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Black Girl (La Noire de…) (1966) -- O. Sembene
Does African
Cinema begin here? (So said film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum in 1995). I haven’t
seen enough to know but it certainly seems plausible (notwithstanding the fact
that there should have been a half-century of African films before this
one). In this regard, this hour-long Black-and-White
feature from Senegalese director Ousmane Sembene (his first) presents a
microcosm of colonialism in the relationship between a Senegalese maid, Diouana
(Mbissine Thérèse Diop) and her French employers, using techniques also adopted
by the Nouvelle Vague (particularly a narrative structure that intersperses
flashbacks to Dakar within the scenes of domestic life in the flat on the French
Riviera) but otherwise characterised by social realism. With insights into the behaviour of both the
colonisers and the colonised, Sembene does not candy coat things for either
party. That said, the unabashed brutality and ignorance of the colonisers is unforgiveable,
whereas the reticence, defiance, and ultimate hopelessness of the colonised seems
a natural reaction. Clearly, Sembene’s answer is resistance and independence
and this is the path that Africa has followed in the nearly 60 years since this
film. But the harrowing legacy of colonialism continues to play out.
