The Black of…, by Senegalese filmmaker Ousmane Sembène (1923-2007), dates from 1966. Nearly sixty years later, the film continues to stand out for its careful setting, its elegant black and white and its sensitive subject on class violence and colonization . In 2015, it was the subject of a restoration carried out by The Film Foundation – an association launched in 1990 by Martin Scorsese – and benefited from several prestigious screenings at the Cannes Film Festival and the Lumière Festival in Lyon. But it is only on October 9, the date of its theatrical release, that the general French public will be able to (re)discover, on the big screen, this feature film considered to be the very first made in sub-Saharan Africa.
“To tell the truth, no one had taken a position and we ourselves had procrastinated. If releases of Asian films are operating at full capacity in France, this is not yet the case for African cinema. recognizes Jean-Fabrice Janaudy, the deputy director of Acacias, the company which distributes it. However, he is convinced that he is dealing with “a great film that is too little known, capable of interesting neophytes, high school students and, more generally, all those in this country whose parents or grandparents are from immigrant backgrounds and who may have been affected by feelings similar to those of heroin ». Either Diouana (played by Mbissine Thérèse Diop), a Senegalese serving a French couple living in Dakar, whom she calls ” Sir “ et « Madame », and whose three children she watches over.
The Black of… traces his journey, his hiring, his joy of “find work with white people”, his move to Antibes. She follows the couple there and becomes a handyman, does the laundry, cooking and cleaning, slowly consuming herself until her tragic end. In the image, faced with the denigration she suffers, Diouana, treated in certain scenes of “negress” who would understand the French language “instinctively, like an animal”, displays a weary detachment.
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But the voice-over, like an inner voice, suggests first annoyance, then despair. “Because the characters are archetypal and the subject simple, the film remains universal and timeless, analysis Thierno Ibrahima Dia, editor-in-chief ofAfriciné, media based in Dakar and dedicated to African cinemas. The work is not limited to an opposition between whites and blacks, between settlers and colonized, but reflects on the possibility of saying “I”, of asserting oneself as a subject. »
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