Au Sénégal en 44 un bataillon de tirailleurs arrive au camp de transit de Thiaroye pour etre démobilisés. Ils seront tous exterminés par les militaires français.
C'est dommage qu'il n'avait pas eu les ressources financiers pour realiser son ultime projet "SAMORY". Doyen n'etait pas un hypocryte. De grace Wade et son "Gou-wer-ne-ment" N'essayez pas de faire du xaware derriere lui.
Nos acteurs (amateurs ou pros)sont formidables. Nos réalisateurs aussi. Et Sembène était un Grand Maître.
Le cinéma africain doit être soutenu, parce qu'il y a tellement de choses à dire et à montrer. Nous ne pouvons pas le faire librement et honnêtement comme le faisait Sembène si nous n'avons pas les moyens de la production.
Notre cinéma ne peut être indépendant que s'il est financé par les africains eux même.
Merci Sembène. Nous te serons éternellement reconnaissant, d'avoir su rendre depuis plusieurs décennie la dignité à notre culture, nos valeurs, notre dignité.
Que la terre te soit légère.
A la nouvelle génération de prendre la relève pour que vive la culture et le cinéma africain en particulier.
Dommage que les gens ne connaissent les vrais hommes qu'apres leur mort.Le Sénégal lui doit un hommage bien mérité pour nous avoir édifier sur beaucoup de choses qui se passés .
Que la terre lui soit légère et que le bon Dieu l'accueille dans son paradis AMEN!!!
c'est vrément domage que la rts ne diffuse pas ces genres de film instructifs au lieu de nous montrer des films a caractere quasi pornographique .en tout cas MERCI SEMBENE OUSMANE, QUE LA TERRE LUI SOIT LEGERE ET QUE LE BON DIEU L'ACCEUILLE DANS SON PARADIS AMEN
vive les bonnes personnes et vive les Hommes de valeurs ;tout le monde doit s'attendre et penser dans toutes ses actions en ce jour qui n'est rien d'autre que le jour de sa mort
c est tres beau film que j'ai regardé avec beaucoup de tritesse c'est triste et tres domage de perdre cet grand monument de la culture africaine.Repose en paix SERVITEUR.
je ne connaissais pas l'homme sinon de nom mais ces films oui! Et j'apprécie beaucoup et j'aimerai que la RTS diffuse ces films surtout sénégalais car c'est des films instructifs et notre société a besoin de ça. ça vaut beaucoup mieux que ces films comme barbarita ou feux de de l'amour et j'en passe. Bravo à sembène ousmane et que la terre lui soit légère et que Dieu l'accueille dans son paradis! AMEN!!!!!!!!!!
Comment seneweb peut-t'il proposer un film en entier ainsi?
Cela m'etonnerait qu'ils aient payé les droits d'auteurs, ou qu'ils aient l'autorisation de le faire, vu le nombres d'internautes qui vont s'y connecter.
Avec la mort de Sembene Ousmane , c'etait l'occasion pour que les gens qui n'ont pas vu ses films de pouvoir l'acheter, et par la meme laisser des royalties a ses heritiers.
J'espere que vous penserez à l'enlever au plus vite.
Je me rappelle y'a de cela une dixaine d'annees environ je jouait avec mes camarades au jeux de billes que l'on connait plutot sous le nom de " bille egate", on jouaient entre le bataillon des parachutistes et celui de transmission, entre la porte du camp qui donne sur poste en allant vers l'infirmerie, pas loin de l'ecole primaire les martyrs. je me rappelle tres bien qu'a chaque fois que les anciens militaires ou surtout les viellards nous voit en train de creuser des pots pour notre jeux ils se mettaient en colere et nous chassaient en nous interdisant de creuser, et c'etait dans un genre de montagne. c'est un peu plus tard que j'ai appris que ces personnes ages nous interdisaient de creuser parce que c'est la ou son enterrer les victimes du massacre du camp de thiaroye, ou je suis ne et grandit jusqu'a l'age de 19ans pour allez etudier ailleurs. ces memoires seront toujours en moi.
