Discover the work of award-winning director Idrissa Ouédraogo (1954-2018), whose distinctive films explored the tensions between traditional and modern life in rural Burkina Faso.

Idrissa Ouedraogo in 2008. Credit: Bertrand Guay/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Ouédraogo was the leading filmmaker to emerge from Burkina Faso in the late 1970s, creating works that gave particular attention to rural workers, and synthesised tensions between the “traditional” and the “modern”. A prolific national filmmaker, he studied cinema in Ouagadougou, Kyiv, and Paris. His oeuvre centred on Sahelian rural life and the blurring boundaries between the mythical and the historical giving rise to a distinct character of Burkinabé cinema.

These films forge a subdued yet highly charged political sensibility in their interrogation of systems of subjugation, honouring their characters’ worldviews, values, and spirit of resistance, beyond the confines of their material conditions. Ouédraogo belongs to a canon of African cinema that strives to subvert the legacy of colonialism and its negative representations of Africans.

Events:

Tilaï + Les parias du cinéma + Introduction by Awa Konaté

Thursday 15th September 2022, 6:20pm, Barbican Cinema 2

Forbidden love shakes a rural community in Idrissa Ouédraogo’s searing drama, considered by many critics to be the director’s masterpiece. Book HERE

*****

Yaaba

Saturday 17th September 2022, 6:30pm, Barbican Cinema 2

Two young children befriend a woman accused of witchcraft in Idrissa Ouédraogo’s touching parable with a great central performance from young Noufou Ouédraogo. Book HERE

*****

Samba Traoré + ScreenTalk

Thursday 29th September 2022, 6:15pm, Barbican Cinema 2

A man commits a robbery and returns to his village to start a new life but finds he cannot escape his past in Idrissa Ouédraogo’s thrilling debut. Book HERE

This programme is curated by Awa Konaté/Culture Art Society (CAS) in partnership with Barbican Cinema.

Header Image: A scene from Mr. Ouedraogo’s film “Kini & Adams,” a story of two friends in Zimbabwe. It was shown at the Cannes International Film Festival in 1997. Credit: Associated Press