Ganja and Hess  
Bill Gunn
Keep this one in your pocket, for emergencies. If you mention this film around anyone who has seen it, they will think you are really deep. That, I guarantee. A blaxploitation-era take on the Count Dracula story, this film does what Blacula could only dream of. It’s weird and avante guard and the only vampire film I’ve ever seen in which the blood of victims is sipped in crystal goblets and licked off the bathroom floor. See it if you can.

Hyenas 
Djbril Diop Mambety
For my money, this is one of the greatest African films ever made. The incredibly rich visually layered cautionary tale touches on both the greatest ambitions and the pettiest impulses of each of us. To say it is the story of a wronged woman, forced into prostitution, who returns to the scene of the crime to get her revenge, would be almost entirely missing the point. Djbril Diop Mambety, the film’s director, sadly died a few years ago, a relatively young man. When he left us, he took one of the most visionary talents of African cinema with him. The noted African film critic, Manthia Diawara, described Mambety’s premiere of Hyenas as “the entry of an auteurist viewpoint into African cinema. Mambety was to Carthage '92 what John Ford and Orson Welles had been to Cannes.”

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