• Tue 03 10 2017 / 7:30 pm •
Le retour d’un aventurier Moustapha Alassane

with MOUSTAPHA ALASSANE

Le retour d’un aventurier, 34', Niger, 1966, French and Hausa with English subtitles

A classic of African cinema, Le retour d’un aventurier is a parody of a Western, set in a village in Niger in the 1960s. It tells the story of a young man who comes home from abroad with a suitcase full of cowboy costumes, which he gives to his friends. They dress up as a band of desperados, and enact the archetypal scenes of American Westerns, herding livestock, getting into barroom brawls, and staging gunfights. Played by amateurs, this game with the Western’s conventions is full of slapstick fun, but under the surface, there hides a complex story of rebellions against elders who are ready to deceive and incite fights, all just to keep things the way they are. Serge Moati’s film Les cowboys sont noirs shows “the making of” the film. It follows the actors riding scooters and going to their day jobs as taxi drivers, acting in a real-life Western on the weekends, their pistols loaded with blanks. Moati’s film underlines the significance of the fact that these cowboys are Africans, appropriating the costume of the Western to conquer the West in their own way. The screening is introduced by film curator DOROTHEE WENNER and EKATERINA DEGOT.
Venue: Filmclub 813 at Die BRÜCKE, Hahnenstraße 6, 50667 Cologne
7 €

The film will be screened together with Les cowboys sont noirs by Serge Moati, 15', France, 1966, in French and Hausa with English subtitles

In cooperation with Film Festival Cologne