Jollof Films presents: Den Muso

Director: Souleymane Cissé

1975 / 88min / DCP

In collaboration with Brooklyn-based Jollof Films, co-founded by Senegalese artists Assane Sy and Ahmad Cissé, and their pan-African cinema club, we present a screening of Cissé’s debut feature—the first ever Malian feature made in Bambara, the filmmaker’s native language. The film is a potent drama depicting the rape of a young mute girl and, when she discovers herself pregnant following the assault, the ostracism she faces at the hands of her religiously conservative community and upwardly mobile family. A brazen challenge to the patriarchal power structure, Den Muso was censored on release and its director briefly imprisoned on specious charges—he wrote the script for his next film, 1978’s Baara, while under lock-and-key—but these attempts at suppression did little to muffle the impact of his angry, impassioned film.

Post-screening conversation with Jollof Films' Assane Sy and Ahmad Cissé on Saturday, June 6th

Part of The World at Full Volume The Cinema of Shunji Iwai