This searing 1966 debut from “the father of African cinema”, Senegalese director Ousmane Sembène, is also thought to be the first feature by an African filmmaker.
M’Bissine Thérèse Diop gives a deeply moving performance as Diouana, a young Senegalese woman who moves from Dakar to Antibes, on the French Riviera, to work as a maid for a French couple. Trapped in their chic, small apartment, her excitement about her new life soon fades as she is subjected to exploitation, ignorance and casual racism by her employers and their friends.
Flashbacks show Diouana’s past life in Senegal, and her droll voiceover is almost as striking today as it was then: a Black female protagonist telling her story in the first person. These techniques, and Sembène’s sparkling black-and-white verité approach, pay barbed homage to the French New Wave, part of Sembène’s multi-layered critique of the subtle and self-perpetuating structures of colonial oppression.
In a 1965 conversation with the French ethnographic director Jean Rouch, Sembène complained: “You look at us as if we were insects,” and asked: “Will European cinematographers, you for example, continue to make films about Africa once there are a lot of African cinematographers?”
A talk by Dr Priyanka Singh, Curriculum Re-Defined Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of Leeds, will open the screening.
A DARE screening in partnership with the University of Leeds.
