Jean-Michel Kibushi: Palabres Animées du Griot

This is a collection of animated shorts by Jean-Michel Kibushi Ndjate Wooto, a pioneer of African animation who is widely regarded as the premier Congolese animator. Based on a folktale, The Toad Visits His In-Laws (1991) follows the titular amphibian and a group of friends he meets along the way to his in-laws' village, where they fight over a spoon when the Toad's relatives serve a meal—killing one another in the process. The companion short The White Orange (1992) centers on Toad's grieving widow, who seeks to bring her husband and the others back to life with a ceremony that, according to a wise old shaman, requires a white orange. The third film, the black-and-white Kinshasa, Black September (1992), uses a children's drawing style to recount the 1991 rioting by unpaid soldiers in the capital against then-president Mobutu, while Muana Mboka (1999) looks at endemic corruption from the perspective of a young boy who is pressured by adults to hand over a reward that he received from a government minister whose car he helped free from a muddy road. While these four films employ traditional hand-drawn animation, the fifth and final film, Prince Loseno (2004), is a claymation tale about a childless king who takes a young new bride to sire an heir and later dies during the son's coronation. A fine introduction to a major voice in African animation, this is recommended. Aud: C, P. (F. Swietek)