Darkness Film Series: Touki Bouki

In Touki Bouki (1973), directed by Djibril Diop Mambéty, two young lovers long to leave Dakar, Senegal for the mythical glamour and comforts of France. Mambéty explores themes of hybridity and cultural alienation through conventions of French New-Wave cinema and his own experimental narrative strategies. Through dissonant techniques, he navigates a post-colonial reality. Where is home when colonialism is one’s inheritance? Mambéty presents the darkness and surrealism of that psychology in this critical and richly symbolic film. Djibril Diop Mambéty (Senegalese, 1945–1998) was an influential Senegalese filmmaker known for his non-linear and experimental films.

The Darkness Film Series presents three films as a meditation and exploration of darkness in film and cinema. Featuring the works of avant-garde directors from different latitudes, these films refract the idea of darkness through the lens of Japanese theater, political oppression, colonial psychology, and more. This series is organized by Justen Waterhouse.