drissa Ouedraogo, Burkina Faso, 1989“Yaaba” in Mooré means grandmother. “Yaaba” is also the name that a twelve year-old boy Bila gives Sana, an old woman abandoned and rejected by the whole village. Yaaba is above all a story about a friendship which is born and which grows between two people in a primitive village society, where we see man as he really is, good, bad, generous, intolerant. Yaaba began with the memory of a tale of my own childhood and of a sort of nocturnal education. Where I come from, this nocturnal education is acquired between the age of seven and ten, just before falling asleep, if one is lucky enough to have a grandmother. –Idrissa Ouedraogo, Quinzaine des Réalisateurs
Yaaba first brought international recognition to Idrissa Ouedraogo, winning the International Critics Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, the Special Jury Prize at FESPACO, and the Sakura Gold Prize at the Tokyo International Film Festival. Yaaba is indeed one of the finest African films. A beautifully filmed morality tale of superstition and intelligence, it touchingly conveys the humanity of its characters and offers a message of tolerance. And it is one of the few African films to have achieved a measure of commercial distribution: in France it sold close to 300,000 seats. 
Yaaba distinguishes itself from Western films set in Africa by a whole set of characteristics that make it a distinctly African film: characters, setting, pacing, language, music, and last, but certainly not least, finance. Yaaba takes us to an all-African context where we come to know a wide range of distinctly drawn characters. The film focuses on people and their interactions rather than the setting. The camera allows us to see the beauty in their faces. Yaaba is set in the Sahel, which holds no particular attractions or excitement: the fauna is limited; we never get to see any game; the desert does not threaten rapid death, even if droughts are a recurring calamity; nor are there any dangers lurking in the dark. In stark contrast to Western films, Yaaba follows a slow peasant mode: Ouedraogo takes his time with long scenes, the camera leisurely pans the wide open landscape, following the slow progress of characters dwarfed by the vast expanse, e.g. Sana on her way to the healer. In this respect Yaaba follows a pattern established by Gaston Kaboré in Wend Kuuni , the pioneering attempt to "Africanize" film language by unfolding at a measured pace consonant with the time-honored customs and seasonal rhythms of African village life. - Film Reference
Idrissa Ouedraogo is one of Africa’s most prolific filmmakers. His early films are remakable in their ability to communicate through imagery. Poko, Les Ecuelles (The Wooden Bowls), Les Funerailles du Larle Naba (The Funeral of Larle Narba), Ouagadougou, Ouga deux roues (Ouagadougou, Ouga Two Wheels), and Issa le tisserand (Issa the Weaver) appeal to a multi-lingual audience without using dialogue or voice-over narration. Although his subsequent films incorporate dialogue, Ouedraogo’s talent for creating meaning with images remains a hallmark of his work.
Ouedraogo’s first co
mmercial success, Yaaba (Grandmother), narrates the story of two young children who befriend an old woman wrongly accused of malevolent sorcery. This film exemplifies Ouedraogo’s interest in the multiple ramifications of individual choices. It also demonstrates Ouedraogo’s skill at adapting the poetics of African oral tales to contemporary cinema. Nwachukwu Frank Ukadike notes that Ouedraogo “fuses the neorealist penchant for eliciting polished performance from nonprofessionals with the African narrative tradition of the griot… as in the oral tradition, a story’s interest and attraction for an audience depend upon how creatively a storyteller embellishes what he has heard or taken from his own experience.” Ouedraogo’s humor, wit, and keen sense of drama in Yaaba earned him international acclaim as an exceptional storyteller and filmmaker.
Ouedraogo’s second big success was Tilai (The Law). At the film’s beginning, the protagonist, Saga, leaves his village. His life away from home is left out of the narrative, which speaks to Ouedraogo’s commitment to rural life. Saga returns to find that his father has married the woman he loves, Nogma. Nogma and Saga decide to disobey the law and escape to another village. Saga’s brother, Kougri, also refuses to follow his father’s order to punish Saga with death. Ouedraogo sympathizes with young villagers’ desires for change, but treats his elder characters with sensitivity. The film depicts the injustices of certain traditional laws in addition to the difficulties involved in defying them. At the same time, Ouedraogo deeply respects his country’s cultures, and sides with their battles for self-preservation.
Although Ouedraogo often critiques strict traditional laws, his love for his African heritage is clear in his films. His appreciation for African traditional life is expressed poignantly in Un cri du coeur (A Cry from the Heart). Here, a young boy named Moctar moves from his village in order to live with his middle-class parents, who have immigrated to France. Pained by his nostalgia for his village, and especially for his grandfather, Moctar has difficulty adjusting. When he has visions of a hyena on the streets, he alarms his parents, who hoped that France would provide Moctar with better opportunities. Un cri du coeur, like numerous African literary works, examines the affection shared between the older African generation and their grandchildren. When Moctar’s hyena, a strong figure in African folklore, appears for the last time, it takes the form of his dear grandfather.
In the context of African cinema, Ouedraogo’s films have been especially successful. He is committed to filming the specific realities of his home country, yet his themes of fidelity, resistance, transformation, and the recovery of traditions have touched diverse, world-wide audiences. —Film Reference
No comments:
Post a Comment