Moolaadé, a film on traditional Senegalese rite, to be screened

Moolaadé, a film by Senegalese artist Ousmane Sembene, will be shown on the Skidmore campus Tuesday, April 24. Free and open to the public, the screening gets under way at 8 p.m. in Gannett Auditorium.

Set in a small African Village, the film tells the story of four young girls who face a ritual "purification." They flee to the house of Colle Ardo Gallo Sy, a woman who saved her own daughter from mutilation. Colle "invokes the time-honored custom of moolaadé, or "sanctuary" to protect the runaways." The mounting tensions between Colle and the village traditionalists endanger the prospective marriage of her daughter to the heir-apparent to the tribal throne.

The College's Department of Art and Art History, Women's Studies Program, and Office of the Dean of the Faculty are co-sponsors of the screening.