----------------------------Original message----------------------------
> I once suggested that Souleymane Cisse's BRIGHTNESS (YEELEN--better
> translated in its French title, "The Light") plays off influences by and
> allusions to African oral traditions and classical European mythology,
> the characterizations of both European art cinema and the patterns and
> traditions of tribal life.  One scene, depicting a ceremony in the tribal
> cult of the "Komo," seems puzzling and too long to Western eyes, but
> Cisse said it would have tremendous impact to a native Mali (Bambara)
> viewer, connecting them to the roots of songs and ceremonies passed down
> but repressed.  In other words, it points for the need for a prior knowledge
> that pure formalism cannot acknowledge--a contextual formalism can give
> access to some of these films, but we need to find the contexts first.
>
> When an American viewer who even lacks much of the context of the classical
> Western past encounters these works, there is little to anchor them.
>
> --Don Larsson, Mankato State U., MN
>
 
        You are pointing to the important problem of diegetic
intelligibility predicated upon extradiegetic knowledge.  But isn't
Bertolucci (not the Bertolucci of the "Asian" trilogy!) always assuming
historical-cultural knowledge about his films?  *Il Conformista,* just to
name one.  And Godard's *La Chinoise?*  Godard in general?  But we have
all gained the necessary expertise to access these films, havent' we?
Why can't it work for Sembene's films as well?
 
        Gloria Monti