Global Film Festival: Touki Bouki

With a stunning mix of the surreal and the naturalistic, director Djibril Diop Mambéty paints a vivid, fractured portrait of Senegal in the early 1970s. 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. Characterized by dazzling imagery and music, the alternately manic and meditative Touki Bouki is widely considered a classic of African cinema. Curated by first-year students, the Global Film Festival features four films exploring ideas in Spencer Museum exhibitions. Touki Bouki (1973, Senegal) is presented in conjunction with the exhibition Power Clashing: Clothing, Collage, and Contemporary Identities. Samantha Lyons, curator of Power Clashing, and Emily Riley, assistant director of the Kansas African Studies Center, KU lead a post-screening discussion.