"Black Goddess" is a love story that spans two centuries.
In 18th century Yorubaland in Nigeria, Prince Oluyole is taken prisoner in the course of internecine warfare fanned by overseas slave traders. He is sold into slavery in Brazil.
Flash forward to the 1970's in Lagos, capital of Nigeria : A dying man bequeaths a sacred carving of Yemoja to his son Babatunde, to whom he entrusts the task of travelling to Brazil to retrieve the duplicate of the carving. The carving that Babatunde is to seek out is supposedly held in trust by members of a branch of their family who remained behind in Brazil when Babatunde's forefathers returned to Nigeria after slavery was abolished in Brazil at the end of the nineteenth century.
In Brazil, Babatunde meets unexpected assistance in his quest from a young female devotee of the cult of Yemoja, who falls into a trance in his presence during a religious ceremony in one of modern Brazil's African religious temples known as candomblé.
At Yemoja's prompting, the young woman undertakes to guide Babatunde to a deserted village in a remote part of Brazil, where they encounter the same mysterious woman to whom Prince Oluyole owed his survival two centuries earlier.
As the interaction between Yemoja, Babatunde and his guide deepens, the adventure evolves into a fresh blossoming of the tragic love affair between Prince Oluyole and Amanda which was cut short by her premature death two centuries earlier…
At his father's deathbed, the young Nigerian Babatunde promises to go to Brazil and search for traces of their once-enslaved ancestors. Beginning with a Candomblé ritual, his journey takes him ever deeper into an alien culture and, in a dream-like sequence, affords him a deeper understanding of his ancestors' suffering and powers of resistance. Balogun effortlessly links present with past, real with magical worlds and discourse with trance. The hypnotic atmosphere is also heightened by the music of the Nigerian drummer Remi Kabaka, which plays with repetitive patterns and distortions. The film is shown in a copy with Japanese side-titles (!) and English subtitles.
A film by Ola BALOGUN
Nigeria / Brazil - 1978, Fiction, 2hr30 [1hr36], History / Drama, OV Portuguese with English Subs, 35 mm, color
starring Jorge Coutinho, Sonia Santos, Zozimo Bulbul, Léa Garcia, Roberto Pirillo, Milton Villar, Antonio Pitanga
7 files
2 files
Add your information (With the self-presentation files)
Convention with Wikiafrica / Wikipedia : Southplanet's contents are shared for free according to the licence Creative commons 
.
© Some artistic content (photos, videos, sound recordings, written texts) is subject to copyright. Copyright is mentioned when and where it applies. Copyrighted material cannot be reproduced.