que dieu aie pitie de son ame et le mene au paradis
sembene est un grand son film camp de thiaroye est un film tres riche et dans ce film nous comprenons que la devaluation a commence depuis 1944 et dans ce meme film nous realison la verite d un probreve qui dit: ( si tu voit un muet courrir ne demande pas ce qui se passe il faut courrir tout simplement car ce dernier n a pas entendu mais a vu avec ses propres yeux)
ngel balma francais bi bou serrere la
Ce qui m'ecoeure dans tout ca c'est que, sous la complicite du gouvernement francais , les dirrigeants senegalais ont voulus gardez ca comme un secret de polichinelle. Ne disant pas la realite, ca fait meme pas partie de l'histoire du senegal enseigner a l'ecole. dire que j'ai passait la majeur partie de ma vie a etudier et a jouer a l'interieur du camp sans qu'on m'enseigne l'histoir du lieu. C'est pour cela que je suis convaincu que l'independance,la vraie, du senegal et meme de l'afrique est a venir, et que c'est pas encore acheve. Tous ces elements font de moi ce que je suis et ma maniere de penser, qu'en aux theories et enseignement de "l'homme blancs". Quand tu te met dans la tete qu'il ne penvent plus t'avoir, cela veut dire qu'ils sont entrain de t'avoir. toujours sur mes gardes a trouver des moyens de les avoirs dans leur propre jeux, histoire d'essayer d'equilibrer la balance.
Tout ce que je veux savoir c'est si ces enculés de français ont payé pour ces crimes. Tous les gens qui ont commis des crimes dans le passé ont payé notamment certains nazis sous la pression internationale. ce qu'ils ont fait est un crime contre l'humanité. Des braves gens qui ont donné leur vie pour eux, qui ont combattu à leur place et qui demandaient à juste titre leur dû sont tués gratuitement. Cela prouve encore notre passivité envers ces français, car cette affaire a été assombrie dans la totale discrétion.Sur le plan international on en parle pas.L'histoire montre qu'un europeen, un américain ou un juif meurt, les personnes responsables seront poursuivits et traduits en justice, mais si c'est le noir c'est tout à fait le contraire. Les gens responsable de cette tuerie encore en vie doivent être traduit en justice.
Que la terre vous soit légère Oussemane, que dieu t'acceuille dans son meilleur de ces paradis. Merci encore pour tout ce que tu as fait pour le Senegal. Amen
Ou peut on trouver le DVD de ces films? J'aimerais constitue une collection pour moi mais aussi pour montrer plus tard a mes enfants quand ils seront en age.
c' est un exellent film lequel tout africain doit voir et se rappeller toujour que le francais est le plus mauvais de toute la race blance .
SEMBENE RPOSE EN PAIX
je veux te ponsse une question mais nous les afriques kaan ley niou foulle et nous les senegalaises aussi pour niou diap-pelee sou nou pobb sou nou maa mii sonnou-nanou pour l'afrique c'est t'une tres tres bon film et leson liberte liberte afrique
ils ont adopt. 1 autre methode mais ils sont encore ici les francais et ns vivons le pire d jour en jour reveillons nous cher freres et soeurs....afrique vous remercie ousmane.
Ne croyez surtout pas que je ne sais pas que l'on peut remonter mon adresse I.P mais j'ai rien n'a cirer.
Sachez qu'à côté de cette tristesse et haine qui m'anime au regard de ce film me vient à l'idée que l'Afrique est la terre des Hommes et que les termes civilisation- humanisme- reconnaissance-loyauté bien que "gaullois" non aucune valeur , si non lexicale,pour nos alliers malgré nous..........
Le mensonge peut bien durer mais la vérité finira toujours par triompher.
Hommage à Sembène Ousmane- Hommage à ces Martyrs de Tirailleurs.
Ousmane Sembène, major figure in African cinema, dead at 84
By Joanne Laurier
13 June 2007
Use this version to print | Send this link by email | Email the author
One of the pioneering figures in African cinema, the Senegalese filmmaker Ousmane Sembène, died over this past weekend in Dakar at the age of 84. Sembène authored numerous works of fiction and directed 10 feature films. At the time of the release on DVD of two of his earliest films, the WSWS posted the following article 17 January 2006 about his life and work.
