Ars Gloria Ars

Another Wave: Global Queer Cinema

By ANITA GATES
Published: July 7, 2006 (New York Times)


Sori and Manga are young African men in love, which horrifies their parents, their school friends and the women who come to love them. You'd think their story, Mohamed Camara's "Dakan" (1997), made in Guinea, would be something like the West African "Brokeback Mountain." But, surprise, it's a gay "Splendor in the Grass." From the opening shot of a couple necking passionately in a parked car to the scene in which Sori playfully forces Manga to get down on his knees and declare his love, to the couple's final meeting, when Sori has a wife and baby, the movie is part homage to, part imitation of, "Splendor," the 1961 movie that introduced teenage sexual frustration to baby boomers. Natalie Wood's character, Deanie, was packed off to the mental hospital in Wichita, Kan.; Sori is sent away for years to a healer who tries to "purify" him into heterosexuality. Even the dialogue sounds an awful lot like William Inge's screenplay translated into French. "Dakan," which has its American premiere tonight at the Museum of Modern Art's "Another Wave: Global Queer Cinema" survey, is not exactly a masterpiece of subtlety, but as one of the first sub-Saharan films to deal with homosexuality at all, it is significant. The series includes feature films and shorts from more than two dozen countries, including Taiwan, Thailand, Singapore, New Zealand, India, Israel and Ivory Coast. One of the best-known entries is François Ozon's "Water Drops on Burning Rocks" (2000), about a businessman in love during the 1970's. The oldest are Ulrike Ottinger's "Johanna d'Arc of Mongolia," a 1989 German film that has been described as a lesbian "Lawrence of Arabia," and, from the same year, Jim Hubbard's short "Elegy in the Streets."

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