Current Films

CHEF!

Jean Marie Teno
Camerun, France 1999 | 61 Min. | 16 mm, OmeU
Chef! is a film about frus­tra­tion. Frus­tra­tion in the face of grow­ing misery in a coun­try rich in nat­ur­al resources which are exclu­sive­ly there for the ben­e­fit of a pow­er­ful … read more

CROSS ROADS

Hillie Mollenaar
Netherlands 1997 | 60 Min. | 35 mm, OmeU
From Tan­za­nia and from Rwanda to Zaire, some half a mil­lion refugees from Tutsi-Hutu vio­lence streamed in to create boom town called Benaco. The new­com­ers – whose roles in Rwanda … read more

DIVORCE IRANIAN STYLE

Kim Longinotto
Great Britain 1998 | 80 Min. | 16 mm, OmeU
Iran­ian women seek­ing divorce meet with strong oppo­si­tion. Often, they stand help­less while their hus­bands win in law-suits and get the cus­tody of their chil­dren, even if they abuse them … read more

IN HET HUIS VAN MIJN VADER

Fatima Jebli Ouazzani
Netherlands 1997 | 67 Min. | 35 mm, OmeU
»In our islam­ic soci­ety , it’s always the woman who pays the price, why?« With these words a young Maroc­can woman sums up, the until today unbro­ken patri­achal dom­i­nance of … read more

JEF JEL

Moussa Sene Absa
France, Senegal 1998 | 52 Min. | BetaSP, OmeU
JEF JEL is a doc­u­men­tary about the Islam­ic con­fed­er­a­tion of the Mourides in Sene­gal. Trav­el­ling from Dakar to Touba, where the move­ment was born, dis­ci­ples bear wit­ness to their reli­gion. … read more

KISANGANI DIARY - LOIN DU RWANDA

Hubert Sauper
Austria, France 1997 | 45 Min. | 35 mm, OmeU
Along an over­grown rail­track south of Kin­san­gani, ex-Stan­leyville, lost refugees are dis­cov­ered by an expe­di­tion of the UN. There are 80.000 (!) Hutus from far away Rwanda. They are the … read more

L’HONNEUR DE MA FAMILLE

Rachid Bouchareb
France 1997 | 90 Min. | 35 mm, OmeU
Nora has had a strict upbring­ing. Her familiy comes from Alge­ria and her par­ents are rig­or­ous in their main­te­nance of tra­di­tion­al cus­tomes. Nora has learned over the years to make … read more

LA BARAKA DES MARCHANDS MOURIDES

Jean Paul Colleyn
France 1997 | 57 Min. | BetaSP, OmeU
Wrapped in their long boubous, car­ry­ing huge striped plas­tic bags, Sene­galese streetven­dors have become a common sight in big cities all over the world. From Dakar to Mar­seille, from Antwer­pen … read more

LA NUIT DU DESTIN

Abdelkrim Bahloul
Algeria, France 1997 | 90 Min. | 35 mm, OmeU
In Paris, Mon­sieur Sli­mani, an old man, wit­ness­es an assas­i­na­tion. Per­sued by the mur­der­ers, he escapes into a mosque. Dis­cov­er­ing, that the mur­der­er is a mighty person, he becomes anx­ious … read more

LECHE

Naomi Uman
Mexico, USA 1998 | 30 Min. | 16 mm, OF
Made with the most rudi­men­ta­ry tools of film­mak­ing LECHE is a black and white film which exam­ines details of the lives of a rural mex­i­can family. The film was hand … read more

MÉMOIRES D’ IMMIGRÉS

Yamina Benguigui
Algeria, France 1997 | 160 Min. | BetaSP, OmeU
This three-parted film allows maghre­bin­ian immi­grants to speak: fathers (part I), moth­ers (part II) and their chil­dren (part III). With archive­ma­te­r­i­al and inter­views Yas­mi­na Ben­guigui analy­ses the »machin­ery« of immi­gra­tion. … read more

MOBUTU, ROI DU ZAIRE

Thierry Michel
Belgium, France 1999 | 135 Min. | 35 mm, OmeU
At the end of 1965 in the ex-Bel­gian Congo torn and exhaust­ed by five years of unrest, Gen­er­al Mobutu and the army set up a pow­er­ful state soon to be … read more

PAULINA

Vicky Funari
Canada, Mexico, USA 1997 | 88 Min. | 16 mm, OmeU
Pauli­na Cruz Suarez, now just turned 50, has worked as a maid in Mexico City since she was 15. She talks of her house­hold tasks and her cook­ing, until we … read more

QUATRE FEMMES D’EGYPTE

Tahani Rached
Canada, Egypt 1997 | 90 Min. | BetaSP, OmeU
How do we get along with each other when our views col­lide? This is a modern, urban ques­tion which is vital and uni­ver­sal. Four Egypt­ian women dare to answer this … read more

WOUBI CHÉRI

Laurent Bocahut, Philip Brooks
France 1998 | 62 Min. | BetaSP, OmeU

WOUBI CHÉRI is a doc­u­men­tary that looks at gay life in con­tem­po­rary Africa. The film takes place in the Ivory Coast and fea­tures a range of char­ac­ters from Vin­cent, a tra­di­tion­al African sto­ry­teller and shaman, to Bar­bara, the viva­cious Pres­i­dent of the local Trans­ves­tite Asso­ci­a­tion. We travel from modern Abid­jan, the cap­i­tal of the Ivory Coast, to small towns in the more tra­di­tion­al coun­try­side. In WOUBI CHÉRI, we exam­ine cru­cial polit­i­cal ques­tions raised today as gays in the Ivory Coast are torn between an old time silent accep­tance and their own desire for more open recognition.

In this film dif­fer­ent people from the gay scene of the Ivory Coast will tell their own sto­ries, bring­ing a new sense of gay and les­bian life as it has never been seen before – its humor, emo­tions, pol­i­tics and tra­di­tions, its plea­sure and pain. Our char­ac­ters take us on an explo­ration of their cul­tur­al and sexual iden­ti­ties, lead­ing us into their world as they see and expe­ri­ence it.

Here the para­me­ters are dif­fer­ent to those in the West­ern world, and the expe­ri­ences of homo­sex­u­al Africans change the notion of what is ‚gay’ and what is ‚straight’ for those in the West as well.

YMAKO

Laurent van Lancker, Robin Shuffield
Belgium 1998 | 52 Min. | BetaSP, OmeU
‘Ymako Téatri’, a the­atre com­pa­ny based in Ivory Coast, uses street the­atre to ques­tion some con­tem­po­rary West African prob­lems. Their orig­i­nal­i­ty con­sists in using the ‘invis­i­ble the­atre’ method in order … read more

ZONE RAP

Bouna Medoune Seye
France, Senegal 1998 | 52 Min. | BetaSP, OmeU
»Que la parole soit claire / la vie tient en deux jours / le jour de la nais­sance, le jour de la mort / Laiss­er sa cul­ture pour une autre … read more