Sifinja The Iron Bride
A film by Valerie Haensch
Sudan/Germany, 2009, 70 Min.
A film about mobility, human creativity, and technology in a Sudanese truck community. The English Bedford-Lorry was introduced to Sudan in the late 1960ies. Since then, local craftsmen technically modify the truck into an ideal vehicle, adequate for traveling off-road and for performing customers’ expectations. The craftsmen and drivers call the lorry “Sifinja” because it is soft and comfortable like the plastic slippers it is named after. In different places in Sudan the carpenters and blacksmiths not only create a shiny iron bride, but they change the whole structure of the lorry through a highly unorthodox performance. Following closely the daily work, art and history of truck-modding on the Nile, a fascinating way of African creativity dealing with global commodities – the automobiles – is opened up. The documentary weaves the original sound of hammering and sawing, drilling and riveting, into a rhythmic, exhilarating audio-visual adventure.
“Sifinja is not merely one of the best ethnographic films I have ever seen. It is one of the best cinematic treatments anywhere of the genius of cultural creativity, of everyday craft, and of the poetic life of objects – all brilliantly evident in the Bedford-Lorries that link communities and enterprise across the Sudan, like comely iron brides. The product of rare anthropological insight and consummate movie-making, Sifinja provides profound comment on the ways in which African imagination and skill refashion global commodities and all they embody, giving them unintended range, beauty, longevity.”
Jean Comaroff
Upcoming presentations:
2010
XIX International Festival of Ethnological Film, Ethnographic Museum in Belgrade, Serbia
AAA/SVA Film, Video and Multimedia Festival, New Orleans, USA
