REDCAT: “There’s an insatiability to Alassane’s films.” — Hyperallergic
Moustapha Alassane (Niger, 1942–2015) studied in Jean Rouch’s IRSH Institute in Niamey, became the French documentarist’s friend and collaborator, and then went to Canada where he met Norman McLaren. Jump-started by screenings at New York’s MoMA, this first North American retrospective presents an alluring selection of his trailblazing work. Alassane was a griot who used various cinematic techniques to tell fables: reviving popular myths in both live action (La Bague du RoiKoda, 1962) and a mixture of stop-motion animation and oil paintings (Samba leGrand, 1977), satirizing the foibles of post-colonial Africa (Le Retour d’un aventurier, 1966), the mores of modern political leaders (the hand-drawn animated Bon VoyageSim, 1966), producing ironical, semi-ethnographic films and perfecting radical formal innovation (Kokoa, 2001).
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