Une si longue lettre, un film d'Angèle Diabang, une adaptation du roman de Mariama Bâ | So Long a Letter, a film by Angele Diabang, an adaptation of the novel by Mariama Bâ

Une si longue lettre, un film d'Angèle Diabang, une adaptation du roman de Mariama Bâ  | So Long a Letter, a film by Angele Diabang, an adaptation of the novel by Mariama Bâ

Synopsis

Mariée depuis 25 ans avec Modou, un avocat, Rama, enseignante élève ses cinq enfants avec brio et humilité. Éduquée et indépendante, elle est emblématique d’une femme africaine marchant vers la modernité. Son époux décide de prendre une seconde épouse, Binetou, 20 ans, la meilleure amie de sa fille ainée, la désillusion est cruelle. Rama devra lutter contre la mère de Binetou. Commence une lutte sans merci où s’affrontent tradition et modernité. Le film évoquera sa descente aux enfers : les vicissitudes économiques, sa lutte acharnée pour conserver sa villa et défendre l’héritage de ses enfants, sa solitude face à cette situation. Il sera aussi le témoin de sa reconstruction.

 

Ramatoulaye, headmistress of a primary school in Dakar and the mother of seven children, has been married to Modou for 30 years, and is shocked when he decides to take a second wife, 20-year-old Binetou. A merciless battle between tradition and modernity ensues, contrasting very different views of women’s roles in contemporary African society.

 

Bio
Angèle Diabang est formée au Forut Média Centre de Dakar (2003), à la FEMIS à Paris et à la Filmakademie en Allemagne. En 2005, elle réalise Mon beau sourire son premier film, salué par la critique internationale et plusieurs fois primé. Suivent quatre autres documentaires, dont Congo, un médecin pour sauver les femmes, premier film sur le Docteur Denis Mukwege, prix Nobel de la paix 2018. Angèle passe à la fiction avec Ma coépouse bien-aimée (Clermont Ferrand 2019, meilleur scénario au festival Émergence du Togo) et Un air de kora primé Poulain de bronze au FESPACO 2019, best African short film 2019 au (AMAA) African Movie Academy Awards, meilleur court-métrage à des festivals au Burundi, au Rwanda, au Bénin (2 fois), à Dakar et au Togo ; Nuits en or des Césars 2020. Elle remporte aussi le prix de la meilleure réalisatrice de la CEDEAO (Afrique de l’ouest) au FESPACO 2019. En 2021, Angèle fait partie de l’équipe des 3 producteurs de la série documentaire Africa Direct pour la télé Aljazeera English. Avec Karoninka, sa société de production crée en 2006 au Sénégal, Angèle a produit une quinzaine de films au Mali, Togo, Congo RDC, Cap-Vert, Rwanda, Gabon, Sénégal, France et Allemagne. Elle est coproductrice de Twist à Bamako de Robert Guédiguian. De mars 2014 à septembre 2016, Angèle a été la Présidente du Conseil d’Administration de la SODAV, société de gestion collective du droit d’auteur et des droits voisins du Sénégal. (Source OuiCoprod) 

 

From Kaddu Beykat to Pumzi: Commemorating World Soil Day, 5 December

The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) Commemorates World Soil Day on 5 December:

Soils have been neglected for too long. We fail to connect soil with our food, water, climate, biodiversity and life. We must invert this tendency and take up some preserving and restoring actions. The World Soil Day campaign aims to connect people with soils and raise awareness on their critical importance in our lives.

The environment has long been a theme that African women in cinema have addressed in their work, from Kaddu Beykat (1975) by Senegalese Safi Faye to Pumzi (2009) by Wanuri Kahiu of Kenya. 

In Safi Faye's Kaddu Beykat the story unfolds through the backdrop of an ongoing drought in the village, causing economic upheaval as groundnuts are its sole crop. In the film, Safi Faye depicts the hardships and problems of a Senegalese peasantry bent under the yoke of an agricultural system dominated by groundnut cultivation. A culture that is imposed on them to the detriment of the food crops that allowed them to live. She challenges the authorities, but also proposes a reflection on the future through reforestation and the protection of nature.

In the 1990s, Burkinabé Franceline Oubda directed her camera on themes around the environment in her documentary film, Femmes de Yatanga, which explores the initiatives of the Association Six 'S' ("L'Association Six 'S'"), based in Burkina Faso. The Association Six 'S' in French illustrates the first letter of the words, all beginning with 's', which describes the objective of the group--savoir se servir de la saison seche en savane au Sahel (to know how to make use of the dry season in the savanna of the Sahel). Her film Femmes de Yatanga portrays the women's efforts to survive the desertification that is threatening the region by using alternative methods of rearing sheep.

Wanuri Kahiu was inspired by the late Nobel Prize laureate and compatriot Wangari Maathai, whose Greenbelt Movement challenged Africans to replenish the earth by planting trees, combatting deforestation and soil erosion.

