La Noire De... (1966)

Film: La Noire De...

Director: Ousmane Sembène

Country: Senegal

Released: March 1966

Runtime: 55 minutes

Genre: Drama

Studio: Les Films Domireew

Influenced: Sarah Maldoror, Med Hondo, Fernando Solanas, Djibril Diop Mambéty, Haile Gerima, Raoul Peck

Ousmane Sembène came to moviemaking later in life, in his early 40s, and went on to make many more films over a long career, even into his early 80s with Mooladé (2004), establishing himself as the "father of African cinema" . La Noire De... is considered a landmark in African cinema as the first film to be made in Sub-Saharan Africa by an indigenous director and one of the first movies made by an African director to receive international recognition, winning the Prix Jean Vigo. The film's English title Black Girl doesn't quite capture the nuance of its original French title, "La Noire De..." (Black girl of...), referencing the main character's immigrant status and liminal feeling of not belonging in either Africa or France. 

La Noire De... tells the story of a young woman named Diouana who leaves her home in Dakar to work as a domestic servant for a French family in Antibes, France. However, she quickly realises that she is being exploited and mistreated, and her dreams of a better life are shattered. The film explores the relationship between language and power, as expressed in the dialogue. In the face of the casual, liberal-minded racism in the house of the wealthy French couple where Diouana works as a maid, she responds simply with "oui, madame" or "non, madame". She increasingly adopts a position of defensive muteness, whereby her silence is a form of defiance and resistance.

Sembène makes the decision to alternate between spoken dialogue and Diouana's interior monologue, so that we see both perspectives, the coloniser and the colonised. The film portrays the complex relationship between Africa and Europe, and the legacy of colonialism, as expressed by one of the French characters at a dinner party who voices his nostalgic regret for the time before Senegal and other African countries had independence, believing in his patronising way that they were happier under the guidance of westerners. Sembène also gives the film a strong feminist message, centring the experiences of a young woman who is caught between traditional expectations and the desire for independence and autonomy. Diouana's struggles and eventual tragic fate can be seen as a metaphor for the challenges faced by women in many African societies.

This complex relationship is best symbolised in the film by the mask. Diouana inititally gives the African mask from her home in Dakar to the French family as a gift, but then later in the film she seeks to reclaim it. Her identity as an African now seems bound up in the mask. At the very end of the film, the mask haunts the French man as he leaves Africa, in the same way that colonialism will continue to haunt France. As a Marxist, Sembène is likely to have read Frantz Fanon's book Peau Noire, Masques Blancs (1952), and there are echoes of the themes of that book (colonial power and dehumanisation) in the film.

The impact of La Noire De... on African cinema has been profound. It inspired a generation of African filmmakers to tell their own stories and to challenge the dominant narratives about Africa that had been perpetuated by European filmmakers for decades. The film also influenced the development of the "Third Cinema" movement in Africa and Latin America, which sought to create a cinema that was independent of both Hollywood and European art cinema. This movement emphasised the need for filmmakers to make films that were politically and socially engaged, and that spoke to the experiences of marginalised and oppressed communities.