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LEADER 00000ngm a2200397 i 4500
003 CaSfKAN
005 20140402113757.0
006 m o c
007 vz uzazuu
007 cr una---unuuu
008 150528p20151997cau098 o vlbam d
028 52 1139755|bKanopy
035 (OCoLC)908378056
040 CaSfKAN|beng|erda|cCaSfKAN
043 e-fr---
099 Streaming Video Kanopy
245 00 Taafe Fanga (Skirt Power).|h[Kanopy electronic resource]
264 1 [San Francisco, California, USA] :|bKanopy Streaming,
|c2015.
300 1 online resource (1 video file, approximately 99 min.) :
|bdigital, .flv file, sound
336 two-dimensional moving image|btdi|2rdacontent
337 computer|bc|2rdamedia
338 online resource|bcr|2rdacarrier
344 digital
347 video file|bMPEG-4|bFlash
500 Title from title frames.
518 Originally produced by California Newsreel in 1997.
520 A gender-bending farce set among the cliff-dwelling 18th
century Dogon people, makes serious points about the
status of women in Africa. It shows how ancient mythology
can still shed light on modern issues. Director Adama
Drabo has devised a gender-bending farce set among the
18th Century Dogon to make some serious points about the
status of women in Africa today. This proleptic tale about
a comic revolution in which women's and men's roles are
reversed was, in part, inspired by the actual role women
played in Mali's 1991 revolution. Drabo surprisingly found
the germ for his domestic comedy from a program on Dogon
mythology he heard over Malian radio. He then wrote a
script which provides a stunning illustration of Marcel
Griaule's observation that, "In the Dogon system of myth,
social life must reflect the working of the universe, and
conversely, the world order depends on the proper ordering
of society." (Griaule, Marcel and Germaine Dieterlen 1954
"The Dogon", in African Worlds: Studies in the
Cosmological Ideas and Social Values of African Peoples,
edited by Daryll Forde, P. 83.) Therefore Taafe Fanga's
story of sexual politics in a Dogon village necessarily
involves the interpenetration of cosmogeny, history and
the still unfolding present. The Dogon believe that all
difference in the universe began with the splitting of the
primal fonio seed into an ever-expanding spiral of space-
time which can only be held together by a careful
balancing or "twinning" of opposing energies. In Taafe
Fanga, this tension reappears in the parallel stories of
four women who challenge male supremacy among the Dogon's
legendary elf-like andumbulu spirit ancestors; their semi-
historical human descendants, the indigenous, cave-
dwelling Tellem; the Dogon who invaded and massacred the
Tellem in the 17th century (leaving them a place only in
folklore;) and finally their present-day listeners to this
tale. Myth, storytelling and now film link past and future,
as symbolized in the opening scene by the arrival of a
traditionally robed griot at a contemporary urban
compound. He flips off a television program (some fatuous
Hollywood musical) and decides to tell a Dogon tale about
the "battle between the sexes," when a proud woman pushes
aside an arrogant young man to sit in the "men's section"
of the courtyard. Ambara, a village elder, impulsively
decides to marry a younger woman because his wife, Timbe,
hasn't gathered firewood to heat his bath. Her younger
friend, Yayémé, is beaten by her husband, Agro, when the
other men accuse him of being "a woman's slave" for
bringing home the firewood. An infuriated Yayémé defies
his warning about the evil andumbulus and sets off in the
dark to forage for brush. There she encounters and
overwhelms what she takes to be one of these bush spirits
and makes off with its powerful mask. Yayémé has
unwittingly stumbled onto the rare Sigi ritual, and has
stolen the mask from a young Tellem woman, Yandju, who in
turn has stolen the mask to protest women's exclusion from
the ritual. The Dogon believed the Tellem held the Sigi
ritual every 60 years to expiate the transgressions of
their andumbulu forebearers. This woman who stole the
earth's powerful raffia skirt, stained red with its
menstrual blood or mud, thus brings death on her husband
and all her descendants. In the Sigi ritual, (which women
are still strictly forbidden to view) men dressed as women
in these red fiber fertility skirts bind the dangerous
spiritual energy unleashed by death which threatens to rip
apart the normal spiral of life. The ceremony is presided
over by the powerful Albarga mask which symbolizes social
harmony and the proper balance between the sexes. Timbe
convinces Yayémé that the mask has been sent by Anma, god
of justice, in answer to her prayer for revenge against
Ambara and all male arrogance. The next day Yayémé,
disguised in the mask, demands that the terrorized Dogon
men from now on exchange roles with the women. Drabo
exploits the full comedic possibilities of this "triumph
of the skirts over the shorts" as the men prove
predictably clumsy homemakers and are so exhausted by the
end of the day they feign sleep to stave off their wives
sexual advances. These scenes are met with uproarious
responses from African audiences, because traditional
gender roles remain largely unchanged. The women soon
recognize that their purpose was not simply to perpetuate
gender stereotypes and injustice in reverse or to
imbalance the world in the opposite direction. Timbe says:
"Men and women are here to complement each other. Let's
use our power now to bring equality among us. Let's share
everything: work, happiness and misfortune." Later in a
pointed reference to contemporary African development,
Timbe points out that both sexes will be needed for an
irrigation project which can again make the earth fertile:
"The purpose of taking power is to make a better
world...No nation is built without hard work - but it
can't be done by excluding men" - or women. In Taafe Fanga,
Drabo has revised the Sigi myth (which seems originally to
have expressed male anxiety over female control of
fecundity) into a myth about women's right to resist
patriarchy, in the griot's words, "to fight for the right
to be different and equal. This film, along with Drabo's
1991 feature Ta Dona provide important examples of how
contemporary African artists are freely reappropriating
traditional belief systems to illuminate pressing social
issues. "This blend of folklore and social realism,
bolstered by spirited acting, doesn't skirt the issues or
bang viewers over the head with them...Solidly
entertaining." - Variety "Taafe Fanga, through humor and
imagination, offers a masterful and utterly involving
introduction to the Dogon worldview. It shows how this
ancient mythology still sheds light on modern issues
through a wry tale of women's continuing struggles against
male power." - Cherif Keita, Carleton College "A
remarkable achievement . . . Drabo employs reversal to
reveal and provoke rethinking of established notions of
tradition, gender and desire at the same time he suggests
alternatives." - Mbye Cham, Howard University.
538 Mode of access: World Wide Web.
650 0 Dogon (African people)|xSocial conditions|xRites and
ceremonies|zAfrica|zMali.
650 0 Women|xSocial conditions|xWomen's Rights|xGender Roles
|xSex discrimination|zAfrica.
650 0 Mythology|zAfrica.
655 7 Feature films.|2lcgft
700 1 Drabo, Adama,|d1948-2009,|efilm director.
710 2 Kanopy (Firm)
856 40 |uhttps://naperville.kanopy.com/node/139756|zAvailable on
Kanopy
856 42 |zCover Image|uhttps://www.kanopy.com/node/139756/external
-image