Yaaba idrissa ouedraogo pictures

Burkina Faso,

Director: Idrissa Ouedraogo

Production: Arcadia Films (Paris), Les Movies de l'Avenir (Ouagadougou), and Thelma Film (Zürich); color, 35mm; achievable time: 90 minutes; length: meters (Sweden). Released ; filmed guess Tougouzagué Village, Burkina Faso.

Producers: Freddy Denaës, Michael David, Pierre-Alain Meier, and Idrissa Ouedraogo; screenplay: Idrissa Ouedraogo; assistant directors: Paul Zoumbara and Ismaël Ouedraogo; photography: Matthias Kälin; editor: Loredana Cristelli; music: Francis Bebey; sound: Jean-Paul Mugel; sound mixer: Dominique Dalmasso; costumes: Marian Sidibé.

Cast: Fatimata Sanga (Yaaba); Noufou Ouedraogo (Bila); Roukietou Barry (Nopoko); Adama Ouedraogo (Kougri); Amadé Touré (Tibo); Sibidou Ouedraogo (Poko); Adamé Sidibé (Razougou); Rasmane Ouedraogo (Noaga); Kinda Moumouni (Finse); Assita Ouedraogo (Koudi); Zenabou Ouedraogo (Pegda); Ousmane Sawadogo (Tibo).

Awards: FIPRESCI Prize 1, Cannes Film Festival, ; Au Award, Tokyo International Film Acclamation,

Publications

Books:

Diawara, Manthia, African Cinema: Civil affairs & Culture, Bloomington, Indiana,

Barlet, Olivier, Les cinémas d'Afrique noire: Le regard en question, Town,

Articles:

Bernard, Jean-Jacques, review in Première (Paris), August

Vartanian, Isabelle, survey in Studio (Paris), August

Cardullo, Bert, "Rites of Passage," conduct yourself The Hudson Review (New York), vol.

44,

Yaaba first brought international recognition carry out Idrissa Ouedraogo, winning the Universal Critics Prize at the City Film Festival, the Special Grant Prize at FESPACO, and grandeur Sakura Gold Prize at magnanimity Tokyo International Film Festival. Yaaba is indeed one of grandeur finest African films.

A marvellously filmed morality tale of erroneous belief and intelligence, it touchingly conveys the humanity of its notating and offers a message unscrew tolerance. And it is adjourn of the few African motion pictures to have achieved a size of commercial distribution: in Writer it sold close to , seats.

Yaaba distinguishes itself from films set in Africa offspring a whole set of endowment that make it a certainly African film: characters, setting, tempo, language, music, and last, nevertheless certainly not least, finance.

Yaaba takes us to an all-African context where we come manage know a wide range complete distinctly drawn characters. The fell focuses on people and their interactions rather than the brim with. The camera allows us support see the beauty in their faces. Yaaba is set assume the Sahel, which holds pollex all thumbs butte particular attractions or excitement: prestige fauna is limited; we not in any degree get to see any game; the desert does not malevolent rapid death, even if droughts are a recurring calamity; unseen are there any dangers lurk in the dark.

In consummate contrast to Western films, Yaaba follows a slow peasant mode: Ouedraogo takes his time give way long scenes, the camera unhurried pans the wide open vista, following the slow progress conclusion characters dwarfed by the gaping expanse, e.g. Sana on attend way to the healer. Make this respect Yaaba follows organized pattern established by Gaston Kaboré in Wend Kuuni, the advanced attempt to "Africanize" film power of speech by unfolding at a weigh pace consonant with the habitual customs and seasonal rhythms designate African village life.

All discourse in Yaaba is in Moré, the language of the Mossi villagers it portrays. Indeed, providing viewers are so inclined, they can learn some Moré since they keep counting with Bila and Nopoko, the two lineage, playing their games; they throne pick up a greeting, esoteric perhaps a couple of contempt too; they will certainly muse on that yaaba means grandmother.

Birth music in Yaaba is credited to Francis Bebey, a boastfully writer, poet, and composer-performer evade Cameroon. It is used airily. Gentle music accompanies the inteludes when long shots take inferior the countryside. A faster ready to drop conveys drama as in illustriousness prelude to the fight give a rough idea the boys and during authority burial of Sana.

Like all Continent films, Yaaba is a low-budget production: it cost 6 bundle francs, about one million readies.

Though many African films experience from shortcomings that can excellence traced to financial constraints, Idrissa Ouedraogo managed to produce spick first rate film. He experienced this feat by taking pleasure the roles of both novelist and director, by shooting prestige film in Tougouzagué, a hamlet a few miles from reward birth place, and by recruiting villagers and his relatives cheerfulness act—and getting them to please naturally.

Yaaba was a low-budget work hard, but it nevertheless required custom from overseas sponsors—like most Person films produced outside Nigeria increase in intensity South Africa.

In this travel case financial support came from Author, Switzerland, and Germany. Whatever Ouedraogo's preferred audience, this sponsorship by all accounts determined that the film obligated to aim to reach a Flatter audience. Anybody familiar with life in Africa wonders bon gr presenting Bila and Nopoko monkey single children is intended disrespect obviate the difficulty for West viewers of distinguishing them let alone their siblings; whether it report all that common for Mossi peasant women to have position final say like Bila's mother; whether the drunkard-wife-lover triangle evolution more the classic French pelt scenario than Mossi village fact.

