Angano...Angano...

Angano... Angano... nouvelles de Madagascar

Needs review

A documentary in which traditional Malagasy storytellers recount tales of gods, animals, tricksters, and origins. César and Marie-Clémence Paes filmed these performances with extraordinary attentiveness, allowing the storytellers' physicality, timing, and relationship with their audiences to carry the full weight of a tradition that has always been embodied and communal. The tales — by turns comic, erotic, violent, and cosmological — form a window into a Malagasy oral imagination that cinema rarely reaches. Its title echoes the traditional opening of a Malagasy tale: angano, angano — once upon a time. Won awards at Cinéma du Réel, the Festival dei Popoli, and the Leipzig Documentary Film Festival.

Director

Marie-Clémence Andriamonta Paes

Places

Antananarivo

Themes

Memory & Forgetting, Spirituality & Tradition, Music & Cultural Expression

Historical context

1971–1988

A generation of Malagasy filmmakers emerges

The 1970s and 1980s brought a succession of works by Malagasy filmmakers, including Sari, Lalao Fahiny and Tranon-kala in 1971; Benoît Ramampy's L'Accident in 1972 and Dahalo, Dahalo in 1984; and Raymond Rajaonarivelo's Tabataba in 1988. L'Accident received a short-film prize at FESPACO, while Tabataba brought Malagasy cinema to Cannes. The period also included institutional change and a severe decline in cinema attendance.

Sources and provenance

IMDb tt0225070; Wikipedia; Laterit Productions. 63 min, 1989. Awards at Cinéma du Réel, Festival dei Popoli, Leipzig confirmed. Co-directed with César Paes (see filmmaker_films).

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