I can’t comment on what clearly sounds like a dynamic discussion which followed the film’s screening, however I will say that I personally felt the film was exceptionally well done; particularly in its realistic depiction of what daily life is like in small villages throughout West Africa. I spent one year in Kadiolo, Mali (Sikasso region; 1996), and had the opportunity to visit several of the small villages that surround Kadiolo as well as neighboring Burkina Faso. While I can’t claim to have seen every film that’s been set in this region of the world, of those that I have seen this production clearly stands out as a quality film, with an exceptional representation of every-day life in West Africa.

The film’s main topic is in fact a heated issue, and one that for obvious reasons I agree needs to change. As a woman, and one who befriended many women in Kadiolo, I have deep feelings against this cultural practice and a strong opposing viewpoint. As an individual greatly interested in learning about and understanding different cultures around the world, I also do my best to appreciate that it is their cultural reality that makes this practice ‘acceptable’ to a great part of West African society, including a strong percentage of its female population.

In Moolaadé, it is ultimately exposure to modern technology and modern medicine that leads some village woman to begin to realize the many reasons why excision is hazardous, cruel, and detremental to their lives and their health, as well as that of their offspring. Progress itself can often be a controversial topic, as its presence often annihilates the beauty and uniqueness of individual cultures throughout the world, however, where improved health and well-being is at stake, I believe most people do agree that introducing such progress is a positive element.

Inevitably, this film does ‘educate’ its audience on some level, on the various aspects of West African life and culture. Society in this region, like all societies throughout the world, is multi-faceted, and Moolaadé can only show its viewers one perspective–that of its creator.

In regards to quality film-making, actor performances, and realistic representation, I found Moolaadé to be an exceptional film production. I am grateful to have found it, and plan to purchase my own copy immediately. Thanks to Ousmane Sembène and his vision, I now have a visual aide to go with my verbal description of what my year in Mali was like.

I ni ce.

The cut genitalia of growing girls is no pleasant matter but in my mind, what could have been a great movie had been ruin for the director own gratifications (at being the educator). Who failed whom: Is it the director? Or the audience? For its audience, every dialogue, every character, every troupe was a fact of the lives of Africans. As Africans, we see the artistic exagerations. Perhaps. However, to see the movie as possible within a complex of other considerations, whether of aesthetics or of meaning, is considered simply irrelevant to the evidential fact of a continent teeming with horrors of botched genital mutilations. Does this mean Molaadé achieved Sembené’s aims, which after all was to educate? The introducing moderator Dr. ____’s plea that the matter be within context because that was what the director wanted as she explained, made little difference. It was interesting and to hear an African woman raised her hand to ask a question, her West-African accented voice shamed and anxious to separate Islam from Sembené’s indictments. It was sad that the reasons behind the word ‘purification’, Islam and local customs were not better understood. The education here certainly failed.

Oh, our selfserving denouncement. Clearly, the self-serving distortions supported by archaic primitivism has mutated with glee it seems into perverted human rights concerns and the denouncement of the other that feeds its ‘great’ sense of self. Similarly, the pitisome contortions supported by an inert neocolonial desire to explain one’s self has graduated into a complex denouncement of pandering. No intercourse but violent assertions and denouncement. The worrisome love affair may never end. We may never truly touch each other, see ourselves in each other.