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

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/978622

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.