African film makes the cut

2004-05-22 21:41

Cannes - Senegal's Ousmane Sembene, at 81 the Cannes film festival's oldest director, scooped two awards on Saturday for his much-noted film denouncing female circumcision, Moolade.

The film by the director considered the father of African cinema won the top prize in the festival's auteur section of 21 films from across the world, Un Certain Regard, and also was named the runner-up by the 2004 Ecumenical Jury.

The film, that jury said, "takes a stand against an extreme Islamic position which uses religion abusively to submit young girls to female circumcision".

Sembene was not in Cannes to comment, but had said in an interview during the festival that "when women progress, society progresses".

Africa's lone entry at this year's 12-day festival won a strong ovation at its screening, which was attended by Senegal's first lady Viviane Wade. It was mentioned by several international film critics as one of the movies that stood out of the scores shown during the 12-day film bonanza.

Girls refuse to be cut

The film was shot in a country village built around one of west Africa's oldest mosques, where the women rise up against the male elders to protect several young girls refusing to be cut according to the ritual of purification.

"Female circumcision is a problem affecting 38 African nations," Sembene said. "There has been progress but there are still men and women reluctant to stop, who cling to the values of the past."

The movie's heroine, Colle Gallo Ardo Sy, refuses to have her only daughter mutilated, saying that the ritual was responsible for her own loss of two babies at birth and the delivery of her sole surviving baby by caesarean section. Girls' lives were at stake, she argues in the film.

I make militant films

"The film will stir debate in Africa", Sembene said. "That was my aim. I make militant films and this one will serve as a basis to bring men and women together to talk. We will travel by truck through the countrysides of Mali, Senegal, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast and Guinea-Bissau to show the film."

The deeply-entrenched practice, most commonly carried out between the ages of four and eight, involves the removal of part, or all, of the female genitalia - in most cases part of the clitoris and labia.

According to Amnesty International, an estimated 135 million girls and women across the world are circumcised, and two million girls a year are at risk. It is practised extensively in Africa and is common in parts of the Middle East.

"Women," the Senegalese first lady said, "who are playing an increasingly important role in society, find female circumcision intolerable nowadays."

Moolade is Sembene's eighth feature-length film and is part of a trilogy, the first being his 2000 film "Faat-Kine" about a single mother in modern Dakar.

The third movie is still in the pipeline and is to be about "African-style corruption", he said. "No project is ever easy," he said. "I'm looking for partners."

- AFP