Désiré Ecaré’s ”Faces of Women” is a technically rough, cheerfully rude, folkloric comedy about the status of women in the Ivory Coast, where Mr. Ecaré was born and raised. It is, in fact, two separate fables with a common frame, that of a street festival where the singing and dancing is nonstop.

In the first story, a bored wife is accused by her tyrannical farmer-husband of having an affair with his younger brother, a nattily dressed layabout. The wife isn’t, but would like to. At her wit’s end, she takes karate lessons in order to best her husband physically.

The highlight of the fable is a long erotic scene in which the layabout seduces the wife’s best friend as the young woman is bathing in the river. Aside from suggesting what the unhappy wife is missing, this sequence hasn’t much to do with the rest of the fable, but it’s beautifully photographed. Mr. Ecaré is as casual about the film’s narrative line as his characters are about the truth.

The second, much more poignant story is about Bernadette, a large, imposing though illiterate woman who supports her lazy husband, her Europeanized daughters and a large number of assorted relatives with her successful fish-smoking business.

Bernadette, who has 200 employees, would like to open a small restaurant in Abidjan, more or less for the fun of it, and goes to the bank to take out a loan. To her shock she finds that she can’t. She has no assets, nothing that would be acceptable as collateral. Her business, she’s told, is all cash-flow, a concept she doesn’t comprehend. Everything she makes in profit is spent on luxuries by her hangers-on. Says her husband piously, ”Women aren’t meant to understand such things.”

With the help of her eldest daughter, a very pretty, sharp-tongued, elegantly dressed young woman, Bernadette takes her first steps toward liberation. If she has her way, her favorite niece will become a cadet at St. Cyr. Eugénie Cissé-Roland, who plays Bernadette, has a sort of grandeur about her that’s also genuinely funny.

”Faces of Women” is the first feature by Mr. Ecaré, who began shooting in 1973 and finished 12 years later. Made on a shoestring, with post-synchronized sound, ”Faces of Woman” is also a one-movie record of a film maker’s development. The style of the fable about Bernadette is far more sophisticated and subtle than the opening segment, which sometimes seems to be the film diary of a movie maker in search of a subject.
http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9B0DEEDA173DF930A25751C0A961948260

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1h 50mn
Size: 	1.65 GiB
Video
Codec: 	h264
Resolution: 	696x478 ~> 696x522
Aspect ratio:  	4:3
Frame rate: 	23.976 fps
Bit rate: 	
BPP: 	
Audio
#1:  	AAC

https://nitro.download/view/DE28D677EBA7778/Visages_de_femmes.mkv

Language(s):French, Aidoukrou
Subtitles:English (hardcoded)

The post Désiré Ecaré – Visages de femmes (1985) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

In the 70’s, Bokolo and Mamadou sweepers in the city of Paris, looking for a way to pay for the return home of one of their sick comrades. When they discover an old book of recipes in the trash, the idea came to participate in a televised game of decline precisely the ingredients of the best dishes of French cuisine. They memorize the recipes sauces, puddings and desserts.

911MB | 1h 03mn | 768×576 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/EC68B910C1A7450/Dessert_for_Constance.mkv
https://nitroflare.com/view/F1EF5F2E80ADE01/Dessert_for_Constance.EN.srt

Language:French
Subtitles:English

The post Sarah Maldoror – Un dessert pour Constance AKA Dessert for Constance (1981) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

“It’s possible that a good half of the greatest African movies ever made are the work of novelist-turned-filmmaker Ousmane Sembene (Black Girl, Xala, Ceddo). Camp Thiaroye (1988), cowritten and codirected by Thierno Faty Sow, recounts an incident that occurred in 1944. Returning from four years of European combat in the French army, Senegalese troops are sent to a transit camp, where they have to contend with substandard food and other indignities. An intellectual sergeant major (Ibrahima Sane) gets thrown out of a local bordello when he goes there for a drink; mistaken for an American soldier, he’s arrested and beaten by American MPs, which provokes his men into kidnapping an American GI. Then when the Senegalese troops discover that they’re about to be cheated out of half their back pay, they launch a revolt.

Leisurely paced, with some talky stretches devoted to debates among the soldiers, this lengthy feature is neither a simple tract nor a loose, undisciplined fresco, but a novelistic (and often witty) treatment of a complex subject in which all the characters get their due. Sane is especially fine, but the other characters–including a mute and traumatized Senegalese survivor of Buchenwald and a sympathetic if naive white officer–are delineated with comparable depth. The film as a whole offers a multifaceted commentary on colonialism and a nuanced history lesson, and the subtle direction is masterful throughout”
(Jonathan Rosenbaum)

Camp de Thiaroye.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	2 h 33 min
Size: 	2.14 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	712x462 ~> 854x462
Aspect ratio:  	1.85:1
Frame rate: 	23.976 fps
Bit rate: 	1 800 kb/s
BPP: 	0.228
Audio
#1:  	French 2.0ch AC-3 @ 192 kb/s

https://nitro.download/view/C29EBAF0B8F06BE/Camp_de_Thiaroye.mkv

Language(s):French, Wolof
Subtitles:English

The post Ousmane Sembene – Camp de Thiaroye AKA The Camp at Thiaroye (1987) first appeared on Cinema of the World.