ABOUT THE BLOGGER

- Beti Ellerson
- Director/Directrice, Centre for the Study and Research of African Women in Cinema | Centre pour l'étude et la recherche des femmes africaines dans le cinéma
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01 May 2025
The African Women in Cinema Blog Celebrates International Workers' Day : Safi Faye's "Fad,Jal"
22 February 2025
Remembering Safi Faye (1943-2023) - Safi Faye’s cinematic practice as womanist work
Remembering Safi Faye (1943-2023)
Safi Faye’s cinematic practice as womanist work*
Je ne suis pas du tout féministe. Je suis féminisante. Je defends le cas des femmes… I am not at all feminist. I am womanistic, I defend the condition of women…
Fad signifies ‘arrive’ and Jal means ‘work,’ ‘work’ because when you arrive at this farming village called Fad’jal, you must work. When you work, you’re happy, and if you don’t work, people will mock you.
I interpret Safi Faye’s “feminisant”—from the French word “femme”, feminist, female”—as doing womanist work. Womanist, itself an expression coined by afro-descendant women in order to reconceptualize western feminism as defined by white women, which often does not reflect the realities of women of color.
Safi Faye’s words invoke the often vexed relationship that Afro-descendant women and women of the
South have with Western feminism, fraught with a contentious past, spurned by those who reject its historical practices of exclusion, ethnocentrism and elitism by white women.
Hence by rejecting the feminist label but affirming “womanistic” as the practice of defending the cause of women, Safi Faye is exercising her agency by naming her own experience rather than accepting one based on another reality.
As a further matter, describing the actions of doing “womanist work” renegotiates the terms of this feminism—outlining the tenets of a conceptual framework toward an intersectional, interdisciplinary, and transnational methodology. In so doing, I use the second citation by Safi Faye to place emphasis on the praxis-based approach to her cinematic practice, as she states:
I investigate, inquire, and then I write, and I try to remain faithful to the rural world that I come from, as well as to Africa and the villagers. I admire people who live off the land. In Serer country, the coastal people to which I belong . . . are renowned for the energy they put into their work. The people live within a matriarchal society in which women have more importance than men. Men and women are free thanks to the fruits of their labor. The rural world, the theme that I chose and which corresponds to my cinematic vision, is timeless. It concerns all rural farmers, whether they are Japanese, Senegalese or Singaporean, since we’ve all been rural farmers at one time; the entire world comes from the countryside. I glorify the hard work rural farmers do to achieve food self-sufficiency.
Therefore, Safi Faye’s womanistic act of defending the cause of women is concomitant with her desire to contribute to the knowledge production of Africa and the safeguarding of its culture: "I do what I can for my Africa, to tell how beautiful Africa is."
05 December 2024
From Kaddu Beykat to Pumzi: Commemorating World Soil Day, 5 December
09 June 2024
Dr. Estrella Sendra discusses the Legacy of Safi Faye with The African Cinema Podcast
Dr. Estrella Sendra discusses the Legacy of Safi Faye with The African Cinema Podcast
Drawing directly from the article “”I dared to make a film: A tribute to the life and work of Safi Faye” Black Camera Fall 2023*, Dr. Estrella Sendra discusses the Legacy of Safi Faye with The African Cinema Podcast
https://open.spotify.com/episode/3KbfNderfGDcoERMVoP4Gt
*See link to Black Camera article by Beti Ellerson
https://africanwomenincinema.blogspot.com/2023/12/safi-faye-i-dared-to-make-a-film-tribute-to-her-life-and-work.html
Image: Beti Ellerson
22 February 2024
In memory of Safi Faye, 22 November 1943 - 22 February 2023, already a year has passed | À la memoire de Safi Faye, 22 novembre - 22 février 2023, un an déjà
Images: Beti Ellerson
Safi Faye has been regularly featured on the African Women in Cinema Blog since its inception 15 years ago. In addition to the recent in depth tribute to her life and work, articles include translated interviews, discussions of her film work, events that give homage to her and her work.
