The Unkindest Cut

Film: Moolaade
Format: DVD from NetFlix on laptop.

When I heard what Moolaade was about, it became the newest List addition that I least wanted to see. This film is about female genital mutilation, which is a subject I find difficult to even contemplate. I try not to shy away from things that are important, and don’t get me wrong—this is important. It just gives me the willies. Sembene’s film is, thankfully, wholly against the practice. Part of Moolaade’s purpose is doubtless to raise awareness of the topic. I’m all for that. It just happens that this topic is horribly icky.

A group of young girls escapes from this ritual exercise and rush back to their village, asking for the protection of Colle (Fatoumata Coulibaly), a woman who refused to have her daughter undergo the same ritual some years earlier. To enact her protection, she places a colored band of rope across the entrance to her house. This protection, called “Moolaade,” prevents anyone from coming into the house to harm the girls. This all becomes more relevant because Colle’s “unpurified” daughter Amasatou (Salimata Traore) is promised to one of the powerful village elders. This elder flatly refused to have his son marry an impure woman as is demanded by this particular Islamic sect.

Persecution

Film: Ceddo
Format: Internet video on laptop.

There’s a certain pleasure in seeing a film that you’re pretty sure no one else you know has seen. Such is the case with Ceddo, a Senegalese film that manages to be as obscure as just about anything I’ve sought in the past three years. As often happens with the more obscure films I watch, I went into this completely cold, not knowing the first thing about this film other than its country of origin and that the director is named Ousmane Sembene. I would never have expected what this film is—a slow-paced discussion on religious persecution.

It’s difficult to tell the time period this film takes place in. In a lot of respects, it looks modern. On the other hand, it’s evident that the slave trade is taking place in the world of the film. In fact, at one point a collection of characters discusses the very real possibility of selling their own families into slavery. My guess is that Ceddo takes place during the 18th or early 19th century. I suppose, in all honesty, that I know too little of West Africa to be able to speak more relevantly than that.