Film: "An Opera of the World"
This moving hybrid film illustrates how opera may be ideally suited to tell stories related to the refugee crisis. Discussion follows with director Manthia Diawara.
Discussion follows with director Manthia Diawara
What happens when artistic cultures migrate and meet? How do migrants navigate between tradition and assimilation?
The centerpiece of Manthia Diawara’s moving hybrid film is a staging of Wasis Diop’s Bintou Were, a Sahel Opera, filmed on location in 2007 in Bamako, Mali, and chronicling a young mother’s desperate attempts to secure a better future.
Diawara’s film serves as a mirror, building an aesthetic and reflexive story through song and dance about the current yet timeless drama of migration between North and South, and the ongoing refugee crises. The success and limits of fusing African and European perspectives are tested by interlacing performances from the Bintou Were opera, past and present archival footage of migrations, classic European arias, and interviews with European and African intellectuals, artists and social activists.
D: Manthia Diawara, Mali/USA, subtitled, 2017, Runtime: 1h10m