Xala (on 35mm)

Senegalese master Ousmane Sembène unleashed one of his most ingenious, scathing satirical dramas with Xala in 1975. He targets the new bourgeois elite of a recently independent African state, never specifically named in the film, who behave much like their departed colonial masters. El Hadji is a businessman who is cursed with impotence (the literal meaning of the word ‘xala’) on his marriage night. His increasingly desperate efforts to solve this problem uncover escalating bureaucratic absurdities and abject corruption in a lacerating critique of postcolonial power. Showing on 35mm as part of the Kafkaesque Cinema programme.

The film is an allegory about post-colonial corruption in Senegal. It starts with a crowd celebrating the country’s independence…. The camera cross-cuts between the celebrating collective and the Senegalese leaders, as if foreshadowing the upcoming division between the leaders of the nation and the population. ‘The artist must in many ways be the mouth and the ears of his people. In the modern sense, this corresponds to the role of the griot in traditional African culture. The artist is like a mirror. His work reflects and synthesizes the problems, the struggles, and hopes of his people.’ Ousmane Sembene, Director