CINEMAtech concludes the Spring 2018 season with Life on Earth (1999), a brilliant meditation on place and belonging from Mauritanian director Abderrahmane Sissako.

"Hauntingly beautiful." Camera Lucida
"Sissako is a poet." Boston Globe
"The vanguard of African cinema." The Guardian
"One of modern world cinema’s most vital voices." British Film Institute

In the last days of 1999, after a few shots of a French supermarket, abundant in food and color, we hear Dramane compose a letter home to his father in Mali whom he then visits in the village of Sokolo. He meets the lovely Nana, and there are possibilities. People place long-distance calls from the post office. "Reaching people," says the postmaster, "is a matter of luck." Contrasts between Paris and Sokolo—between Mali and France and between Africa and Europe—are underscored by voice-over poems and comments by Aimé Césaire. A man dictates a letter to a brother in France: what is the nature of their hardships? People look for their place on this earth. [IMDB]

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