The history of African cinema is inextricably linked with colonialism. Although film production has existed on the continent since the early days of film, up until the 1960’s sub-Saharan Africa had been portrayed solely by Western filmmakers. These filmmakers exoticised and dehumanised their African subjects in ethnographic films, which doubled as propaganda to justify European colonialism. Recognising film as an important political tool, colonial powers suppressed filmmaking by their black subjects. The 1934 Leval decree prohibited Africans (and European anti-colonialists) in French colonies from making films of their own. It was not until these nations became independent that indigenous African filmmaking could thrive.
Ousmane Sembène, born in Ziguinchor, Senegal in 1923, is considered to be the Father of African cinema. He began his career as a novelist. His works, inspired by Marxist ideology, were critical of both French colonialism and the corruption of the African elite. Realising the limitations of his written works due to widespread illiteracy on the continent, he turned to filmmaking as a way to express his ideas to the masses. Sembène’s first feature film, Black Girl (1966) was the first film made in sub-Saharan Africa and directed by a black African to receive international attention. The film follows Diouana (Mbissine Thérèse Diop), a young Senegalese girl who moves from Dakar to Antibes to work as a governess for a well to do French family. The romantic view Diouana has of France is soon shattered as she is forced into what is essentially domestic slavery. Unable to cope, she takes her own life. Black Girl predates The publication of Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino’s influential manifesto, Toward a Third Cinema, by three years. Therefore, the film can be viewed as a precursor to the Third Cinema movement as Sembène uses Diouana’s story to explore the issues of racism and France’s colonial legacy on the newly independent Senegal.
‘For the francophone African film-makers of Ousmane Sembène’s generation’, writes Rachael Langford, ‘cinema was a way of communicating to other Africans meditations on African experiences, both contemporary and historical, which for the first time were not mediated by outside eyes.’ From the very beginning of the film Sembène uses cinematic language to cement the viewer’s identification with his protagonist. The film opens with Diouana’s arrival in France. Sembène uses point of view shots from Diouana’s perspective as she makes her way through a sea of unfriendly white faces on her way off the dock, and as she rides in the car with Monsieur on the way to his apartment. Sembène also uses regular close ups of Diouana in the opening sequence which are underscored with first person voice over narration that expresses her uncertainty. Langford views this as an inversion of the archetypal colonial travelogue. ‘The dramatic action of the film is constituted by Diouana’s journey into the interior of metropolitan France and her experience of the barbarism of its indigenous population’. Diouana’s first person voice over narration ‘allows a neo-colonised African ‘I’ to frame a travelogue-memoir… It allows the audience privileged access to Diouana’s ‘for intèrieur’, her innermost being’. Diouana, while being representative of the oppression of colonized people is likewise depicted as a character with her own complex motivations. Also of significance is that she is named while her white employers, known only as Madame and Monsieur, are not. The use of such identifying techniques proves a stark contrast to portrayals by European ethnographers which dehumanised Africans and depicted them as simple beings in comparison to white Europeans.
Diouana is greeted by Madame when she arrives at the apartment. The films black and white cinematography is at its most effective in these interior scenes as it works to emphasise Diouana’s otherness. Diouana’s black skin stands in stark contrast to the oppressive whiteness of Madame and Monsieur’s apartment, emphasising her alienation from her new surroundings. The camera lingers on an African mask, displayed prominently on an otherwise bare white wall. Like Diouana, the mask has been isolated. Madame shows Diouana around the house. Cheerful, non-diegetic French music plays over the scene, reflecting Diouana’s hopefulness for her new life. The two women stand in front of the living room window, admiring the view as Madame lists the names of coastal resorts. From this scene onwards the viewer sees nothing more of Antibes, replicating Diouana’s isolation and the claustrophobic atmosphere of the apartment.
In an abrupt transition, the camera wipes to a shot of Diouana cleaning the bathroom. Jaunty African music plays in the background, a reminder of Diouana’s routes and her lowly status in her new home. The fast paced editing of this cleaning sequence expresses to the viewer how arduous her work is. ‘The kitchen, the bathroom, the bedroom, the living room… That’s all I do! That’s not what I came to France for!’ – her voiceover recounts. The apartment has become her prison. She is forced to cook and clean while Madame and Monsieur’s refuse to explain their children’s absence.
In the next scene the couple’s friends visit for dinner. Madame asks Diouana to prepare rice and mafe. Diouana is confused, she remembers that they did not eat Senegalese food when they lived in Dakar. The couple boast of their African experiences and Diouana’s ‘genuine African cooking’. In France, it is the couple’s life in Senegal that make them interesting to their dinner guests. Diouana’s narration expresses that she is still hopeful about her life in Antibes – ‘After this rice, maybe they’ll show me the city’. She daydreams of the ‘pretty dresses’ and ‘silk undies’ she’ll buy when her mistress pays her and sending photographs of herself on the beach that will make her friends in Dakar ‘die of jealousy’. As Diouana daydreams the guests talk about her as if she is not there. Asked if she speaks French Madame replies that she does not but that she understands the language ‘instinctively’, comparing her to an ‘animal’. The couple and their guests take on the role of ethnographers. They view Diouana as an exotic other – dehumanizing her and denying her interior.
