A Single Word
Daughter of Water: the Films of Khady Sylla
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1h 2m
Directed by Khady Sylla and Mariama Sylla | 63 mins | 2014
Begun by Sylla and completed by her sister, Mariama, after Khady’s death in 2013, "A Single Word" connects the essay film to the oral historical tradition of the griots—West African storytellers, musicians, and poets who act as repositories of family genealogies and events past and present in their communities. The Sylla sisters’ grandmother, Penda Diogo Sarr, bearing prodigious memory and a deep well of folk wisdom accumulated through the years, is at the center of "A Single Word," but it is as much a lyrical document of daily life in rural Senegal as it is the study of a single character, a contemplation of language as the storehouse of memory in which the filmmakers continue, through their own means, the invaluable archival efforts of their subject.
Up Next in Daughter of Water: the Films of Khady Sylla
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Colobane Express
Directed by Khady Sylla | 52 mins | 1999
Losing ground to more modern forms of transit today, the colorfully painted “car rapide” minibuses that criss-cross the crowded streets and avenues of Dakar at breakneck speed carrying passengers and merchandise have been icons of the city since first appe... -
An Open Window
Directed by Khady Sylla | 52 mins | 2005
After an unsatisfactory attempt to make a film about the numerous mentally ill people who filled the streets of Dakar back in 1994, Sylla, in her own words “fell ill and crossed to the other side, seeing what others don’t see.” Now “living the experience f...
