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Soleil O

Director in Person
Screening on Film
Directed by Med Hondo.
With Robert Liensol, Theo Legitimus, Yane Barry.
Mauritania, 1970, 35mm, color, 105 min.

In an unnamed French colony in West Africa, black men line up before a white priest for baptism and renaming—the first step in a process that simultaneously deracinates and subjugates them. In France, colonial blacks, encouraged by propaganda, arrive to seek a better life. What they find is unemployment or a handful of "dirty" jobs, unacceptable living conditions, naked racism, and bureaucratic indifference. Searching for a new form, Med Hondo has eschewed all conventional narrative. From the stylized and surreal opening sequences to the episodic adventures of a particular man, the director presents a series of imaginative set pieces, linked by voiceover narrative, that investigate and dramatize a complex of interrelated themes. A scathing attack on colonialism, the film is also a shocking exposé of racism and a brutal and ironic indictment of Western capitalist values.

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