If African film is inarguably the worst-represented section of international cinema, Janus Films have outshone their already-high standards with the restoration of Senegalese filmmaker Ousmane Sembène‘s cornerstone Black Girl. The director was recently highlighted in a documentary that can now be streamed on Netflix, and, among all recent endeavors, this might be the best with which to acquaint oneself with his cinema.
It’s good news, then, that Black Girl will begin its run at BAMcinématek this Wednesday, after which point it should expand to various cities before inevitably coming to Blu-ray via Criterion. The trailer will give some real sense of Janus’ efforts — this 4K restoration is lovely, likely the sort that only brings us closer to its film’s intense emotions and precise form.
See the preview below:
Synopsis:
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 (La noire de . . .). 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.
Black Girl begins is run at BAMcinématek on Wednesday, May 18.