30 December 2023
08 September 2023
16 June 2023
04 May 2023
Safi Faye Memorial Talk - 'Women of African Cinema’ - Film at Lincoln Center - May 6 2023
12 April 2023
"I Dared To Make A Film": A Tribute To The Life And Work Of Safi Faye - Indiana University Cinema
26 March 2023
Tributes to - Hommages à Safi Faye (1943 - 2023)
23 March 2023
20 March 2023
01 March 2023
Remembering Safi Faye (1943-2023)
24 February 2023
Safi Faye : La Grande Référence - 1943-2023 - A Tribute, "I dared to make a film!"
14 January 2023
Safi Faye: Man sa yay | I, your mother - Berlinale Forum Special Fiktionsbescheinigung 2023
01 September 2022
Safi Faye's La Passante 50 years on: "I dared to make a film"
06 March 2022
12 August 2021
23 March 2021
27 May 2019
21 May 2018
17 May 2018
Safi Faye : “Fad,jal” (Cannes Classics 2018)
24 December 2017
25 November 2015
26 May 2010
30 December 2023
“I dared to make a film”: A Tribute to the Life and Work of Safi Faye by Beti Ellerson - Black Camera: An International Film Journal 15.1 (Fall 2023) - African Women in Cinema Dossier
My journey into African Women Cinema Studies began with my interviews of the women at Fespaco in 1997, Safi Faye was among them. I remember very vividly those moments I shared with Safi, she was laid-back, passionate, engaging, and funny. The film that resulted from those interviews, Sisters of the Screen, is an important part of that journey, and her words introduce it. She, without a doubt led the way for me. I have learned a great deal from her, her work, her cinematic practice and innovative ethnological methodology, the importance of listening, the primacy of voice, all of which I have incorporated in my own work. Indeed, as in her own filmmaking: the camera, the cameraman and I, were eyewitness to her story. Here twenty-seven years later, it is an honor to share this tribute.
Safi Faye was born in Dakar, Senegal, on November 22, 1943, and throughout her life embraced her Serer roots of the rural world. Raised in a large family—the second of five sisters and a brother, her parents emphasized the importance of formal education and encouraged their children to succeed academically. She received her teaching certificate from the Normal School of Rufisque and spent her tenure as a teacher in Dakar. As an official guide at the First World Festival of Black Arts held in Senegal in 1966, she was introduced to African cultures and learned about the significance of their contributions on a global scale. This was a turning point in her personal and professional development. During the event she would meet intellectuals from around the world, including anthropologist and cineaste Jean Rouch who would invite her to participate in his film. During the shooting, she would travel to Europe and other parts of Africa.
She often talked about receiving a French colonial education, which gave her more knowledge about France than about Africa, and the paradox of having to go to Europe to learn about her continent. In 1970 she went to Paris to study ethnology at the Sorbonne, from a desire to work on her own culture and traditions—she studied as well at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes. She completed her doctorate in 1979. As part of the curriculum at the Sorbonne she had recourse to the camera as an instrument of research. Having understood the significance of film as a visual record, she enrolled in the Louis Lumière Film School; there she “dared” to make a film, La Passante, in 1972. Other films followed, fourteen in total, notably the internationally acclaimed Kaddu Beykat (1975), Fad’jal (1979) and Mossane (1996). Using cinema as a tool for teaching and learning, Safi aimed to educate future generations of Africans about their origins, their history. The passion that she had for her continent and its people has been evident throughout her career as educator, ethnologist, filmmaker. She talked fondly of her beloved daughter, Zeïba, who was born in 1976; she was also a grandmother: “I am spending more and more time with them, and I enjoy it.”
On Feburary 22, 2023 she joined the ancestors, where she lays to rest in her paternal native village of Fadial. But rather than a library burning down—a famous citation of Amadou Hampâté Bâ that she quotes in her legendary film Fad’jal—her story will remain alive, passed on to the next generation, as we continue in the oral tradition, to say her name—and show her work.
Safi, may the earth rest lightly upon you.
Indeed, in the words of her compatriot Birago Diop, Safi Faye lives—through the sounds and whispers of the Serer country, through her daughter, her grandchildren, through our memories, through her films—the last of which invokes the Pangool ancestors.
May they guard and protect her.
This essay is a tribute to her life and work.
