Memories
I am shite at remembering things. Especially important things. (Although, arguably, if I forget something unimportant, I am less likely to be reminded that I forgot it. So who knows how many non-important things I've forgotten I forgot).
Still, you'd think I would easily recall the peak experiences in my life. Especially now that "peak experience" for me means "anything where I don't feel apprehensive". You'd figure that this would give me more peak experiences to choose from. Peak experiences, I would think, are like teeth: if I lose one, I should still have a bunch left.
It hasn't worked out that way. Apparently I can lose all my teeth just by forgetting about them.
Since the past week's Ebertfest made me feel less apprehensive, which is a good thing, I will write down some stuff about it before I forget. Maybe that way I won't lose it. Or at least that particular spiritual tooth will get a spiritual filling, which will enable me to masticate my spiritual gruel for a while longer.
Strangely, the movie I want to write about first isn't one of the movies I liked best. Maybe I'm starting with Moolaadé because, unlike the rest of what played at Ebertfest, it's easy to explain what the movie is about.
This Senegalese movie is an exposé of one way that Africans make life difficult for each other, as if they didn't already have difficulties enough. Basically, the movie is about African girls and the women who mutilate them. Or at least the parts of them that tradition deems improper for the girls to keep.
I had a hard time getting into this movie's groove, and not for the obvious reason. The movie has life and humor, but often I wasn't sure if what I was watching was meant to be humorous -- or just the way Senegalese villagers act. For example, when greeting each other, the characters would repeat each other's names and titles several times in a call-and-response fashion. To an American (or to me, anyway), this seems funny if meant humorously, but merely instructive if not.
The main character is a woman who uses tradition to battle tradition -- an impressive feat of cultural martial arts. When four girls come to her and beg for protection against the mutilation ritual, she invokes moolaadé, which is translated as "protection" but also seemed to imply some kind of preternatural presence. Predictably, this angers all the village's important folks.
Ultimately, despite a certain non-actorly clunkiness, the movie gets pretty compelling. It's fiction, but it's about something real. The lead actress survived the sometimes-fatal mutilation that is the central subject of the film -- a tradition which is widely practiced today. As the discussion panel said afterward -- the movie may have life and humor, but it is about a war. In every case, the people who die in this war are the ones least able to defend themselves.
The fact that the movie managed to get made at all is probably amazing. Predicably, many more Westerners than Africans have been allowed to see this film. One factor that keeps it from being seen in Islamic Senegal is probably the unfavorable comparison of the village's mosque to an architecturally identical giant anthill.
One nice thing: during the panel discussion after the movie, the lead actress (Fatoumata Coulibaly) spoke French in a wonderfully smoky voice. This is something I never mind listening to. It's too bad that so little of the discussion got translated for her, so she couldn't participate all that much. Well -- here's to everyone learning French, so that smoky-voiced leading ladies can tell us important things in a way we can understand.
In that spirit, I promise to come back and talk about the Ebertfest movies that are impossible to explain. Or I might just give up and relate some of the funny stories the festival guests told. Unless I forget. In any case, you will be entertained.