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 Periodical article |
 Leiden University catalogue |
 WorldCat |
| Title: | 'Provoking situations': Abderrahmane Sissako's documentary fiction |
| Author: | Levine, Alison J. Murray |
| Year: | 2011 |
| Periodical: | Journal of African Cinemas (ISSN 1754-923X) |
| Volume: | 3 |
| Issue: | 1 |
| Pages: | 93-107 |
| Language: | English |
| Geographic term: | Mauritania |
| Subjects: | cinema films |
| About person: | Abderrahmane Sissako (1961-) |
| Abstract: | Abderrahmane Sissako (Mauritania) employs both documentary and fictional narrative strategies in his films. This simple observation opens onto a broad consideration of Sissako's aesthetic vision and its poetic and political ramifications. The article argues that the hybrid narrative form is one element of a 'poetics of liminality', that plays out at many levels of Sissako's work. Liminal spaces and the thresholds that separate them permeate the work both formally and thematically. The result is a reflection on the limits and possibilities of cinema as an art form and on its ability to act as a mediator of messages and to do political work in the world. The article anlyses the multiple declensions of liminality in the three films that have received the broadest critical attention: 'La vie sur terre' (Life on earth, 1998), 'Heremakono' (Waiting for happiness, 2002), and 'Bamako' (2006). Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. [Journal abstract] |