Senegalese film informs

Cire was fed up with Colle, his second wife. So he took his brother-in-law’s advice and… Cire was fed up with Colle, his second wife. So he took his brother-in-law’s advice and decided to teach her a lesson, whipping her in front of the entire town so that she would submit. But Colle would not fall.

Mercenaire, the town merchant and former soldier, finally put a stop to the whipping — an act that would later cost him his life.

Watching this scene, the audience gasped with each blow and fell silent after the late rescue, awaiting the next emotional moment in the Senegalese movie “Moolaade.”

The Tuesday night showing of the film at the Regent Square Theater benefited the Pittsburgh Refugee Center, an organization that helps refugees adapt to living in the United States after life in refugee camps.

The PRC is currently helping groups of Somali refugees in the Pittsburgh area by providing translation services and support groups. PRC staff volunteer Kate Freed expects 180 Somali refugees to be settled in Pittsburgh by the end of April.

“They haven’t had a strong voice,” Freed said, adding that the movie worked as an aid to help people understand foreign cultures.

“So it’s just another way to talk about not just the Somalis, but refugees everywhere,” she said.

About 200 people attended the event, which included a discussion on Somali refugees in addition to the movie screening.

The movie reveals the complicated culture surrounding what the villagers of Djerisso call “purification,” or female circumcision. In the film, Colle Ardo takes in four young girls who fled the ritual and grants them moolaade — protection. The film also deals with a young man studying and working in Paris coming to terms with the culture he left behind.

“Moolaade” was directed by Ousmane Sembene, an 81-year-old Senegalese man who has traditionally made movies that focus on ordinary people. His last movie, “Faat Kine,” explores the lives of women living in Senegal’s capitol city of Dakar.

Pitt senior Catherine Acquah summed up her feelings about the movie in one word.

“‘Mortified’ would be the word,” Acquah said, “because it was disgusting to treat people like that.”

“Moolaade” also revealed the relationship between the men and women of the village, and the social taboo on men marrying women who are not circumcised, or “bilakoro.”

Pitt sophomore Erica Auker said that the film was “powerful,” and that Sembene didn’t try to sugarcoat anything about the practice, which she saw as degrading to women and inflexible.

“Where do you cross that boundary between someone’s culture and human rights?” Auker asked. “To say ‘no, that is wrong’?”

She added that she appreciated the few pieces of humor that Sembene included in the movie.

Freed was impressed with the turnout and proud of the people of Pittsburgh for coming to see the movie and expressing interest in the refugees and their culture. She hopes that people will welcome the refugees.

Eric Hartman, a doctoral candidate at Pitt, teaches a class on democratic citizenship and sees the message of the movie as “cultural change being a dynamic process.

“We rarely get a chance to bring people into the community and value them as we do others,” he added. “By valuing the refugee population it gives everyone a chance to be equally valued.”

Hartman said that it was hard to form a first impression of the film.

“I guess I have continuously more to learn,” he said.