BAMAKO/African film puts World Bank and IMF on trial

ANTARA NEWS, May 24th, 2006

"... a jewel of a film from Mauritian director Abderrahmane Sissako..."

Cannes, France (ANTARA News) - Africa's lone entry in the Cannes Film Festival aims to speak for millions with its ambitious tale of putting the World Bank and IMF on trial for the monetary policies choking African nations.

"Bamako", a jewel of a film from Mauritian director Abderrahmane Sissako, aims to demonstrate the impact these policies are having on the daily lives of Africans, and was shown here Tuesday in official selection, but out of competition.

A makeshift court, including a judge in an ermine-trimmed red robe, is set up in a poor quarter of the Malian capital Bamako, in a courtyard as women look after their children and kids play football nearby.

The witnesses, including former culture minister Aminata Traore, parade before the court to tell their stories.

But most of those appearing in the witness box are the anonymous and the oppressed, the real victims of the austerity budgets drawn up by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for struggling African nations.

Debt repayments, which absorb an astonishing 40 percent of the budgets of Kenya and Zambia, is a recurrent leitmotif.

The film avoids trying to manipulate the court, and the institutions on trial also have a right to defence lawyers. But in a scene in which bank notes change hands, Sissako shows that corruption is not just a myth here.

Above all his film seeks to speak for a continent.

"I was very aware that from my small position, and because I make films, I have to try to be the voice of millions of people," Sissako told AFP in measured tones.

"Because of this position of unwilling spokesman, I have had to get involved in something that seems very urgent to me: the need to give a voice to those who need it most, to those who need to cry out against this form of injustice."

Sissako, whose previous films include "October", "Life on Earth" and "Heremakono", does not add that sub-Saharan Africa produces only around a dozen feature-length films a year -- as a region barely equalling the output of The Netherlands or Finland. By comparison, some 240 films were made in France in 2005.

Miraculous survival

"There is no long-term policy to support cinema in Africa, except in South Africa and Morocco," said Jean-Pierre Garcia, artistic director of the Amiens film festival, and a film expert.

"It's a miracle that African cinema survives and given its resources it does very well," he added, saying that the growing digital market and the video CD (VCD) -- "the poor man's DVD" -- was creating new markets in Nigeria, Ethopia, Burkina Faso and Madagascar.

"Bamako" would also have never seen the light of day without the backing of of France's National Centre for Cinematography, the television channel Arte and the French organisation, Fonds Sud Cinema.

It also received support from African-American actor Danny Glover, who takes a cameo role in a hilarious scene, a kind of anti-IMF spaghetti Western, where cowboys shoot down surplus teachers to meet IMF demands to reduce the numbers of teachers in primary schools.

"I just wanted to help in any way I could, to support his film, and in supporting his film, in a larger sense, support African filmmakers," Glover told AFP, about the backing from his company Louverture.

"We haven't seen many films from Africa, and I have the impression that the number of films put forward for selection is falling," regretted Thierry Fremaux, Cannes artistic director.

"I hope it's not an irreversible trend, but it will be if nothing is done to fight against it. As for us, we have added our support to help rebuild African cinema and will try to do more."

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