August 4, 7pm TOUKI BOUKI
by
August 4, 7pm
Touki Bouki, 1973, Senegal, 95 min
Director: Djibril Diop Mambety
French and Wolof with English Subtitles
“Touki Bouki EXPLODES…one image at a time.”
– Martin Scorsese
International Critics Award at 1973 Cannes Film Festival
Diploma Award and the Prix FIPRESCI at 1973 Moscow Film Festival
Touki Bouki ranked #52 in Empire magazine’s “The 100 Best Films Of World Cinema” in 2010
Mory, a charismatic cowherd who drives a motorcycle mounted with a bull-horned skull, and Anta, a female student, meet in Dakar. Alienated and tired of life in Senegal, they dream of going to Paris and come up with different schemes to raise money for the trip. Mory eventually contrives to steal the money, and much clothing, from the household of a wealthy homosexual while the latter is taking a shower. Anta and Mory can finally buy tickets for the ship to France. But when Anta boards the ship in the Port of Dakar, Mory, poised on the gangplank behind her, is suddenly seized by an inability to leave his roots, and he runs away madly to find his bull-horned motorcycle, only to see that it has been ruined in a crash that nearly killed the rider who had taken it. The ship sails away with Anta but not Mory while the hauntingly melodious song “Love Is Fleeting, But Rejection Lasts a Lifetime” is sung and Mory sits next to his hat on the ground, staring disconsolately at his wrecked motorcycle. The film is written in French and Wolof, with English subtitles.