Black Girl (La Noire de…)(1966)
dir. Ousmane Sembène
Colonialism fits in one apartment.
Where to watch: HBO Max and Plex (free with ads); rent Amazon, Apple TV, Fandango At HomeLetterboxd ↗
Diouana, a young Senegalese woman, takes a job as a nanny for a white French couple in Dakar, then follows them to the Riviera expecting a new life. Instead she becomes a maid shut in their flat, watched and owned. It is one of the first great African films and runs about an hour.
Why it’s here
The film makes the colonial relationship small enough to see: one flat, one woman, one mask on a wall. What's punk is Sembène, a Senegalese director, making the film the French would not, with independence barely won and the old arrangements intact. What's pedagogical is the use of space and silence: you read power from where people are allowed to stand. Pairs with Xala, already in the catalog.
Where This Film Lives
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