This Thursday, November 4th, 7:30 p.m., Woodburn Hall 120, FESA will be showing the film Keïta! l’Héritage du griot. Part folk tale, part analysis of contemporary and traditional West African values, Keita! is the story of a young boy as he learns the Bambara epic of Sunjata Keita. Keita portrays the dichotomy between traditional values and ways of learning and modern, Western-style education all the while interspersing scenes of a classical West African tale of heroism and magic. In French and Bambara with English subtitles. Bring your friends to this FREE event!
More about Keita!
Keïta! received the Best First Film Prize from the Panafrican Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou (Fespaco) and was awarded the Junior Prize at the Cannes Film Festival.[1] The New York Times praised the film, claiming it “succeeds admirably in keeping… history alive.”[3] In a 1995 interview, Kouyate reflected on the experience and commenting on traditional society, saying:
Sometimes when you don’t know where you’re heading, you have to return to where you came from in order to think things over before continuing your journey. Today, with all the things happening to her, Africa has trouble finding which direction to take—modernity, tradition, or some other road. We are not really capable of digesting all these things. We don’t know who we are, and we don’t know where we are going. We are between two things. Between our traditions and our modernity.[4]
IUB Folklore & Ethnomusicology Student Association 