Black Girl (La noire de...)

La noire de... The black girl of... what? whom? where? Nowhere. No one. Nothing. Or is "of" the most important word in the title? Is she the property of? Existing only to be exploited; only to be manipulated, abused, and destroyed? Something, but…

Eli Hayes

"France is the kitchen, the living room, the bathroom and my bedroom.” In another movie it might seem hyperbolic to equate displacement to imprisonment and menial servitude to slavery, but with the point-of-view of the main character who has so brutally been stripped of her…

laird

the anger and oppression in here is mostly quiet. it simmers before it explodes. white supremacy manifests itself in subconscious gestures and daily cruelties just as much as in colonial rule. i felt just as constrained by that apartment as the protagonist.

kailey

A portrait of domestic slavery, of African fetishism, of class and race disparity. Diouana is treated in a subhuman manner, shown off at dinner parties as this token African prize, and then berated for not working hard enough at a job she never accepted to do in the first…

Robert Beksinski

Colonialism does not end with independence. When physical suppression ends, cultural suppression lingers on far longer - maybe forever. Once the myth of hierarchy has been sown, the damage is done. Black Girl shows this. Here, a young girl buys into the dream of France: the…

Stephen Gillespie

The neocolonial prison of usury and dehumanization is more than a physical and economic confinement, its barb-wired walls surround the mind as well.

Joshua Dysart

Director and writer Sembène Ousmane is considered to be the “father of African cinema” and I can see why. An interesting fact is that, at the time, Senegal had recently declared independence from French colonial rule in 1960 and, supposedly, before such an event, Africans…

noen

The first sub-Saharan film to reach an international audience, Black Girl addresses racism and the legacy of colonialism in both Africa and Europe. For this film alone director Ousmane Sembene is one of the most important filmmakers of the 20th century, and his film shares…

Cinemonster

Angry filmmaking at its absolute finest! A monumental piece of cinema.

Mark