Lumières Françaises • Images of Africa

July Cinema Club Screening: Saturday, July 13 at 11:00am

Cinema Club Moderator Megan Feeney will be in conversation with Patricia Lorcin, Professor Emerita of History, U of MN, with expertise in race and gender in France and its colonies; and in western imperialism, colonialism, and post-colonial studies.

Cinema Club screenings are Free for MSP Film Society Members. Not a Member? Join here. More info on Cinema Club here. Members: Remember to sign-in to make your reservation.

ABOUT THE FILMS

Black Girl • 1966 • 59 min

Ousmane Sembène, one of the greatest and most groundbreaking filmmakers who ever lived and the most internationally renowned African director of the twentieth century, made his feature debut in 1966 with the brilliant and stirring Black Girl. Sembène, who was also an acclaimed novelist in his native Senegal, transforms a deceptively simple plot—about a young Senegalese woman who moves to France to work for a wealthy white couple and finds that life in their small apartment becomes a figurative and literal prison—into a complex, layered critique on the lingering colonialist mindset of a supposedly postcolonial world. Featuring a moving central performance by Mbissine Thérèse Diop, Black Girl is a harrowing human drama as well as a radical political statement—and one of the essential films of the 1960s.

Preceded by Borom Sarret • 1963 • 18 min

A young cart driver in Dakar is robbed by a succession of dishonest passengers. When his cart is confiscated by the police, he loses not only his means of livelihood but his sole claim to self-respect in an exploited and poverty-ridden community. Borom Sarret was the directorial debut of Ousmane Sembène and considered the first African film made by a black African.

Cinema Club is generously sponsored by:
Julie & Charlie Zelle and Leni & David Moore

This work is funded in part by MHC with money from the Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund that was created with the vote of the people of Minnesota on November 4, 2008.