Le Franc
The Metrograph Pictures Library
•
45m
Directed by Djibril Diop Mambéty | 45 mins | 1994
Djibril Diop Mambéty, a towering figure in world cinema, is best known for his two features, Touki Bouki (1973) and Hyenas (1992, re-released in a new restoration by Metrograph Pictures in 2019). Yet these two extraordinary films tell only part of the story of the director’s enormous accomplishments in his too-brief life. Two of the masterpieces of the medium-length form (commonly referred to as a featurette or moyen métrage) that Mambéty completed in his final years provide us a fuller picture of the elements that define his small, but perfect, filmography—a rich social vision, sly humor, and formal ingenuity. Mambéty initially meant for these films to lead off a trilogy to be titled “Tales of Ordinary People,” but sadly lived only to complete Le Franc and The Little Girl Who Sold The Sun. It is with great pleasure that we present two major works by one of contemporary cinema’s greatest filmmakers. Metrograph Pictures releases.
Both films were restored in 2K by Waka Films in 2019 with the support of the Institut français – Cinémathèque Afrique and the CNC at Éclair Laboratories from the original negative.
Up Next in The Metrograph Pictures Library
-
Hyenas
Directed by Djibril Diop Mambéty | 110 mins | 1992
One of the treasures of contemporary cinema, Senegalese master Mambéty made his long-delayed follow-up to his canonical Touki Bouki with this hallucinatory comic adaptation of Swiss avant-garde writer Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s play The ... -
The Prairie Trilogy
Directed by John Hanson and Rob Nilsson | 90 mins | 1978
John Hanson and Rob Nilsson, co-directors of Cannes Camera d’Or winner Northern Lights and fellow members of San Francisco’s Cine Manifest film collective, collaborated on this remarkable series of documentaries underwritten by the North Da... -
The Raft
Directed by Marcus Lindeen | 97 mins | 2018
In the summer of 1973, a young international crew of six women and five men embarked together on a most unusual sea voyage—a close-quarters trip across the Atlantic from Spain to Mexico on a free-floating raft christened the Acali, initiated by Mexican ...
