Metrograph

Losing ground to more modern forms of transit today, the colorfully painted “car rapide” minibuses that criss-cross the crowded streets and avenues of Dakar at breakneck speed carrying passengers and merchandise have been icons of the city since first appearing in the 1970s. In Colobane Express, Sylla anchors viewers alongside a car rapide driver and his green apprentice, capturing the frenetic, danger-fraught workaday routine of these daring individuals, in the process observing the noise, energy, and hustle of life in Senegal’s largest city. Screens with The Silent Monologue, Sylla’s docudrama inquiry into the lives—inner and exterior—of Dakar’s female domestics, which employs scenes of improvised street theater, direct-address freestyle screeds, candid interviews, and inner monologue musings with the end of allowing its subjects, of whom quiet subservience is expected in their professional lives, to be seen and heard.

Introduction by Johanna Makabi on Saturday, June 14th