Moolaadé (2004)

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General		Extras
Category	Drama	Menu Audio Theatrical Trailer Trailer-Yesterday, Amandla!, Darwin's Nightmare, Dogora Trailer-Look Both Ways, Kenny
Rating
Year Of Production	2004
Running Time	119:31
RSDL / Flipper	Dual Layered	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Ousmane Sembene
Studio Distributor	Madman Entertainment	Starring	Fatoumata Coulibaly Maimouna Hélène Diarra Salimata Traoré Dominique Zeïda Mah Compaoré Aminata Dao Rasmane Ouedraogo Ousmane Konaté Bakaramoto Sanogo Modibo Sangaré Joseph Traoré Théophile Sowié Balla Habib Dembélé
Case	Amaray-Transparent-Secure Clip
RPI	$29.95	Music	Boncana Naiga

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	French Dolby Digital 2.0 (224Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.78:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	1.66:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English	Smoking	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

In a village in Burkina Faso, a strong-willed woman named Colle hides several young girls from the cultural ritual of "purification", the brutal often life threatening act of female circumcision. Calling upon the time-honoured custom of moolaadé (magical protection), she and the other women in the village come together to rebel against the misogynistic attitudes towards them, using the cultural traditions to fight masculine domination, finding strength in knowledge as well as unlikely allies. As the men running the town attempt to overcome the women, their power goes beyond the "moolaadé", confronting the values that bind them.

Shot authentically and powerfully, Moolaadé moved audiences at the Cannes Film Festival and manages to bear the weight of the heavy subject matter without being exploitative or excruciating to watch - instead, the film is a celebration of life, and overcoming adversity and outdated, dangerous ideology. It is a beautiful film that will continue to resonate, and is a worthy swan song for Ousmane Sembene.

Video

   The video features a black border and is generally very rough, featuring pixelation and low level noise. It's an average transfer, in which there are few artefacts but occasional other issues, including some telecine wobble, some odd issues with flickering, and a look of softness that covers the entire film, with few scenes that are very sharp. This isn't uncommon for low budget features, but a lot of the blame here is clearly due to a mediocre job converting the film to digital.

   Contrasting to these issues, the colours flourish brightly and the look of the film is great - it's as close to this kind of culture as a lot of us are going to get, and the video does a good job of putting us in that place, despite some of the drawbacks.

   There is one English subtitle track, which is turned on by default, and it is unfortunately the major drawback for this DVD. The subtitles are horrible, full of spelling errors, mistranslations, long parts of dialogue not translated, and important words untranslated making their meanings completely unknown. It is the worst subtitle track I have ever come across, actively detracting from the film and making the experience less enjoyable and even understandable. Although it avoids the most common problem with subtitles - being invisible using only a single colour for text (this track uses the black-bordered-yellow text favoured by the SBS subtitling department) - the problems with this track leave me unable to recommend the DVD, and for a film this good, that is a horrible shame.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

   The soundtrack is adequate and utilizes both channels for surround rather than being a simple mono track split across two channels. There is plenty of immersion in the sounds of Burkina Faso, both in and out of the village, and the dialogue is all audible and well balanced with the effects and music.

   Although a 5.1 track would have been nicer, the Dolby Digital 2.0 works with the soundtrack to create a nice sense of atmosphere.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Animated Menus with Sound

Original Theatrical Trailer (1:31)

Madman Propoganda - Anti-Piracy PSA (0:31), Yesterday (2:17), Amandla! (1:49), Darwin's Nightmare (1:59), Dogora (1:50), Look Both Ways (0:38), Kenny (1:53)

• Interview with Ousmane Sembene (25:20 / 16x9)

• Making of 'Moolaadé' (24:46 / 4:3)

• Ousmane Sembene Filmography

I am unable to find any complaints with the subtitles from this version, meaning that the R4 should be immediately skipped by anyone who wants to see this film properly (and everyone should).

   The video and audio are both adequate, but the awful subtitle track makes watching the film very hard, actively destroying the experience.

   There are few extras.

   Do not buy this DVD - buy elsewhere if you want to see this film, and, as mentioned, you should.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall