Black Camera: "Faire boutique": Reframing Safi Faye's Place in Petit à Petit, by Jean Rouch by Beti Ellerson (Vol. 17, No. 1 (Fall 2025) )

  

Black Camera: An International Film Journal

Vol. 17, No. 1 (Fall 2025) 

"Faire boutique": Reframing Safi Faye's Place in Petit à Petit, by Jean Rouch

by Beti Ellerson

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2979/blc.00088

The article follows Safi Faye's pre-cineaste experience with the film Petit à Petit (1971), by Jean Rouch. A time during which the spirit of May 1968 and its philosophy "it is forbidden to forbid" had a profound impact on her life. It was this spirit that she instilled in her character Safi, a role that she created and interpreted. While Rouch designated the themes, the actors themselves improvised their own characters. Thus, Faye invented her personage Safi. Based on the long, three-episode, noncommercial version, which Rouch himself viewed as "the only valid, true version," the article proposes a reflection on Faye's contributions to and experiences during the making of the film. 

Black Camera: An International Film Journal, Issue 17.1 Fall 2025

Black Camera: An International Film Journal, Issue 17.1

https://muse.jhu.edu/issue/56164

 

Vol. 17, No. 1 Table of Contents:         

 

IN FOCUS:

The Future of African Filmmaking: A Roundtable Discussion

 By: Akin Adesọkan and Michael T. Martin

 

PEER-REVIEWED ARTICLES:

 

Filming Precarious Subjects: A Conversation with Amandine Gay and Enrico Bartolucci 

By: Jimia Boutouba

 

CLOSE-UP: 

SAMBIZANGA: AESTHETICS AND POLITICS IN SARAH MALDOROR’S FILM

 

Sambizanga (1972): Aesthetics and Politics in Sarah Maldoror’s Film: An Introduction

By: Gust Burns

Sambizanga Unfolded: Nationality, Translation, and Feminism in a Revolutionary Film 

By: Sofia Afonso Lopes

Sambizanga: The Thin Green Line Between Canons and Revolutions
By: Jennifer Blaylock
Anticolonial Public Service? Swedish Television and the Funding ofSambizanga
By: Christian Rossipal
Aesthetics of Liberation: Carceral Intimacies in Sarah Maldoror’s Sambizanga
By: Dineo Maine 
On Screening Sambizanga in Lagos: A Conversation by the Monangambee Film Collective
By: Alicia Abieyuwa Bergamelli, Chrystel Oloukoï and Esé Emmanuel
Reflections on Sarah Maldoror’s Sambizanga: An Interview with Annouchka de Andrade
By: Gust Burns

 

CLOSE-UP:

REVISITING SARA GÓMEZ
Revisiting Sara Gómez: An Introduction
By:Jamie Ann Rogers
Agnès Varda, Sara Gómez, and the Communist Semidocumentary 
By: Julia Alekseyeva
Reviving Gestures and Insect Life in the Films of Sara Gómez: Ethical and Aesthetic Issues of Digital Restoration
By: Rebecca Gordon

 

AFRICAN WOMEN IN CINEMA DOSSIER:
“Faire boutique”: Reframing Safi Faye’s place in Petit à Petit by Jean Rouch
By: Beti Ellerson

 
OLIVIER BARLET DOSSIER:
The Sembène and Vieyra Archives in Bloomington: An Interview with Alain Sembène, Jacques Vieyra, and Stéphane Vieyra
By: Olivier Barlet