Touki Bouki Essay

957 Words4 Pages
Touki Bouki was a film made in 1973, corresponding with the trend of 1970s African cinema that had become quite focused on contemporary social and cultural issues in postcolonial Africa. The narrative foregrounding in the opening sequence of Touki Bouki reveals almost instantly the underlying theme of the film; the contradictions between tradition and modernity, depicted by the contrasting images of life in a Senegalese shantytown and the thriving French-influenced city center. Nwachukwu Frank Ukadike writes in Black African Cinema, “The unconventional manner in which space, time, and events are juxtaposed compels one to appreciate the film as a non-narrative whose collage of cultural, political, and sexual imagery offers a wide array of connotative assumptions” (Ukadike 173). This is evident in the first sequence of the film; there is minimal dialogue in this sequence, thus leaving the audience to their own interpretations of what the filmmaker, Djibril Diop Mambety, is trying to present, which is accomplished particularly through the camerawork, editing, and sound. The establishing shot of the film is a medium-long shot and a stationary camera of a small boy riding on a cow’s back, herding cattle in an open rural area, slowly moving towards the camera. The soundtrack is deliberate- a melody being played on a flute mixed with the direct sound of the cattle, leaving the audience assuming that the film will be depicting a very ‘traditional’ image of Africa. The camera then jump cuts to the inside of a slaughterhouse with choppy editing and sometimes out-of-focus camerawork, where the audience sees the cattle (assumably the same ones the boy had been herding in the previous frame) being killed. The vivid images of close-up shots of the cow’s blood pouring out of its neck, its legs twitching as it dies, and it being hung by its hind legs creates a sudden intrusion of
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