The films mostly linear structure is interspersed with scenes that flashback to Diouana’s life in Dakar prior to her employment. The first flashback recounts how she came to be employed by Madame and Monsieur. Diouana walks around Dakar, knocking on doors enquiring for work. In one instance a white Frenchwoman, assuming that Diouana is attempting to sell her something angry tells her ‘I don’t want any!’. In the next sequence Diouana waits on the street with a number of other young Senegalese women who are also looking for work. Madame appears, she walks back and forth, surveying the women. The scene is reminiscent of a slave auction. Madame is in complete control; she knows that each of the women is desperate for work. The women rush Madame, begging her to hire them while Diouana, unsure of herself, lingers on the curb. Madame spots Diouana and offers her work as a nanny for her two children despite the fact that Diouana has never ‘worked for white folk’ before. The scene suggests that it is Diouana’s lack of confidence that draws Madame to her. Unlike the other women in the scene who display at least some sort of agency in asking Madame to hire them, Diouana is passive. She will be easy to control and manipulate. The sequence demonstrates Senegal’s continued economic dependence on France post-independence.
Later on in the flashback the origins of the African tribal mask are revealed. Diouana buys the mask from a young boy, possibly her brother, as a gift for her new employers. Madame shows the mask to her husband. He examines it, declaring that ‘it looks like the real thing’. As Monsieur looks for a place to display the mask the camera cuts to shots of various examples of African art that hang in their living room. According to Chadwick Jenkins, In African culture ‘Masks are used in ceremonies to connect with the spirits of the ancestors and to come to grips with the forces of good and evil that undergird nature and that effect the community.’ The couple appreciate the mask only for its aesthetic and possible monetary value. It is stripped on any deeper meaning. In this scene the mask represents the way in which African culture has been appropriated, and debased, by white westerners.
The scene also reveals what Madame and Monsieur’s life was like in Dakar. They live in a large house and are able to employ multiple staff. Diouana is responsible only for the care of their two children. In one sequence Diouana is allowed to sit in their garden. Her face is content and relaxed as she looks out at the view. The natural beauty of their garden differs greatly from the sterility of their Antibes apartment. The sequence explains why Diouana was so eager to work for them in Antibes. Moreover, the sequence demonstrates that the French couple’s situation has worsened since independence. They will never regain their such a privileged position in the post-colonial world.
According to Claire Andrade-Watkins, ‘France's colonial policy of direct rule and assimilation perpetuated the idea that France and the colonies were a family, bound by the French language and culture… francophone Africans, particularly African elites and their children, were indoctrinated to view France as the mother country’. The second flashback shows Diouana’s excitement at the prospect of living in France. ‘All I could think of was my trip… I was going to France!’ her voice over narrates as she takes a walk through the city with her boyfriend. She’s conscious of her boyfriend’s trepidation – ‘he’s angry. He’s going to say ‘That’s domestic slavery!’ but even his anger does not dull her enthusiasm. Diouana views France as her salvation; to her, France is a land of opportunity. In her boyfriend’s bedroom Diouana flicks through a glossy French magazine whist imagining her life in Antibes (‘I’ll see the country!’). The photographs of the glamorous white women in her magazine are juxtaposed with photographs of tribal women that hang on her boyfriends wall. A tapestry emblazoned with Patrice Lumumba’s face is draped behind her boyfriend as he pours himself a drink. Lumumba, a Pan-Africanist who served as the first Prime Minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo post-independence was assassinated a few years prior to the release of Black Girl in 1966. Through the symbolism of the tapestry and the photographs of the tribal women Sembène indicates that Diouana’s boyfriend is politically aware – this explains his rightful distrust of Diouana’s employers. His political consciousness is in stark contrast to Diouana’s naivety.
The later scenes show Diouana’s growing despondence at her situation. The couple notice that she has become even more withdrawn, and come to differing conclusions that she is either ‘ill’ or ‘lazy’. Illiterate and unable to speak French, Diouana shows her resistance to Madame’s cruel treatment through her clothing. She forgoes her mistress’s hand-me-down dresses and her maids uniform and begins to wear traditional African dress. She takes off the wig that she has worn during the duration of her time in France and combs out her natural hair. Diouana has finally seen the true face of the motherland and reacts by rejecting assimilation into French culture. The mask once again becomes an important symbol as Diouana’s unhappiness reaches a tipping point. Diouana and Madame fight over the mask. Madame feels entitled to it was gifted to her, whilst for Diouana the mask represents her African identity.