Capital Celluloid 2017 - Day 228: Fri Aug 18

Black Girl (Sembene, 1966): Close-Up Cinema, 7.30pm


This 35mm screening (which also screens on August 23rd) is part of the Ousmane Sembene season at Close-Up Cinema. You can find all the details here. The film is being shown on a double-bill with the short Borom Sarret.

Chicago Reader review: 
The 1966 first feature of Senegalese director Ousmane Sembene. A girl from a lower-class district in Dakar goes to work as a maid for a French couple and accompanies them on a vacation to France, where her newfound sense of freedom gradually turns into feelings of isolation and invisibility. Sembene keeps his metaphors under control, and the result is a message movie with an unusual depth of characterization. 
Dave Kehr


Here (and above) is the trailer.

Borom Sarret (dir: Ousmane Sembene)
1964 | 19 min | B/W | 35mm
“Sembene’s first film, Borom Sarret (“cart owner”) chronicles a day in the life of a beleaguered horse-cart driver in Dakar. In spite of the material limitations of the production - if not because of the challenges they posed – Borom Sarret manages to create a powerful social statement as it combines simple means with complex observations on bureaucracy, religion, and the anonymity of the modern city. Compressing his narrative into a mere nineteen minutes, Sembene conveys the condition of Senegal’s urban poor as he situates their experience in the larger social panorama of post-independence Africa.” – Harvard Film Archive

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