Monday, 26 November 2012

Life of Africans showcased in Pierre Yameogo retrospective category



Noted Burkina film director-producer S. Pierre Yameogo is also well-known photographer and screenwriter, born on May 15, 1955 in Koudougou (Burkina Faso) in West Africa. His six films will showcase in the retrospective category of the 17th International Film Festival of Kerala. Pierre Yameogo is to attend the festival and be in the capital for the duration of the festival from 6th to 14th of December.  
Pierre Yameogo films are those which broach certain specified social realities to shake things up. Yamego, a great observer of day-to-day life in Africa, makes his scripts on harsh reality of the African community and the socio-ethnic issues burning in between them. His stories are on the common people, filmed in very simple way, who are left behind and unable to stand up in the competitive world of money and power.
Photographer turned film maker, Yameogo, studied at the Conservatoire of French Cinema, has penned script for his five films and produced his three films and a French film Keita! L'héritage du griot. The founder of AFIX production company in 1982, Pierre Yameogo, has won seven International awards and received immense appreciations for his great pieces of art.  
His films included in the festival are Delwende, Me and My White Guy, Wendemi, Laafi Tout va bien, Silmande Tourbillon and Dunia.

Delwende is a true story of desperate Napoko Diarha and daughter at risk of succumbing to a sexist tradition based on localized superstition. This movie which depicts the traditional rules and mental blindness of African Villages won two awards at the most prestigious Cannes Film Festival in 2005. Its cinematography was also done by Yameogo himself, which gave him lot of appreciations at various International Film festivals.

The 89 min film Me and My White Guy is an ironic and lively movie which portrays an African student stranded in Paris after losing his government grant. Movie is insightful and acutely observed spoof on social stereotypes and implicit racism. This movie had won two awards in Ouagadougou Pan-African Film and Television Festival.
The film Wendemi released in 1993, sketches, an abandoned child who leads a voyage in search of his identity. It was screened in many festivals around the globe and well appreciated by the audience for its narrative style.
Laafi Tout va bien, premiered in the 1991 Cannes film Festival, depicts Joe, a teenager who encounters many shockingly realistic games of life and politics. This 85 minutes duration film was really enjoyed and welcomed all over the world.
Silmande Tourbillon is one of the most impressive films made in Africa in recent times. The dramatic comedy sketches an austere and probably controversial representation of the involvement of a Lebanese family in the economic and social corruption in Burkina Faso. The film bagged four awards in Namur International Festival of French-Speaking Film and Ouagadougou Pan-African Film and Television Festival.
  Dunia tells the story of Nongma, a ten year old girl who acquire an official offer to study at a good school while living with her ailing grandmother. This film mainly focuses on the socio-cultural aspect of a women’s life in both city and rural areas.
This realistic filmmaker’s films tell the story flawlessly, thus making the language not a barrier to understand his film, which makes them truly international ones. These six films in the International Film Festival of Kerala will open up the life of the African people, in particular the people of Burkina Faso, to the world and giving a larger canvas to represent the life of neglected African society.

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