Bamako (New Yorker DVD)

 

Picture: C+     Sound: C+     Extras: C+     Film: B-

 

 

In another key work bringing attention to how Africa and its labor are being ripped off by the supposedly globally beneficial “global economy” when it is about “emerging markets” ruing people’s lives and even killing them from lack of the basic necessities.  Abderrahmane Sissako’s Bamako (2006) offers a trial in a small village that puts the whole system on trial.  It sounds like it might not work at first, but instead, it becomes a direct record of how awful the lopsided situation is.

 

Though I thought the similarly themed Life + Debt (reviewed elsewhere on this site) spelled out how bad it is more directly, yet I thought this accomplished a personal look at the damage that the other work could not because it needed to go into the explicit direction it did.  Here, we see these persons as three-dimensional in a direct way that needs at least feature length to begin to convey.  If things stay this bad, this will serve as an early record of the latest round of keeping things bad in Africa.  After all, what use is that AIDS funding if they are starving to death?

 

The anamorphically enhanced 1.85 X 1 image is soft, but does retain enough of its color to somewhat make up for that.  The Dolby Digital 5.1 mix is trying to have a soundfield, but some of the dialogue and other sounds can be a problem.  The Dolby 2.0 Stereo is more natural sounding as a result.  Extras include a nice booklet inside the DVD case with a glossary along with more on the film, while the DVD adds interviews with three of the participants, Danny Glover and Harry Belafonte about the real life situation. Plus a trailer for this and four other New Yorker releases.  That includes Life + Debt, which you can read about at this link:

 

http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/137/Life+++Debt+(Documentary)

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo