Ousmane Sembene was one of the greatest, most groundbreaking filmmakers in the history of cinema, an acclaimed novelist, and the most renowned African director of the twentieth century. Black Girl was his brilliant, blistering debut. Released in 1966, it won the Prix Jean Vigo at the Cannes Film Festival that year. The film is about a young Senegalese woman, played powerfully by M''Bissine Therese Diop, who moves to France to work for a wealthy white family as a nanny, but quickly discovers that life in their apartment is a prison, both figuratively and literally; but it is also a searing, nuanced critique of the lingering colonialism in the supposedly postcolonial world. Vlad Dima''s study of Black Girl argues that the film helped to map the future of African cinema. He situates it within its postcolonial context, considering its adaptation from the eponymous short story first published in 1962. He examines the performances of Mbissine Therese Diop (Diouana), Anne-Marie Jelinek (Madame) and Robert Fontaine (Monsieur), considering the ways in which they embody or subvert postcolonial, French archetypes, and then goes on to examine the technical aspects of Sembene''s filmmaking, such as his innovative use of framing and aural composition. Finally, he traces the film''s lasting influence on African cinema, from Sembene''s own Xala (1975), to Safi Faye''s Mossane (1996), Joseph Gai Ramaka''s Karmen Gei (2001), Jean-Pierre Bekolo''s Saignantes (2005), and Mati Diop''s Atlantics (2019).

Vorwort
A study of Ousmane Sembene's Black Girl (La noire de...)(1966), a seminal work of African cinema, in the BFI Film Classics series.

Autorentext
Vlad Dima is Professor and Chair of the Department of African American Studies at Syracuse University, USA. His books include Sonic Space in Djibril Diop Mambety's Films (2017), The Beautiful Skin: Football, Fantasy, and Cinematic Bodies in Africa (2020), and Meaninglessness: Time, Rhythm, and the Undead in in Postcolonial Cinema (2022). He has published numerous articles, mainly on French and francophone cinemas, but also on Francophone literature, comics, American cinema, and television.

Inhalt

1. Sonic Frames: Where it Begins
   
   2. Characters
   3. Objects
   4. Visual Frames: Where it Ends
      Credits
      Endnotes