Скачать или смотреть Idrissou Mora Kpai Shocked by his family's history in Si-Gueriki, La Reine Mère

Si-Gueriki is a documentary where the subject matter seems to discover the filmmaker in contrast to the filmmaker choosing the subject matter. The film was intended as a tribute to his late father, a wasangeri or member of the royal family of the Borgu people of northern Benin, by his son returning after a ten year residence in Europe. In the course of his investigations, Mora Kpai discovers the lives of his mother and sisters which had previously been invisible to him and decides to make a film about them instead. A tension runs through the film between the modern ideas the filmmaker has imbibed in the West and his pride in being the descendant of a wasangeri.

Mora Kpai’s ignorance of women’s lives results from Borgu child-rearing practices. Boys are removed from their mothers at an early age and spend all their time with the men of the tribe. At the same time (around 5 years old) young girls are given away by their birth-mothers to be brought up by a female relative; this is to train them to be subservient members in their husband’s family. Mora Kpai speculates that separation and stoicism is such a pervasive factor in Borgu life because it makes mortality, less painful. But its toll on the living is palpable in the awkwardness and reticence of the mother’s conversations with her son. Indeed the only emotional warmth glimpsed in the film surprisingly is between his mother and her late husband’s fourth co-wife. They reflect humorously on how they discouraged their husband when he became overly uxorious and say they will love each other until death parts them.

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