Niger: Magic and Ecstasy in the Sahel (2005) [NR]

Release Date:
January 1, 2005

Original Title:
Niger: Magic and Ecstasy in the Sahel

Genres:
Documentary | Music

Production Companies:
Sublime Frequencies

Production Countries:
Niger

Ratings / Certifications:
US: NR 

Runtime: 68

A celebration of life in the Sahel region of Africa, this film showcases many of Niger’s venerable music styles. Tuareg Electric Guitar trance rock, Bori cult dance ceremonies, Fulani Folk, and Roadhouse Gospel Rave-ups are some of the segments included in this latest "Folk Cinema" classic from Sublime Frequencies! Filmed in December of 2004 on location in Niger, Hisham Mayet delivers a spontaneous, raw, and inspiring collection of images, music, and ceremony (again with a single camera presentation) from a nation mired in poverty and continual post-colonial disappointment. Quoting from Mayet’s liner notes: "This is not music as commodity, this is music as survival. There is a saying in Niger that goes, "when we die we know we are going to heaven because we already live in Hell" well I think its more like the purgatory that we all live in and they sure have managed to transcend with an incredible natural resource: Music. Dig it!"

Additional information:

The Search Form


Video

Click each video panel to show or hide.

Although TheMovieDB might provide a key to a YouTube video, there is no guarantee that the video might be present at YouTube.

Camera Operator:
Hisham Mayet

Director:
Hisham Mayet

Editor:
Hisham Mayet

About the Movie Section

Most data and links to images for the Movies section come from TheMovieDB (TMDB).

Additional data for Film Titles come from The Open Movie Database (OMDb).

At least one plug-in comes from IMDb.

Data are -- hey, it's a plural -- subject to the limitations of their sources. (For example, TMDB search results currently max out at 20.) I am limiting myself to free data sources for now. (No, a "free trial" is not free.)

While much of the above data are retrieved directly from outside APIs and other such sources, data from American Film Institute (AFI) and British Film Institute (BFI) were manually entered the old fashioned way into a MySQL database. Re BFI I took the following liberties:

  • I added "runners up" to Top 10 lists, treating them as ties where applicable and numbering them accordingly at the bottom of each list.
  • Regarding those polls wherein "franchise" movies were submitted as one project until BFI's policy changed to regard them separately, I treated them as ties and renumbered the affected lists accordingly (e.g. the Godfather films).

Regarding profile removals and data corrections:

  • If you would like your profile removed from this site, please contact the source of this data directly, TheMovieDB. My assumption is: once it's gone from their site, it should soon be gone from this site.
  • If you would like to correct movie data on this site, please contact the source of this data directly, TheMovieDB. My assumption is: once it's corrected on their site, it should soon be corrected on this site.
  • For additional corrections and profile removals, please e-mail The Open Movie Database (OMDb).

Filtering is applied here to film projects flagged as "adult" by TheMovieDB. Pending "popular demand" I am contemplating a login and profile system with preferences (such as whether to allow adult images to appear) and permissions (such as data entry).

Whereas the overall purpose of this website is to serve as a personal demo/portfolio/workshop of web and data skills, this Movies section is not meant to compete with or substitute for far more definitive movie websites.

Whether or not he still clings to an award which he won in 1986 as a film critic for his college's newspaper, Jeffrey Hartmann is not responsible for the texts of overviews and biographies supplied by external data sources.