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3rd Saturday Documentaries: Black Girl
May 21, 2022 @ 5:00 pm - 8:00 pm
The 3rd Saturday Documentaries are returning to Elegba Folklore Society’s Cultural Center. Join us on Saturday, May 21 at 5p to view and discuss “Black Girl.” Free.
“Black Girl” is a film made by Ousmane Sembène in 1966 on location post-colonial Dakar, Senegal and Antibes, France. Documenting a true story, the film follows Diouana’s search for employment and what she perceives as a better life in France, Senegal’s colonizer. The film provokes thought about neo-independence, the self-view of African people, liberation and activism. Ousmane Sembène is hailed as the father of African cinema. “Black Girl” is considered the first major film produced by an African filmmaker.
Born in Ziguinchor, a city in the Casamance region of southern Senegal, in 1923, Ousmane Sembène grew up in Senegal when it was a French colony. In his early life, he was a fisherman, bricklayer, plumber and mechanic until he was drafted into the French Army during WW II. Afterwards, he remained in France, became a dock worker and taught himself to read and write in French.
In 1956, he published his first novel, “Le Docker noir,” or “Black Docker,” a memoir. His artistic expression developed with several literary works that drew from his experience of isolation living as an immigrant in France and the challenges of Africans navigating injustices in a post-colonial country. Senegal became independent in 1960, and Sembène soon became a member of the Global Nationalist Liberation Movement. He found film to be a greater vehicle for constituting, as he said, a “consciousness among the masses.”
Inside colonialism and its parallel dehumanization, the colonists’ camera was a tool of “empire.” Films made by Europeans were sent back to colonial centers to paint skewed and violent portraits of African people that justified colonization.
Citing the power of the oral tradition, Sembène says, “I’m not trying to make cinema for my buddies. What I’m interested in is exposing the problems of the people to which I belong. For me cinema is a political action.”
“Black Girl” considers the problem and the tragic need for action.
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