Guelwaar

Sembène 100

Ousmane Sembène’s collaborators have suggested that Guelwaar is the film the director was most proud of; for a time, having considered retirement, it was to have stood as his final statement. Through the absence left by the recently deceased activist Pierre Henri Thioune, Sembène examines Senegal’s faultlines of religions, generations, genders, and incompatible dreams of the country’s future. The film begins as a tragicomedy—Guelwaar’s body has disappeared, through either bureaucratic malfeasance or the morgue’s honest mistake. This local error becomes a microcosmic religious battle over land and law, and culminates in scenes that resemble Sembène’s preferred form of public engagement: a face-to-face confrontation in which titles and trappings slip away to reveal a common human cause.

(Ousmane Sembène, Senegal, French, & Wolof w/ English Subs, 114 min, 1992, DCP)

Free for members (includes all UWM students). $5 for non-members. Memberships can be purchased at the Union Cinema.