In collaboration with Cultural Services Of The French Embassy, the Museum of Moden Art (MoMA) is presenting the very first North American retrospective of Moustapha Alassane (1942–2015), a pioneer of populist cinema in newly independent Niger in the 1960s and 1970s. The retrospective will be held May 12-15.

A fabulist who sheathed the sharp sting of his political satire within playful stories of water genies, pugilistic frogs, cowboys, and brave fishermen, Alassane parodied colonialist attitudes toward black Africans, the corrupt despotism of local officials, and the shallow materialism of Niger’s youth in a series of animated, fictional, and ethnographic films that remain beloved and influential even today.

His earliest animated films were simple projections of cardboard cutouts, but his work quickly matured, leading to friendships and collaborations with Zalia Souley, the dean of Nigerien movie acting, and the French documentarian Jean Rouch and the Canadian animator Norman McLaren. Alassane’s films are vital and imaginative records of Nigerien traditions and rituals: his first feature, Aoure (1962), presents the married life of a young Zharma (ethnic Muslim) couple on the banks of the Niger River; his 1973 film Shaki documents the ascension of a Yoruban king and the syncretic intermingling of traditional customs and beliefs with those of Islam and Protestantism.

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