Ousmane Sembène, Senegalese author, scenarist and film director, has been making films for over 40 years. New Yorker Video has recently released two of Sembène’s earliest and most remarkable cinematic works on DVD: one short film, Borom Sarret (1963), and Black Girl (1966), which also holds the distinction of being sub-Saharan Africa’s first feature film.
Born in 1923 in southern Senegal, Sembène, the son of a Muslim fisherman, migrated as a stowaway to France in 1947 to escape the ravages of a war-torn colonial economy. Having joined the French Communist Party in 1950 and the anti-racist movement MOURAP in 1951, he was working as a dock worker in Marseilles in 1960, the year Senegal declared its independence. Within a few years, Sembène had established himself as a novelist and short story writer in France.
On a trip back to Senegal, Sembène was struck by or reminded of the high levels of illiteracy. This convinced him to turn to film rather than literature as a means of communicating with wide layers of the population. In 1962, he enrolled at the Moscow film school, studying under veteran Soviet director Mark Donskoy, and then worked at Gorki film studies under the tutelage of Sergei Gerasimov.
An unusual personality, at this point in his life Sembène combined profound opposition to capitalism and colonialism with a deep feeling for artistic work. He immersed himself in world literature, including the work of left-wing (or former left-wing) writers like Americans Richard Wright, John Dos Passos and Ernest Hemingway, the Chilean poet Pablo Néruda, the Turkish poet Nazim Hikmet, the Jamaican-born, African-American writer Claude McKay and others. He also became involved with the left-wing theater Le Theâtre Rouge.
Under such conditions, Sembène began his filmmaking career, viewing cinema as a means of elevating consciousness, politically and culturally ... as a “liberating art.” Following his earliest films, which we discuss below, Sembène continued to look critically at Senegalese society and Western colonialism. For example, his 1974 film Xala lambastes the hypocrisy and pride of the African ruling elite, while maintaining a critical stance towards aspects of traditional African society. The short film Taaw (1972) centers on an unemployed youth who learns “the bitter truth about the contemporary social order: to survive one has to be a policeman, a paid informer or a Member of Parliament” (P. Vincent Magombe, The Oxford History of World Cinema). Similarly in Mandabi (The Money Order, 1968), a civil servant’s daily survival depends on adopting corrupt methods.
After the release of Mandabi, Sembène was subjected to a barrage of attacks for exposing the horrific levels of misery in Senegal, and throughout his career he faced governmental criticism and censorship. Ceddo (1977), “which reflected the conversion of the Senegalese people to Islam [in the 17th century] and the wretchedness of the political system” (Magombe), was banned by the government for eight years.
Like other African filmmakers, Sembène has not only faced censorship within Africa, but as well from without, particularly from France, which has provided much of the technical and financial resources for the development of cinema in the former French colonies in sub-Saharan Africa. Sembène’s 1972 film Emitai, critical of French colonial rule, was kept out of circulation for five years and then released with a re-edited ending.
The films newly released by New Yorker Video on DVD (contained on one disc), Borom Sarret and Black Girl, are starkly realistic films that mesmerize by virtue of their poetic quality. Both exemplify the richness made possible when serious art and serious politics encounter one another. They are examples of the sublime artistic treatment of everyday life. The urgency of each image—as though life depended on avoiding the superficial and extraneous—disturbs in the extreme.
Borom Sarret
Borom Sarret was Sembène’s directorial debut upon his return to Senegal in 1963. The film treats a day in the life of an unnamed borom sarret (derived from the French phrase “bonhomme charrette”—a horse-driven cart driver for hire, operating in the poor quarters of Dakar). The regular passengers of Sembène’s “borom sarret” include people as destitute as he is. (“When is she going to pay me? But she has her troubles too.”)
As the day progresses, paying customers begin to hire his services. Stopping for a meager lunch of nuts and burdened with worries about what his family is eating, the wagoner becomes enthralled by a storyteller, or griot, singing about tales of ancestral glory. Swept away (“Even if this new life enslaves me, I am still noble”), he hands over his earnings to the charismatic minstrel.
