Educational Media Reviews Online

Filmmaker Sylvain L’Esperance takes us on a visual tour of the Niger River in Mali as it crosses a semi-arid vegetation zone below the Sahara known as Sahel. In his words “It is a vivid patchwork of canals, rivers, lakes, islands, seas, prairies and flood zones.” On the journey we meet a variety of people who are dependent on the river and the land. From a master boat maker teaching his children the art of constructing a dugout as he learned from his father; to the ferry driver who left the land to explore and find his mother; to the fishmonger who complains about the erosion of the land affecting the fish; to the herders who keep on moving their cattle; to the fishermen who continue to subsist on their catch. An interesting and scenic voyage with little narration but plenty of quiet observation it is perhaps a little too long. The subtitled translations of the interviews seem stilted given the level of literacy in the area. All of the people recognized their dependence on the river but seemed untouched and perfectly content to live by the land. It would be of interest to anyone studying the region.