Watch at Home and then Meet - DEEP DIVE into African Film!

Friends, I'm trying something new for the group! We have had watch-at-home-and-meet events to watch one or even two movies, but for the month of May those who are willing will be taking a deep dive into the films of Africa. Over approximately five weeks we will watch eight selected films (four features and four shorts), and then meet on Tuesday June 4 (at Edgewater Public Market) to discuss!
NOTE: We will also meet on Tuesday, May 14th (same location and time) to check in after the first couple of weeks! Watch for a separate meetup for that.
All films are available for free on various platforms but if you have the Criterion Channel many are also available there with interesting extra goodies like commentaries or interviews. All eight come highly recommended and should be diverse, representative, entertaining, and thought provoking.
You don't have to watch them in order, but my hope is that those of us who are watching will encounter one another at other meetups over the month and can share thoughts as we go. I will also post in the comments from time to time if I encounter any interesting tidbits or reviews (and feel free to do the same!)
I don't want this to be too intimidating, so feel free to play along even if you don't intend to watch all eight. And if you get really into it and want EVEN MORE, see my research list where I narrowed a list of 20 films down to these final selections, and dig even deeper!
WIthout further ado, here is the list. It should amount to roughly 2 hours of viewing each week between now and our meetup on June 4 (five weeks).
WEEK ONE
ZOMBIES - a short film from 2019, musical and magical, as an amuse-bouche. View on YouTube (21 minutes) Democratic Republic of the Congo
TOUKI BOUKI - With a stunning mix of the surreal and the naturalistic, Djibril Diop Mambéty paints a vivid, fractured portrait of Senegal in the early 1970s. In this French New Wave-influenced fantasy-drama, two young lovers long to leave Dakar for the glamour and comforts of France, but their escape plan is beset by complications both concrete and mystical. Widely considered one of the most important African films ever made.
View on Max or here for free (skip to 12:20 for an intro) or on Criterion with lots of extras
1973 (91 minutes) Senegal
WEEK TWO
THIS IS NOT A BURIAL, IT'S A RESURRECTION - With a poet’s eye for place, light, and the spiritual dimensions of everyday existence, Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese crafts a meditation on the concept of homeland and a transcendent elegy for what is lost in the name of progress.
View on Kanopy or Criterion (with extras)
2019 (120 minutes) Lesotho
WEEK THREE
WHO KILLED CAPTAIN ALEX - Self-proclaimed as "Uganda's First Action Film!" this very homemade, very low-budget production was a huge viral smash. It does not appear to be available anywhere except this YouTube version with an MST3K-style commentary track. It's like two works of art for the price of one! Of our selections, this one is highest rated on Letterboxd, so...
2010 (68 minutes) Uganda
BLACK GIRL - Director Ousmane Sembène, who was also an acclaimed novelist in his native Senegal, transforms a deceptively simple plot—about a young Senegalese woman who moves to France to work for a wealthy white family and finds that life in their small apartment becomes a prison, both figuratively and literally—into a complexly layered critique of the lingering colonialist mind-set of a supposedly postcolonial world. One of the essential films of the 1960s.
Watch on Criterion, Max, Plex (w/ads), or $3 rental on Amazon
1966 (60 minutes) Senegal
WEEK FOUR
OH, SUN (Soleil Ô) - A furious howl of resistance against racist oppression, the debut from Mauritanian director Med Hondo is a bitterly funny, stylistically explosive attack on Western capitalism and the legacy of colonialism.
View on Criterion (with extras) or YouTube
1970 (103 min) Mauritania
PUMZI - An afrofuturist short about a world in ecological collapse.
Watch on YouTube.
2009 (21 min) S. Africa/Kenya
WEEK FIVE
NEPTUNE FROST - Codirected by Saul Williams and Anisia Uzeyman, this visually wondrous sci-fi punk musical takes place in the hilltops of Burundi, where a group of escaped coltan miners form an anticolonialist hacker collective.
Watch on Kanopy, Criterion, or $3 Amazon rental
2021 (110 min) Rwanda