid, quota fulfilling syllabus) and all inspiring manner. I remember back in the days, when it would be shameful for a city kid like me to even dream of playing some Kikuyu folk tunes. I like my RnB and HipHop and it’s not practical to turn back time and pretend to be authentic in this fast paced globalising world. Why don't we just embrace and celebrate the difference and not be ashamed of our ignorance, be it of the modern world or of our traditional values. As an independent 2nd generation, we hold the linchpin to adding the African legacy to the front pages of history books. Let's make a bright impact on the silver screen!

K.M.N.(2004)

Labels: YELEEN

posted by Swooshbaby @ 1:11 PM