Table of contents:
The Oeuvres of Safi Faye
La Passante
Revanche
Kaddu Beykat | Peasant Letter
Fad'jal
Goob na ñu
Man sa yay
Les ames au soleil | Souls Under the Sun
Selbé et tant d'autres | Selbé, One Among Many
Trois ans cinq mois
Ambassades nourricières / Culinary Embassies
Racines noires / Black Roots
Elsie Haas, femme peintre et cinéaste d'Haiti
Tesito
Mossane
Safi Faye through a Womanistic Lens
Work as Leitmotif
Visualizing Oral Tradition: Giving Agency to the Voice of the Peasantry—The Duty of Memory
The Peasantry and the Production of Knowledge
Safi Faye’s Imaginary and the Western Gaze
Safi Faye Reclaiming Discourse on the Anthropology of Africa: The Dichotomies of Fact and the Fictional Imaginaire
Words on Cinematic Practice
For Whom Do I Make Films
Filming in Africa
The Politics of African Cinema
07 November 2023
08 September 2023
Safi Faye à l’affiche - Safi Faye in the Spotlight - 45è édition - Le Festival des 3 Continents - Nantes et en Loire-Atlantique 2023
45è Édition
Le Festival des 3 Continents - Nantes et en Loire-Atlantique
2023
https://www.3continents.com/fr/actu/affiche-2023-safi-faye/
Hommage à Safi Faye (Sénégal)
Cinéaste pionnière et première femme d’Afrique subsaharienne à réaliser un long métrage (Lettre paysanne, 1975 - Prix Georges Sadoul et Prix de la critique au Festival de Berlin), Safi Faye s’est éteinte en février dernier, au moment même où le Festival des 3 Continents s’apprêtait à l’inviter à présenter l’intégralité de son travail à Nantes. Formée à l’ethnologie à l’EHESS puis à l’école Louis Lumière, elle quitte son poste d’enseignante pour se consacrer au septième art après avoir rencontré Jean Rouch qui lui confie un rôle dans Petit à Petit. Autrice d’une œuvre à la forte empreinte documentaire, Safi Faye saisit les outils du cinéma non seulement comme ceux d’une possible émancipation féminine, sociale et coloniale mais aussi pour rendre à une tradition orale, gestuelle et terrienne sa force et son histoire. Cinéaste fidèle à son Sérère natal, Safi Faye est l’incarnation pleine et entière d’une africanité face aux défis de son temps.
Pioneering cineaste and the first woman of SubSahara Africa to make a feature film (Peasant Letter, 1975 - Prix Georges Sadoul et Prix de la critique au Festival de Berlin), Safi Faye passed away last February at the same moment that the Festival des 3 Continents was preparing to invite her to present her body of work in Nantes. Trained in ethnology at the EHESS and the Louis Lumière film school, she left her position as teacher to focus on the Seventh Art after meeting Jean Rouch who presented her with a role in Petit à Petit. Author of a work with a strong documentary footprint, Safi Faye seized the tools of cinema not only as a possible means of social, colonial and women’s emancipation, but also to restore the vitality and history of an oral, gestural and community-based tradition. A cineaste loyal to her native Serer roots, Safi Faye is the full and true embodiment of Africanness, facing the challenges of her time.
Avec Safi Faye | With Safi Faye
France - Documentaire - Couleur - 19′
In partnership with INA the extracts of interviews of Safi Faye introduces different sections of the homage to the cineaste. The screening of Ambassades nourricières the 3rd of December is preceded by the entirety of the archives.
En partenariat avec l’INA (Institut national de l’audiovisuel), des extraits d’interviews de Safi Faye introduisent différentes séances de l’hommage à la cinéaste. La projection d’Ambassades nourricières le 3 décembre est précédée par l’ensemble de ces archives.