Left desperate by this ill-conceived act, he begins taking riskier fares. This lands him in a wealthy area of the city with its obvious French influence. Here, amid modern high-rises and fancy cars, the horse-drawn carts are not allowed. An arrogant, self-important policeman stops him and hands him a ticket. Forced to sell his cart in order to pay the fine, the cart driver returns home with less than when he left. There is no food for him, his wife, his children or his horse. “I promised you we would eat tonight,” his wife says to her children and she leaves with them in tow. His manhood shredded, the wagoner says meekly: “Where is she going? There is nothing to eat.” A day in the life of this borom sarret has left him with nothing economically or spiritually.
In a 19-minute black and white short, Sembène artfully delivers a world of extreme economic and social oppression. A working class seething in discontent.
An aspect of the oppression explored by the film is its psychological impact on the oppressed: the wagoner’s susceptibility to the griot; his condescension and lack of sympathy for a deformed beggar (“So many beggars, they are like flies”); a shoeshine boy helplessly allowing a customer to leave without paying; but above all, the wagoner’s acceptance of his place in society, his fatalism about his conditions.
What begins as a dichotomy between the braggadocio and exploited life of the wagoner ends with deflated illusions and a political understanding more in line with the harsh reality of Senegal’s post-colonialism. While the French colonial overlords have gone, a brutally structured society remains intact. No amount of praying or the invocation of ancestors alters the situation.
A painful lesson learned from being swinishly cheated out of his only means of subsistence—his wagon. “What will I become? It’s all a lie! It’s the same everywhere.... Who cares about ancestors? I’m broke. It was the same yesterday and the day before that. We all work for nothing. There is nothing left except to die.”
Black Girl
Like Borom Sarret, Sembène’s Black Girl is set in the aftermath of Senegal’s independence, and explores the relationship between a Senegalese housemaid, Diouana (Mbissine Thérèse Diop) and a French couple (Anne-Marie Jelinek and Robert Fontaine) who employ her. Arriving from Dakar, Diouana is to resume her employment in Antibes, on the French Riviera. In Dakar, before her country’s independence, Diouana worked for the French family as a nanny and expects to perform the same duties in France.
Flashbacks show her enthusiasm for the upcoming trip to France as well as the grinding poverty and unemployment she will be leaving behind. Diouana fantasizes about traveling in the European country and visiting fashionable stores. She also leaves behind a resentful boyfriend, obviously an African nationalist, who has a banner painted with portraits of martyred Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba. He has no interest in France and its attractions.
Upon Diouana’s arrival in Antibes, she discovers that the couple lives in far more modest circumstances than those they enjoyed in Senegal. This translates into a much altered relationship between Diouana and the couple. Looked upon as a servant, the Senegalese girl goes without regular pay or the opportunity to get out of the apartment’s cramped confines. Attempting to offset her demeaning treatment, Diouana dresses stylishly while performing her chores—an act that further enrages Madame.
Expected to cook, clean and function as a piece of exotica for dinner guests (“I have never kissed a Negress before!” remarks a visitor), she is barely seen as human, increasingly becoming the target of Madame’s frustrations. The latter’s continuous refrain is: “Get up you lazy, we are not in Africa!” She even strikes Diouana while the latter is lying down.
A letter from her mother berating Diouana for not sending money is the final disappointment. She disintegrates when Monsieur tries to assuage her by paying her overdue wages. She did not come to France to wear an apron and make money. The soundtrack changes from African to French music. The camera pans a populated Riviera beach. Is this the alternative to a wretched life in Dakar?
Finding everything intolerable, Diouana comes to a tragic end, proclaiming, “I’ll never again be a slave!”
With his maid’s belongings, Monsieur returns to Dakar. Conspicuously hidden behind sunglasses, he searches a shantytown for Diouana’s family. In an act of guilty condescension, Monsieur attempts to compensate Diouana’s mother with a cash offering—it would not occur to him to do otherwise. The gesture is rejected.
