Le Franc aka The Franc

Djibril Diop Mambéty, Switzerland/France, 1994, 45 minutes, 35mm

Djibril Diop Mambety has produced two of the most celebrated films of African cinema, Hyenas and Touki Bouki. In Le franc, he begins a trilogy of shorts, Tales of Little People, whom he describes as, the only truly consistent, unaffected people in the world, for whom every morning brings the same question: how to preserve what is essential to themselves.

Mambety uses the French government's 50% devaluation of the West African Franc (CFA) in 1994 as the basis for a whimsical yet trenchant parable of life in today's Africa. Marigo, a penniless musician living in a shanty town, buys a lottery ticket from the dwarf Kus, the god of fortune. When he wins, Marigo begins a harrowing odyssey across a Dakar of trash heaps, dilapidated buildings and chaotic traffic. Played with slapstick gusto by the gangly, rubber-legged Dieye Ma Dieye, Marigo is both comic and poignant, a Senegalese Charlie Chaplin. We, the viewers, are left to decide if he is a symbol of hope or its ultimate futility. - California Newsreel

Lissa Balera plays Sili Laam, a little girl with a leg brace and crutches who begs while her blind mother sings in the street. After being knocked over by a band of wild newsboys, she signs up to sell the 'Le Soleil' because 'what boys do, girls can do, too.' Though she's tiny and her limbs are wasted, She's as tough as nails, uncowed by the newsboy's protecting their turf, and even bossing corrupt cops around - Sam Hurwitt, Austin Chronicle

This was to be the second film of Mamberty's trilogy but is, sadly, his last. The director died in Paris in 1998. Mambety describes film as a hymn to the courage of street children. He treats his subject without a trace of sentimentality, but with the utmost empathy, admiration and, most of all, respect for those who may be downtrodden, but never helpless. With an eye for striking settings - like the almost surreal landscape of empty refrigerators outside an appliance vendor's - and complex color arrangements, Mambety finds beauty and a certain aesthetic order amid the grinding poverty and riotous sounds and colors of his native city. Ken Fox, TV Guide