Finzan
Finzan / A Dance for Heroes is a 1989 Malian film, the second feature film directed by Cheick Oumar Sissoko.[1] The Malian film critic Manthia Diawara welcomed the film, which deals with arranged marriage and female genital mutilation, as "an impassioned cry for the emancipation of African women [...] one of the boldest examples of socially engaged filmmaking to come out of Africa in recent years".[2]
| Finzan | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Cheick Oumar Sissoko |
| Written by | Cheick Oumar Sissoko |
| Cinematography | Mamadou Famakan Coulibaly, Cheick Hamala Keïta, Mohamed Lamine Toure |
| Edited by | Ouoba Montandi |
Running time | 107 minutes |
| Country | Mali |
| Language | Bambara with English subtitles |
The film opens with a shot of a mother goat nursing her kids, before cutting to a page of statistics from the World Conference on Women, 1980:
A world profile on the condition of women reveals the striking effects of double oppression. Women are 50 percent of the world's population, do about two-thirds of its work, receive barely 10 percent of its income and own less than 1 percent of its property.[3]
The main character in Finzan is a widow, Nanyuma, expected by tradition to marry her brother-in-law, Bala. To avoid doing do, she escapes to the city, but is eventually captured, tied up, and sent back. Though forced to undergo the marriage ceremony, she refuses to consummate it, and eventually leaves the village to make her own future. In a subplot, a well-educated young women, Fili, questions female genital mutilation. In one of the film's final scenes, she Fili is captured by a group of women and forcibly excised.[3]
References
- Stephen Holden, Review/Film Festival; A Plea to Emancipate Africa's Women, The New York Times, March 22, 1992. Accessed October 11, 2020.
- 'Finzan: A Dance for the Heroes', California Newsreel Library of African Cinema 1995-95 Catalogue, pp.7-9
- Amy Beer; Christine List (1999). "Looking at African women: media representations of feminism, human rights, and development". In Valentine Udoh James; James S. Etim (eds.). The Feminization of Development Processes in Africa: Current and Future Perspectives. Greenwood Publishing Group. pp. 55–7. ISBN 978-0-275-95946-3.
- Laura DeLuca; Shadrack Kamenya (Fall 1995). "Representation of Female Circumcision in Finzan, a Dance for the Heroes". Research in African Literatures. 26 (3): 83–86.
- K. Martial Frindéthié (Spring 2002). "Allegorizing the Quest for Autonomy: Cheick Oumar Sissoko's Finzan and Amadou Seck's Saaraba". Dalhousie French Studies. 58: 173–184.
- Josef Gugler (2003). "Finzan (1990): Gender Conflict and Village Solidarity". African Film: Re-Imagining a Continent. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. pp. 160–167.