The movie’s final scenes involve Monsieur being driven out of Senegal by Diouana’s younger brother, menacingly wearing an African mask. Monsieur departs and the boy is left weeping. The wounds inflicted by Monsieur and Madame are permanent.
Filmed in black and white, Black Girl is, at first glance, a study in elegance. Diop’s fluid movements and noble comportment are rhythmic and beautiful, further embellished by the film’s soundtrack. Critic Manny Farber described the film as “a series of spiritual odysseys: through a kitchen; a ceremonial procedure before the bathtub suicide; a small boy, holding
Film très émouvant. J'ai eu envie de pleurer.
Nos acteurs (amateurs ou pros)sont formidables. Nos réalisateurs aussi. Et Sembène était un Grand Maître.
Le cinéma africain doit être soutenu, parce qu'il y a tellement de choses à dire et à montrer. Nous ne pouvons pas le faire librement et honnêtement comme le faisait Sembène si nous n'avons pas les moyens de la production.
Notre cinéma ne peut être indépendant que s'il est financé par les africains eux même.
Merci Sembène. Nous te serons éternellement reconnaissant, d'avoir su rendre depuis plusieurs décennie la dignité à notre culture, nos valeurs, notre dignité.
Que la terre te soit légère.
A la nouvelle génération de prendre la relève pour que vive la culture et le cinéma africain en particulier.
Wa salam
Que la terre lui soit légère et que le bon Dieu l'accueille dans son paradis AMEN!!!
vive les bonnes personnes et vive les Hommes de valeurs ;tout le monde doit s'attendre et penser dans toutes ses actions en ce jour qui n'est rien d'autre que le jour de sa mort
Cela m'etonnerait qu'ils aient payé les droits d'auteurs, ou qu'ils aient l'autorisation de le faire, vu le nombres d'internautes qui vont s'y connecter.
Avec la mort de Sembene Ousmane , c'etait l'occasion pour que les gens qui n'ont pas vu ses films de pouvoir l'acheter, et par la meme laisser des royalties a ses heritiers.
J'espere que vous penserez à l'enlever au plus vite.
f#ck la france
f#ck la france
f#ck la france
sembene est un grand son film camp de thiaroye est un film tres riche et dans ce film nous comprenons que la devaluation a commence depuis 1944 et dans ce meme film nous realison la verite d un probreve qui dit: ( si tu voit un muet courrir ne demande pas ce qui se passe il faut courrir tout simplement car ce dernier n a pas entendu mais a vu avec ses propres yeux)
ngel balma francais bi bou serrere la
de grace soyez simmples
repose en paix oumane
reposez vous bien monsieur ousmane sembene que diue vous accuelle au paradi
SEMBENE RPOSE EN PAIX
Suis triste mais dé rek moy deugue Que la terre lui soit légère
J'ai bcp appris de ce grand Monsieur!
Sachez qu'à côté de cette tristesse et haine qui m'anime au regard de ce film me vient à l'idée que l'Afrique est la terre des Hommes et que les termes civilisation- humanisme- reconnaissance-loyauté bien que "gaullois" non aucune valeur , si non lexicale,pour nos alliers malgré nous..........
Le mensonge peut bien durer mais la vérité finira toujours par triompher.
Hommage à Sembène Ousmane- Hommage à ces Martyrs de Tirailleurs.
By Joanne Laurier
13 June 2007
Use this version to print | Send this link by email | Email the author
One of the pioneering figures in African cinema, the Senegalese filmmaker Ousmane Sembène, died over this past weekend in Dakar at the age of 84. Sembène authored numerous works of fiction and directed 10 feature films. At the time of the release on DVD of two of his earliest films, the WSWS posted the following article 17 January 2006 about his life and work.
Ousmane Sembène, Senegalese author, scenarist and film director, has been making films for over 40 years. New Yorker Video has recently released two of Sembène’s earliest and most remarkable cinematic works on DVD: one short film, Borom Sarret (1963), and Black Girl (1966), which also holds the distinction of being sub-Saharan Africa’s first feature film.
