Ousmane Sembene's vicious circle: the politics and aesthetics of 'La Noire de …'

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Periodical article

Title:	Ousmane Sembene's vicious circle: the politics and aesthetics of 'La Noire de …'
Author:	Malcic, Steven
Year:	2013
Periodical:	Journal of African Cinemas (ISSN 1754-923X)
Volume:	5
Issue:	2
Pages:	167-180
Language:	English
Geographic term:	Senegal
Subjects:	films filmmakers postcolonialism
About person:	Sembène Ousmane (1923-2007)
External link:	https://doi.org/10.1386/jac.5.2.167_1
Abstract:	Ousmane Sembene's 'La Noire de …' (1966), widely considered black Africa's first independent feature film, is about a woman's recognition of the duplicitous nature of neocolonial subjectivity, a duplicity that Sembene himself recognized during the production of the film. Historically, French cinematographic institutions, implanted in Senegal in order to facilitate African filmmaking, operated within a circular logic that required Sembene to be both French and Senegalese. Aesthetically, Sembene impugns this circular logic through his ironic use of focalization, montage and mise-en-scène, offering a critique not only of French neocolonialism, but also of assimilationist policies of the early Senegalese government. In 'La Noire de …' Sembene develops a spatiotemporal aesthetics of neocolonialism that acts as the primary structural principle of the film and reveals the contradictory existence of the neocolonial subject. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. [Journal abstract, edited]