A PRIMITIVE POWER

REVIEWED - MOOLAADÉ: Born on New Year's Day, 1923, Ousmane Sembene, the Senegalese father of post-colonial African cinema, came relatively late to movies, writes Michael Dwyer

A war veteran who joined the French forces, and an active trade unionist, he worked at the Citroën factory in Paris and on the docks at Marseilles before writing a series of acclaimed novels and studying film in Moscow, finally directing his first feature in 1966 - the sharp colonial satire, La Noire de . . . /Black Girl.

Although some of his earlier films were shown on the Irish film society circuit in the 1970s, most of Sembene's output remains unseen here. For audiences unfamiliar with his remarkable body of work, the closest reference point would be Ken Loach - both directors are polemicists who make their political points directly but accessibly through skilfully structured narratives that arrest the attention and with a classical, unshowy cinematic style.

At 82, Sembene has lost none of his edge and flair, as he demonstrates in Moolaadé, a disturbing but wholly responsible and riveting drama in which he unflinchingly tackles the issue of female genital mutilation, which is still practised in 38 west African countries. The movie's remote Burkina Faso village setting suggests some primitive past era until the sight of radios and television indicate that this is indeed the present and that the dangerous practice is still widespread.

Fatoumata Coulibably strikes a formidable presence as Collé, the second of a tribesman's three wives, who bravely dares to oppose the system and gives refuge to four prepubescent girls designated for cutting. Collé exploits the deeply superstitious nature of this patriarchal society by taking the girls into her home and stringing a rope as a moolaadé (protection) across her premises.

Neither the village women who perform the ritual nor the male elders dare cross the line for fear of being cursed. The forces of authoritarianism seek out alternative solutions, restricting the women's access to the outside world, and subjecting one of them to a vicious public beating while the elders loudly exhort the punisher to hit her harder and tame her.

Moolaadé is a tough, uncompromising drama that is cringe-inducingly creepy at times, yet fascinating in its detailed depiction of daily life in a present-day west African village as the influences of the outside world encroach upon and threaten its primitive, fundamentalist ethos. This is humanist cinema at its most compelling and dramatically powerful.