The Black of…, by the Senegalese filmmaker Ousmane Sembène (1923-2007), dates back to 1966. Almost sixty years later, the film continues to stand out for its careful setting, its elegant black and white and its sensitive theme of class violence and colonization. In 2015, it underwent a restoration carried out by The Film Foundation – an association created in 1990 by Martin Scorsese – and benefited from several prestigious screenings at the Cannes Festival and the Lumière Festival in Lyon. But only on October 9, the date of its theatrical release, will the general French public be able to (re)discover on the big screen this feature film, considered the first made in sub-Saharan Africa.
“To tell the truth, no one had taken a position and we ourselves had postponed it. If in France the releases of Asian films are operating at full capacity, the same is not yet the case with African cinema. acknowledges Jean-Fabrice Janaudy, deputy director of Acacias, the company that distributes it. However, he is convinced that it is “a great film that is too little known, capable of interesting neophytes, high school students and, in general, all those in this country whose parents or grandparents are of immigrant origin and who may have been affected by feelings similar to those of heroin ». Or Diouana (played by Mbissine Thérèse Diop), a Senegalese woman in the service of a French couple living in Dakar, whom she calls ” Mister “ AND ” Lady “, and whose three children she takes care of.
The black of… traces his journey, his hiring, his joy of “find a job with white people”, his transfer to Antibes. She follows the couple there and becomes a handyman, doing laundry, cooking, and cleaning, slowly wasting away until her tragic end. In the image, given the denigration she suffers, Diouana, treated in certain scenes of “black” Who would understand the French language? “instinctively, like an animal,” shows a weary detachment.
But the voice-over, like an inner voice, suggests first anger and then despair. “Because the characters are archetypal and the theme simple, the film remains universal and timeless, analysis Thierno Ibrahima Dia, editor-in-chief ofAfrican, Media outlet based in Dakar and dedicated to African cinemas. The work is not limited to an opposition between whites and blacks, between colonists and colonized, but reflects on the possibility of saying “I”, of affirming oneself as a subject. »
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