Talking about what motivated her to make the film Pumzi, Wanuri Kahiu had this to say: “Wangari Maathai has been talking about this issue for years and we never heed her advice so I am not here to tell people to conserve the environment alone, I am showing them what will happen if we don’t. I show a land where people recycle their own water to survive.” (nation.co.ke)

And thus the African Women in Cinema Blog celebrates the importance of soil, as it highlights the work of African women in cinema who endeavor to raise the public's awareness of soil and its importance to humanity and the environment. 

Safi Faye à l’affiche - Safi Faye in the Spotlight - 45è édition - Le Festival des 3 Continents - Nantes et en Loire-Atlantique 2023

La réalisatrice Safi Faye à l’Affiche

Director Safi Faye in the Spotlight
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)

Mame Woury Thioubou: the pen and the camera, her tools for observing and describing her world

Mame Woury Thioubou:

the pen and the camera, her tools for observing and describing her world

Source: https://lescommeres.sn/film-documentaire-le-senegal-a-bien-du-talent/. Published 3 July 2023. Translated from French by Beti Ellerson

Mame Woury Thioubou, journalist and filmmaker, is just as much at ease with the pen as with a camera. Tools that allow her to observe and describe her world, to share feelings. An exercise that has earned her honors worldwide. 

At a time when movie theaters are dying in Senegal, one of its daughters lives and brings to life, the 7th art. Mame Woury Thioubou is now a name to remember in the Senegalese cinemascape. A journalist known and appreciated for her work in the Economic and Culture pages of the Quotidien daily for more than a decade, is also a talented documentary filmmaker. 

“The two professions are rather complementary. At the newspaper I work with words and when I make a film, I do so with images—I feel emotions that I cannot render in writing" she admits. “I felt the need to find another form of expression and by a happy coincidence, I came across the creative documentary program at Gaston Berger University in Saint-Louis (Ugb).”

After several years of training there, her artistic vision takes flight. And so a star was born. From the start, her new passion earned her distinctions. In 2009, while she was still pursuing the Master's in Creative Documentary Filmmaking, her first student work, Ébène, was named best film at the (Fifq) Festival International du Film de quartier de Dakar (Dakar International Neighborhood Film Festival) in 2009. She is well on her way to imprinting her name in the annals of Senegalese cinema.

From a desire to engage head-on with the social issues of Senegalese society, Mame Woury directs her first medium-length film Agora Braille which focuses on the inclusion of the blind in the Senegalese school system. Other productions follow. In the world of culture and festivals, Mame Woury Thioubou has distinguished herself both at home and abroad. From Gorée to Togo, passing through Madagascar or France, her cinematographic productions have garnered distinctions.

 

In 2019, she won the prize for best documentary feature at the Vues d'Afrique Festival in Montreal, for the film Fifiiré en pays Cuballo; it also received the mention of the juries at the Festival Images et vie (Dakar) and at the Urusaro Festival from Kigali, as well as awards for best international documentary at the Yaoundé Black Screen Festival (Cameroon), at the Luxor African Film Festival (Egypt), at the Mostra de Cinéma Africana in Salvador de Bahia.

 

The number of distinctions that Fifiiré en pays Cuballo has received testifies to the quality of the work, but also to its meaning. It is a story drawn from the depths of her origins. “I belong to the traditional fishing people of the Senegal River Valley. My people have always chased crocodiles and hippos from the river using mystical formulas. Today, with the changes affecting the river, the crocodiles have disappeared; my people are now only fishermen and yet there are not many fish left. " And the most distressing thing for the filmmaker is that "out of the ruins of these mystical beliefs and the warrior exploits of our ancestors, still carried along by the song of the Pekaan, the life of the inhabitants of my community are plunged into poverty. Hope remains, sustained by the epic story of the women who could rebuild the river” she says.

Does Mame Woury Thioubou see herself in these achievements? She admits: “At first, my films were about me and my family. It is very often through this door that one encounters the documentary." For example, her first film, Face à Face (Face to Face) deals with beauty, the traumas of her childhood. An outlet to “overcome a lot of things. And at the same time, it doesn't only help me, as there is always someone who lives the same situation and who, by watching the film, draws from it the requisite strength to move forward…That is one of the most satisfying aspects of documentary filmmaking. Putting words to pain and emotions and helping people get better,” she says.

In her cinema, she also wants to show the hidden face of the world, such as the reality of illegal emigration, visualized in 5 Etoiles (5 stars). “We often talk about the dangers of crossing the desert and the Mediterranean. But what is not talked about as much is what happens once the migrants arrive at their destination. In this place called 5 Etoiles, Malians, Senegalese, Guineans, and others, find themselves trapped in their dreams. Then begins a new fight under the gaze of Governor Faidherbe,” she explains. This production was awarded the Bronze Tanit at the Carthage Film Festival in 2019. It also earned Mame Woury a distinction at the Festival Film Femmes Afrique in Dakar in 2020, and, among others, was selected, for the official selection of Fespaco 2021.

