Films at the Whitney: Work/Place

DCP | 1978 | Directed by Souleymane Cissé | Mali | 93 minutes | Bambara with English subtitles

Free admission. No registration required. 

The great Malian filmmaker Souleymane Cissé (1940–2025) casts his wry eye on the conduits of work and power in the urban fabric of Bamako. Following a porter’s journey into factory work and a factory manager’s unravelling under the pressures of worker organization and corrupt regulation, BAARA (WORK) is a well-calibrated machine, pulling its network of husbands, wives, managers, bureaucrats, and workers of all kinds into uneasy intimacies—and towards an acerbic, explosive ending. The New Yorker film critic Richard Brody writes that BAARA, “though from 1978, is far ahead of most political movies made today in its critical view of patriarchal abuses of power” (read the full review).

This screening will also feature a short film: 

SEA COUNTRYMEN (4K restoration, 1955, directed by Vittorio De Seta, Italy, 11 minutes)

Work/Place traces the cinematic relationship between labor and its environments, from salt mines and city streets to harbors and factories. With features and shorts from thirteen countries, including France, China, Mali, the United States, and Mexico, this five-night series depicts what the place of work has been—and could be—in the lives of people around the globe.  

Series curated by Annie Berman and Nathaniel LaCelle-Peterson