Born in 1923 in southern Senegal, Sembène, the son of a Muslim fisherman, migrated as a stowaway to France in 1947 to escape the ravages of a war-torn colonial economy. Having joined the French Communist Party in 1950 and the anti-racist movement MOURAP in 1951, he was working as a dock worker in Marseilles in 1960, the year Senegal declared its independence. Within a few years, Sembène had established himself as a novelist and short story writer in France.
On a trip back to Senegal, Sembène was struck by or reminded of the high levels of illiteracy. This convinced him to turn to film rather than literature as a means of communicating with wide layers of the population. In 1962, he enrolled at the Moscow film school, studying under veteran Soviet director Mark Donskoy, and then worked at Gorki film studies under the tutelage of Sergei Gerasimov.
An unusual personality, at this point in his life Sembène combined profound opposition to capitalism and colonialism with a deep feeling for artistic work. He immersed himself in world literature, including the work of left-wing (or former left-wing) writers like Americans Richard Wright, John Dos Passos and Ernest Hemingway, the Chilean poet Pablo Néruda, the Turkish poet Nazim Hikmet, the Jamaican-born, African-American writer Claude McKay and others. He also became involved with the left-wing theater Le Theâtre Rouge.
Under such conditions, Sembène began his filmmaking career, viewing cinema as a means of elevating consciousness, politically and culturally ... as a “liberating art.” Following his earliest films, which we discuss below, Sembène continued to look critically at Senegalese society and Western colonialism. For example, his 1974 film Xala lambastes the hypocrisy and pride of the African ruling elite, while maintaining a critical stance towards aspects of traditional African society. The short film Taaw (1972) centers on an unemployed youth who learns “the bitter truth about the contemporary social order: to survive one has to be a policeman, a paid informer or a Member of Parliament” (P. Vincent Magombe, The Oxford History of World Cinema). Similarly in Mandabi (The Money Order, 1968), a civil servant’s daily survival depends on adopting corrupt methods.
After the release of Mandabi, Sembène was subjected to a barrage of attacks for exposing the horrific levels of misery in Senegal, and throughout his career he faced governmental criticism and censorship. Ceddo (1977), “which reflected the conversion of the Senegalese people to Islam [in the 17th century] and the wretchedness of the political system” (Magombe), was banned by the government for eight years.
Like other African filmmakers, Sembène has not only faced censorship within Africa, but as well from without, particularly from France, which has provided much of the technical and financial resources for the development of cinema in the former French colonies in sub-Saharan Africa. Sembène’s 1972 film Emitai, critical of French colonial rule, was kept out of circulation for five years and then released with a re-edited ending.
The films newly released by New Yorker Video on DVD (contained on one disc), Borom Sarret and Black Girl, are starkly realistic films that mesmerize by virtue of their poetic quality. Both exemplify the richness made possible when serious art and serious politics encounter one another. They are examples of the sublime artistic treatment of everyday life. The urgency of each image—as though life depended on avoiding the superficial and extraneous—disturbs in the extreme.
Borom Sarret
Borom Sarret was Sembène’s directorial debut upon his return to Senegal in 1963. The film treats a day in the life of an unnamed borom sarret (derived from the French phrase “bonhomme charrette”—a horse-driven cart driver for hire, operating in the poor quarters of Dakar). The regular passengers of Sembène’s “borom sarret” include people as destitute as he is. (“When is she going to pay me? But she has her troubles too.”)
As the day progresses, paying customers begin to hire his services. Stopping for a meager lunch of nuts and burdened with worries about what his family is eating, the wagoner becomes enthralled by a storyteller, or griot, singing about tales of ancestral glory. Swept away (“Even if this new life enslaves me, I am still noble”), he hands over his earnings to the charismatic minstrel.
Left desperate by this ill-conceived act, he begins taking riskier fares. This lands him in a wealthy area of the city with its obvious French influence. Here, amid modern high-rises and fancy cars, the horse-drawn carts are not allowed. An arrogant, self-important policeman stops him and hands him a ticket. Forced to sell his cart in order to pay the fine, the cart driver returns home with less than when he left. There is no food for him, his wife, his children or his horse. “I promised you we would eat tonight,” his wife says to her children and she leaves with them in tow. His manhood shredded, the wagoner says meekly: “Where is she going? There is nothing to eat.” A day in the life of this borom sarret has left him with nothing economically or spiritually.
