LinkTV Cinemondo, Waiting for Happiness (2002)

LinkTV Cinemondo, Waiting for Happiness (2002)
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Titles known as:
Heremakono (2002)
En attendant le bonheur (France)
Waiting for Happiness (International: English title)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waiting_for_Happiness
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0308363/
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/10002025-waiting_for_happiness/
http://www.seattlefilm.org/festival/film/detail.aspx?id=21588&fid=32

Waiting for Happiness
Category: World Cinema: Cinemondo
Regions: Europe, Sub-Saharan Africa
Topics: Race / Ethnicity / Ethnic Conflict
Mauritania, 100 minutes

Dir: Abderrahmane Sissako (Life on Earth)

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Official Selection — New York, Toronto and Cannes Film Festivals
Winner — FIPRESCI PRIZE, Un Certain Regard, Cannes Film Festival

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Master filmmaker Abderrahmane Sissako unveils a new vision of Africa

with this luxuriously rhythmic, carefully observed film. Nouadhibou

is a small seaside village on the Mauritanian coast, and amongst its

white-washed buildings and melodic songs passed down through

generations, lives intertwine while waiting for a hypothetical

happiness.

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After a long absence, the seventeen-year-old Abdallah visits his

mother before emigrating to Europe. Unable to speak the local

language, the melancholic young man finds himself a stranger in his

own country. Traditional, colorful fabrics interest him much less

than the latest European trends, and though he shies away from

village customs and festivities, Abdallah watches this touching,

foreign universe unfold around him with sheer sensitivity.

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This film features an introduction with writer/director,

Abderrahmane Sissako, hosted by Peter Scarlet, and a 9-minuate post

show wrap up where Sissako discusses Waiting for Happiness and his

latest film, Bamako.

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The Court was selected for this year's New York Film Festival and

was screened at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival.

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“Waiting for Happiness is Mr. Sissako’s nod to a small hamlet’s

ability — no, its need — to greet encroaching advancement with a

shrug…We can only guess that Mr. Sissako is also using the movie as

a way of dealing with the possibility that he’s being hailed as

Africa’s next big thing. It’s a momentous responsibility to

shoulder, and like Abdallah, the director is still in the process of

establishing who he is.” — Elvis Mitchell, The New York Times

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To learn more, or to purchase this program, visit New Yorker Films. ;;

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About Cinemondo
This film is part of Link TV’s world cinema series Cinemondo,

premiering entertaining and award-winning foreign films from some of

the world’s most talented directors.

Director: Abderrahmane Sissako
Starring: Katra Ould Abder Kader, Matta Ould Mohamed Abeid, Nana

Diakité

Mauritania-born Director Abderrahmane has been hailed as African

cinema's next big thing. Whether that translates into wide

viewership is another story, considering his film opened in London

last week without the attention it deserved. Not that his

melancholy, poetic, ethereal Waiting for Happiness arrived in town

like a circus, Kill Bill-style. Instead it arrived in a big, cynical

city like London like the protagonist of the film: timid, displaced

and not speaking quite the same language.
In Waiting for Happiness, seventeen-year-old Abdallah visits his

native village before he sets off to Europe. This event serves as

the pretext for the film's exquisite visual tapestry and equally

entrancing soundtrack, although Sissako avoids dwelling on it too

much. Abdallah feels estranged from the place, not being able to

speak the local dialect, and spends his time observing the timeless

pace of the city through the frames of his mother's house in this

desert-like, windswept north-western part of Africa.

The story in the film resonates with the probable trajectory the

film will have on the commercial circuit, despite having won the

International Critics' Prize in Cannes 2002. Like a precious stone,

those who will love it will have to do a considerable amount of

digging just to find it.

It's difficult to recommend a film like this in the context of the

story itself. We have to take Abdallah's point of view and simply

observe the townsfolk's lives unravelling. We see a young girl being

coached to sing traditional Arab music; a local handy man (Maata)

trying to connect electricity to a house, with little success. He is

helped by Khatra, a boy of six or seven, who helps Maata on his

errands while infusing the film with a charm and humour that comes

from his dream of owning a blue overall (a dream that we eventually

see coming true).

We also meet Nana, a beautiful woman who is going through a

melancholy phase inb her life, signified by frequent flashbacks to a

romantic trip to Europe. Then there's a Chinese man who is fond of

karaoke, Abdallah's mother and a roster of other fleeting characters

which stock the film with faces while the ambiance, the mood and the

general pace of the film does the rest.

Redolent of Italian Neo-realism, Waiting for Happiness completely

goes against the grain of both contemporary mainstream and

independent cinema. Subtle and philosophical, it requires poetic

language to describe it. Like a lullaby wafting across the hazy

afternoon of the metaphysical landscape it contains and is contained

by, it takes the viewer to a universe that is timeless – perhaps the

only temporal signifiers are the tacky gadgets the Chinese men

sells, the old cars, the electricity. But it doesn't seem like the

director is concerned in showing a place that has resisted the

encroachment of globalisation, or any other political issues for

that matter – this is not a topical film. Rather it's a director's

poetic gaze at people he knows and a place with which he is

emotionally connected.

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