***
These interviews give us the opportunity to hear to Safi Faye, a rare moment, at the time of the presentation of Mossane at the Cannes Film Festival in 1996, and the theatrical release in 1998, which coincides with the retrospective at the International Festival of Film de Femmes de Créteil dedicated to her. Safi Faye is garnering rather late media attention, as Mossane is her last film. This perhaps explains the sense of wariness that one may perceive in her voice, and in her expression. But what we hear above all is a mixture of humility and audacity, affirmation and restraint, the same mixture which shapes the tone of her films. AR
Ces entretiens nous donnent à entendre la parole, rare, de Safi Faye, au moment de la présentation de Mossane au Festival de Cannes en 1996, puis de la sortie en salles du film en 1998, qui coïncide avec la rétrospective que le Festival International du Film de Femmes de Créteil consacre à la cinéaste. Safi Faye accède à une médiatisation bien tardive, puisque Mossane est son dernier film. Cela explique peut-être la pointe de méfiance que l’on perçoit dans sa voix, et les regards en coin qu’elle distribue. Mais ce qu’on y entend surtout, c’est un mélange d’humilité et d’audace, d’affirmation et de retenue, ce même mélange qui façonne le ton de ses films. AR
***
Le Festival des 3 Continents a le plaisir de vous révéler l’affiche de sa 45ème édition qui se tiendra à Nantes du 24 novembre au 3 décembre 2023 à Nantes et en Loire-Atlantique.
L’affiche réalisée par le studio graphique Lesbeauxjours représente un portrait de la réalisatrice sénégalaise Safi Faye à laquelle le festival rend hommage à travers une rétrospective intégrale de son œuvre.
“Cinéaste pionnière et première femme d’Afrique subsaharienne à avoir réalisé un long-métrage (Lettre paysanne, 1975 – Prix Georges Sadoul et Prix de la Critique à Berlin), Safi Faye est disparue en février dernier à l’heure où nous nous apprêtions à l’inviter ce mois de novembre à présenter l’intégralité de son travail au Festival des 3 Continents, déclare Jérôme Baron, directeur artistique du festival. Un hommage se substitue désormais à cette invitation à laquelle d’un geste de la main, le sourire montant dans les yeux, la cinéaste semble répondre depuis une salle de montage où elle travaillait.”
De ses débuts comme actrice chez Jean Rouch à la singularité d’une œuvre à la forte empreinte documentaire, Safi Faye aura saisi les outils du cinéma non seulement comme ceux d’une possible émancipation féminine, sociale et coloniale mais aussi pour rendre à une tradition orale, gestuelle et terrienne sa force et son histoire. Africaine, paysanne fidèle à son Sérère natal, cinéaste engagée, femme libre, Safi Faye aura moins été une personnalité aux multiples facettes que l’incarnation pleine et entière d’une africanité face au défi de son temps.
Les grands axes de la programmation du Festival des 3 Continents seront rendus publics prochainement et la Sélection officielle révélée le 9 novembre 2023, lors d’une conférence de presse.
***
45th Edition · Director Safi Faye in the Spotlight
The Festival des 3 Continents is delighted to unveil the poster for its 45th edition, which will be held in Nantes, France, from November 24th to December 3rd 2023.
The poster, designed by Lesbeauxjours graphic agency, features a portrait of the Senegalese director Safi FAYE, to whom the festival is paying tribute.
"She was a pioneer in filmmaking and the first woman from sub-Saharan Africa to make a feature film (Lettre paysanne, 1975 - Georges Sadoul Prize and Berlin Critics' Prize). Safi Faye passed away last February just as we were about to invite her to present all her work at the Festival des 3 Continents, says Jérôme BARON, the festival's artistic director. A tribute now replaces this invitation, to which the filmmaker seems to respond with a wave of her hand, a smile rising in her eyes, from an editing room where she used to work"
From her beginnings working as an actress with Jean ROUCH to the singularity of a body of work with a strong documentary imprint, Safi Faye has seized the tools of cinema not only as those of a possible feminine, social and colonial emancipation, but also to give back to an oral, gestural and earthy tradition its strength and its history. An African woman, a peasant loyal to her native Sérère, a committed filmmaker and a free woman, Safi Faye was not so only a multi-faceted personality but also the full and complete embodiment of an African identity facing up to the challenges of her time.
Films
La Passante (1972) sous reserve - subject to confirmation
Lettre Paysanne ( Kaddu Beykat) 1975
Fad'jal (Grand-Père, Raconte Nous) 1979
Moi, Ta Mère (Man Say Yay) 1980
Les âmes au soleil (Souls under the Sun) 1982
Ambassades Nourricières (1984)
Mossane (1996)
Avec Safi Faye (1979, 1998)
Leçon de cinémas avec Safi Faye (2008)
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