Mami Wata

The movie is visually stunning, I’ve not seen a movie use black and white to this effect. While I can’t speak for the accuracy of this film, I appreciated its ability to take me into a culture fairly unknown to me. All that said, the video and sound quality wasn’t at the level I would expect from a film released in 2023. Overall the film is beautiful and a worthwhile purchase.

The photography throughout the scenes is amazing and the performances are very engaging and intense! This is a different kind of movie but one that I definitely enjoyed. The peerless VS restoration process was on full display with stellar sound and picture! Thank you, VS, for continuing to lovingly restore and release so many wonderful films from every conceivable genre! You are keeping physical media alive in this streaming world we now live in! Highly recommended!

Movie:

Stunning visuals, including a few really haunting images. The black & white cinematography just looks so great throughout the film. I'd call this a fairly "sparse" film, which works pretty well to capture the folktale feeling it seems to be going for.

The spell is broken somewhat by the presence of a motorbike that one character has; I felt a bit distracted wondering about where & how they get gas. Then later people are talking about wanting utilities (electricity, running water, etc. ), and I started to think about how you would need to go about connecting a village to those things, which further got me off the vibes of the movie.

Overall though this was very good. The characters & plot do more than enough to carry the story, and there were multiple unexpected turns that I appreciated.

This was an extremely unique film for me.

Extras:

Always nice to have the trailer. The making of featurette and scoring session were both fine. The deleted scenes were short but interesting, and "Defying Genre" gave some insight into the film.

Book:

Good statement by the director and an OK essay on Mami Wata the goddess.

Packaging:

So good! Bonus points for reversible cover.

Very interesting offering! Glad to have it.

I was intrigued by the gorgeous black and white photography in the trailer and wanted to give it a shot when I found it on sale. I'm very glad I did. Really interesting film. I'm so glad we're getting more African cinema representation from these llabels.