Black Girl (1966)

Ousmane Sembene - 1966 - Senegal, France - 65' - French, english subtitles

Black Girl, directed and written by Ousmane Sembène from 1966 is one of the first ever sub-Saharan feature films created by an African director. Sembène is often referred to as the father of African cinema, and this film showcases a strong sense of black cinema and spectatorship. Before he became a film director, Sembène was a writer, actually only one of his 36 practicing trades! He came to understand cinema to be his best tool for exploring themes of blackness, being African and creating a new black aesthetic. He wanted to depict Africa as it was, and saw cinema to function as a mirror that could enlighten the world on the reality of the African continent. 

The story takes place in a new post-colonial world, we follow a young Senegalese woman, Gomis Diouana, as she begins a new job as a nanny for a white, rich family in Dakar. Her happiness is short lived, as her employers relocate her to for France, where she becomes their made, taking care of their house, not children. In France she becomes more aware of her own race, as she’s continually seen as the other. Suffering under these oppressive conditions, she’s driven into isolation and despair, suicide seems to present itself as the only way out. Sembène actually wrote the script in Wolof, the native language in Senegal, but was forced to rewrite the script in French in order to secure funding. Therefore, even Gomis Diouana’s internal monologues are spoken in the coloniser’s tongue. His vision of a thoroughly decolonised piece of art could not be fully realised, but his work is still one of the most seminal pieces of postcolonial cinema.