Short film
Sarzan
Momar Thiam · 1963
Synopsis
After fifteen years in the French army, a sergeant of the colonial troops returns to the village where he was born. Independence has changed the country, and he himself no longer fits in with his own people or their traditions: what he has seen elsewhere makes him ashamed of what he finds. He sets about civilising his village, as he puts it, and correcting customs he no longer understands. The villagers close ranks; left alone to want what he holds to be good, he decides to attack the altars of the ancestors.
Context
The film comes from a tale by Birago Diop, one of the stories the writer had collected. It runs twenty-nine minutes, shot in sixteen millimetre and spoken in French; it is the first film of its author, then a photographer by trade. The Rotterdam festival noted in it a curious African formalism. Long difficult to see, it was shown at the Cinéma du réel festival in Paris in 1996, in a selection devoted to the Africas, then at the Rotterdam festival in 2010.
Who it is for
Half an hour, in French, on a story drawn from a tale by Birago Diop; nothing needs to be known before watching it.
Prizes and reception
First film by the man the profession later called its doyen; it has since been shown again at film festivals, in France as in the Netherlands.
Sources for this page 5
The pages consulted to check this page.