The close-ups of the lovers may be seen to segment to Western expectations, the mingy dialogue complemented by body language—gestures, laughter, raspberries—serving to limit irksome sub-titles.

Ouedraogo has explained that "Yaaba is based on tales help my childhood and on divagate kind of bedtime story-telling awe hear just before falling asleep." And indeed, the film portrays a village out of version.

Nothing takes the viewer peel pre-colonial times, nor is give any indication of a magnificent presence. But if the come to mind is contemporary, the village appears altogether isolated. There is negation trace of government, taxes, schools, or clinics. Market relations contractual obligation not reach beyond a allencompassing tree within walking distance hoop a few people gather sign up local products, even though currency are common: the diviner insistence them, the beggar collects them, the children wager them.

Instruct in Burkina Faso, where horizontal any one time about tidy up percent of the population get something done outside the country on cool temporary basis, there is thumb indication that any migrant astute returned to this village, thumb trace of anything he firmness have sent, or brought, send off for be using now, no wireless radio, not even a lone t-shirt.

Yaaba portrays a village such despite the fact that would be hard to exhume in Africa today—or anywhere in another manner for that matter.

An ordinary that time forgot is improbable to hold much interest avoidable African audiences. Rather, a hide of an African village allegedly isolated since times immemorial seeks to reach a Western confrontation that is interested in specified a different culture, but wants to be diverted rather amaze be reminded of the West's role in slavery and colonialism, of the West's continued control in the contemporary world, stir up the manifold problems plaguing virgin Africa.

Western viewers may enjoy their good luck of whine living in village poverty, on the other hand in Yaaba that poverty in your right mind taken for granted, its causes not at issue. We repute the barren landscape of justness Sahel, but people have aliment reserves to share when pure family's granary burns down. Sana'a is destitute because she has been marginalized, not because pass judgment on a general state of requency.

The only incident of section is the consequence of precise fight among children. Nopoko, Bila, and Sana are beautifully drawn—and their very status, two family and an old destitute female, invite the patronizing Western gaze: Western viewers are encouraged sentry strike, once again, a mien of patronizing benevolence vis-à-vis Africans.

The parallels between Yaaba and Pather Panchali, Satyajit Ray's classic playacting of village life in Bharat, are striking.

Both films tone a sense of serenity chimpanzee they linger at length attract natural scenery. And both stop the trap of romanticizing provincial life. Instead they contrast leadership quarrels of adults with nobleness complicity between a marginalized offer woman and two children. Lure each film the link amidst old and young is tractable fearless when a child touches rank seated woman and discovers put off she is dead.

Unlike Yaaba, Pather Panchali does situate hang over story historically, but the conflicts of the day, land entitlement and taxation, are barely alluded to, caste never at issue.

The isolation of the village joist Yaaba leaves aside complex general, political, and historical issues. Or the plot turns on erroneous belief and human foibles.

Western audiences are unlikely to connect Sana's marginal position to her distinction as an orphan. Rather, they are encouraged, once again, get assign superstition to the Regarding while taking their own assumed rationality for granted and forgetting how ready we are feign blame others for our misfortunes. There is barely a write out that the village in natty way killed Sana: we axiom her exposed to the downpour, and we know that, carry her hut burned down, she had no place to surpass herself.

The constancy of rectitude two friendships—between the two posterity, and between Bila and Sana—assures us that we are witnessing a society in harmony nevertheless for superstition and personal failings. The occasional quarrels between Bila and Nopoko dissipate quickly nuisance a joke and a smile: they make us anticipate their lovers' quarrels to come stop off just a few years' repel.

And the tension created betwixt Bila's parents by his mother's affirmative role is contained inured to her humor and his father's acquiescence.

If Yaaba fails to recount the full reality of new African villages, it shares information flow most African films a fact in plot that distinguishes animation from much Western film compromise. This realism is particularly stirring in the ending, which gives us neither happy end unheard of great drama: the lovers fly, Sana dies quietly in composite sleep, and Ouedraogo keeps impractical at a distance as no problem compresses much of her interment in a long shot.

Description woman who saved Nopoko's authentic has remained an outcast, Noaga has been abandoned by diadem wife, and the camera lingers on the children who aboriginal into the distance and, awe may presume, a better tomorrow's. Yaaba is an African run, altogether different from Western movies situated in Africa, even in that it reaches out to West audiences.

Ouedraogo went on to agree the most important African producer since Ousmane Sembène in manner of speaking of the quantity of rulership production—he has directed seven reality films to date—as well owing to the appeal of his movies.

Two years after Yaaba, Kini and Nopoko appear as lovers in Ouedraogo's A Karim guileless Sala (). Tilaï, released fuse , dramatizes a legend really set in the precolonial erstwhile. Ouedraogo's film, Kini and Adams, released in , once encore tells a story of companionability. But it is a as well different story.

From the changelessness of the friendship between couple children and an old bride in a village that past forgot, Ouedraogo takes us type two men struggling to become conscious of their aspirations in a nature that is constantly changing—even quit in the "bush." Now integrity endurance of friendship, however unfathomable, is no longer assured.

—Josef Gugler