Saved events

Ballade aux sources + Life on Earth (12A*) + Introduction

Screening the Sahara

,Cinema 3
Two old men sit in a long boat on a river with a bicycle and a black umbrella.

Semi-autobiographical films from the Sahara’s foremost filmmakers explore the return of the exiled and the multiplicity of identity and landscape in the region.

The event showcases works by Med Hondo and Abderahmane Sissako that explore the identities and landscapes of the Sahara.

Taking the lead both behind and in front of the screen, these early films by two masters of cinema bring us on a voyage tracing their own personal trajectories of migration and exile, and the wider shared geo-history of the region and its diaspora.

In Life on Earth, a young emigré returns from France to a Malian oasis to bring in the millennium with family. Ballade aux sources, newly restored and played with its original orchestral soundtrack for the first time in the UK, sees filmmaker Med Hondo embark on a ‘mission transaharienne’, leaving vertiginous neon Paris for an overland descent from North to West Africa.

Tagged with: Cinema Screening the Sahara

Ballade aux sources, Med Hondo, 1965, 25 mins U, no dialogue

Life on Earth, Abderahmane Sissako, 1998, 60 mins PG, in French and Bambara with English subtitles

Programme

In La vie sur terre, a young emigré returns from France to a Malian oasis to bring in the millennium with family. Aimé Césaire’s Discourse on Colonialism plays, as the villagers navigate a web of crossed wires spanning remittances, epistolary exchanges and missed calls between rivers and continents. A smitten Sissako cycles through jutting mud labyrinths and cruises the Niger, musing on questions of humanitarianism and modernisation that would come to define his later films.

Ballade aux sources, played with its original orchestral soundtrack for the first time in the UK, sees filmmaker Med Hondo embark on a ‘mission transahareinne’, leaving vertiginous neon Paris for an overland descent from North to West Africa. Revealing the gradation and interconnectedness of a continent and communities falsely split in two, the Sahara acts as a bridge rather than a division, along which Hondo partakes in local rituals and roams between imposing ancient monuments.

Cinema 3

Location
Barbican Cinema 2 & 3 are located on Beech Street, a short walk from the Barbican’s Silk Street entrance. From Silk Street, you’ll see a zebra crossing that will take you across the road to the venue. 

Address
Beech Street
London
EC2Y 8DS

Public transport
The Barbican is widely accessible by bus, tube, train and by foot or bicycle. Plan your journey and find more route information in ‘Your Visit’ or book your car parking space in advance.