In a 19-minute black and white short, Sembène artfully delivers a world of extreme economic and social oppression. A working class seething in discontent.
An aspect of the oppression explored by the film is its psychological impact on the oppressed: the wagoner’s susceptibility to the griot; his condescension and lack of sympathy for a deformed beggar (“So many beggars, they are like flies”); a shoeshine boy helplessly allowing a customer to leave without paying; but above all, the wagoner’s acceptance of his place in society, his fatalism about his conditions.
What begins as a dichotomy between the braggadocio and exploited life of the wagoner ends with deflated illusions and a political understanding more in line with the harsh reality of Senegal’s post-colonialism. While the French colonial overlords have gone, a brutally structured society remains intact. No amount of praying or the invocation of ancestors alters the situation.
A painful lesson learned from being swinishly cheated out of his only means of subsistence—his wagon. “What will I become? It’s all a lie! It’s the same everywhere.... Who cares about ancestors? I’m broke. It was the same yesterday and the day before that. We all work for nothing. There is nothing left except to die.”
Black Girl
Like Borom Sarret, Sembène’s Black Girl is set in the aftermath of Senegal’s independence, and explores the relationship between a Senegalese housemaid, Diouana (Mbissine Thérèse Diop) and a French couple (Anne-Marie Jelinek and Robert Fontaine) who employ her. Arriving from Dakar, Diouana is to resume her employment in Antibes, on the French Riviera. In Dakar, before her country’s independence, Diouana worked for the French family as a nanny and expects to perform the same duties in France.
Flashbacks show her enthusiasm for the upcoming trip to France as well as the grinding poverty and unemployment she will be leaving behind. Diouana fantasizes about traveling in the European country and visiting fashionable stores. She also leaves behind a resentful boyfriend, obviously an African nationalist, who has a banner painted with portraits of martyred Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba. He has no interest in France and its attractions.
Upon Diouana’s arrival in Antibes, she discovers that the couple lives in far more modest circumstances than those they enjoyed in Senegal. This translates into a much altered relationship between Diouana and the couple. Looked upon as a servant, the Senegalese girl goes without regular pay or the opportunity to get out of the apartment’s cramped confines. Attempting to offset her demeaning treatment, Diouana dresses stylishly while performing her chores—an act that further enrages Madame.
Expected to cook, clean and function as a piece of exotica for dinner guests (“I have never kissed a Negress before!” remarks a visitor), she is barely seen as human, increasingly becoming the target of Madame’s frustrations. The latter’s continuous refrain is: “Get up you lazy, we are not in Africa!” She even strikes Diouana while the latter is lying down.
A letter from her mother berating Diouana for not sending money is the final disappointment. She disintegrates when Monsieur tries to assuage her by paying her overdue wages. She did not come to France to wear an apron and make money. The soundtrack changes from African to French music. The camera pans a populated Riviera beach. Is this the alternative to a wretched life in Dakar?
Finding everything intolerable, Diouana comes to a tragic end, proclaiming, “I’ll never again be a slave!”
With his maid’s belongings, Monsieur returns to Dakar. Conspicuously hidden behind sunglasses, he searches a shantytown for Diouana’s family. In an act of guilty condescension, Monsieur attempts to compensate Diouana’s mother with a cash offering—it would not occur to him to do otherwise. The gesture is rejected.
The movie’s final scenes involve Monsieur being driven out of Senegal by Diouana’s younger brother, menacingly wearing an African mask. Monsieur departs and the boy is left weeping. The wounds inflicted by Monsieur and Madame are permanent.
Filmed in black and white, Black Girl is, at first glance, a study in elegance. Diop’s fluid movements and noble comportment are rhythmic and beautiful, further embellished by the film’s soundtrack. Critic Manny Farber described the film as “a series of spiritual odysseys: through a kitchen; a ceremonial procedure before the bathtub suicide; a small boy, holding