Very conscious of the myriad issues in her society, Mame Woury Thioubou aims to raise public awareness. Giving a social dimension to her documentaries, which resonate as an echo of the emotions and problems of her environment. "We want to give our vision of reality," such as with the medium-length film on prisons: Rebeuss, Chambre 11, which relates the story of two young prisoners who died from electrocution at the Rebeuss Central Prison, right in the center of Dakar. The film, which recently won an award in Canada, talks about prison conditions in Senegal. “My objective is above all to encourage debate on this subject, to initiate a reflection that could lead to improving our detention sites” insists Mame Woury Thioubou.  

Focus Safi Faye & Khady Sylla - Gëstu Naataal i Jigeen - Festival Africain de film | recherche féministes | African Feminist Film Festival - 16-18 06 2023 - Gorée, Senegal

Focus Safi Faye & Khady Sylla

Gëstu Naataal i Jigeen

African Feminist Film Festival

Festival Africain de film & recherche féministes 

16-18 06 2023

https://cinefemfest.com/2023-festival-focus-safi-faye-khady-sylla/

Cine Fem Fest à Gorée - Warkha TV

 

The objective of this festival is to research and celebrate African cinema from a feminist angle. The 2023 edition celebrates the work of two pioneering Senegalese filmmakers: Safi Faye and Khady Sylla.

This feminist cinema festival-symposium, the first of its kind in Senegal, will be held from June 16 to 18 in Gorée Island, Senegal. It will be organized over three days in the form of a retreat with a carefully selected small group.

The symposium-festival will combine film screenings with academic-style presentations and debates to use action-research and participatory pedagogies to contribute to popular feminist education by promoting the work of these two female filmmakers and writers, and others such as directors Mame Woury Thioubou, Diabou Bessane, and Mariama Sylla, all feminists who are still unknown to the general Senegalese public.

***

L’objectif de ce festival est de rechercher et de célébrer le cinéma africain sous un angle féministe. L’édition 2023 célèbre le travail de deux cinéastes sénégalais pionniers : Safi Faye et Khady Sylla.

Ce festival-colloque du cinéma féministe, le premier du genre au Sénégal, se tiendra du 16 au 18 juin sur l’île de Gorée au Sénégal. Il sera organisé sur trois jours sous forme de retraite avec un petit groupe soigneusement sélectionné.

Le symposium-festival combinera des projections de films avec des présentations et des débats de type académique pour utiliser la recherche-action et les pédagogies participatives pour contribuer à l’éducation féministe populaire en valorisant le travail de ces deux cinéastes et écrivaines, et d’autres telles que les réalisatrices Mame Woury Thioubou, Diabou Bessane et Mariama Sylla, toutes féministes encore méconnues du grand public sénégalais. 

Mame Woury Thioubou : Rebeuss, Chambre 11 - Selection Officielle - Vues d’Afrique 39e Festival International de Cinéma 2023

Mame Woury Thioubou

Rebeuss, Chambre 11

Selection Officielle - Vues d’Afrique 39e Festival International de Cinéma 2023

Sénégal - 41min - documentaire - 2021

Synopsis 

Dans la nuit du Mardi 27 Août 2019, Cheikh Ndiaye, âgé de 18 ans et Babacar Mané, 19 ans meurent dans leur cellule de la prison de Rebeuss à Dakar. Une tragédie qui ravive un débat latent sur les conditions de vie dans la plus grande prison du pays. Cheikh Ndiaye et Babacar Mané ont perdu la vie dans des conditions effroyables et seulement pour des délits mineurs. Leur mort a suscité pendant un moment un débat sur la condition carcérale...

During the night of Tuesday 27 August 2019, 18-years-old Cheikh Ndiaye, and 19-years-old Babacar Mané, die in their cell at the Rebeuss prison in Dakar. A tragedy that revived a smoldering debate on the living conditions in the country’s large prisons. Cheikh Ndiaye and Babacar Mané lost their lives under horrifying conditions and for only minor offenses. At the time, their deaths sparked off a passionate discussion on conditions in the prison environment.

Bio

Après une Maîtrise en Géographie de l’Université Cheikh Anta Diop de Dakar, Mame Woury Thioubou choisit le journalisme. En 2009, elle intègre le Master de réalisation de Documentaire de création de l’Université Gaston Berger de Saint Louis (UGB) où elle réalise son film de fin d’études « Face à Face ». Désireuse de porter les combats de la société sénégalaise, elles’engage dans la réalisation de son premier moyen métrage « Agora Braille » qui traite de l’inclusion des non-voyants dans le système scolaire sénégalais.

Mame Woury Thioubou is a journalist by training. In 2009, she enrolled in the Master of Creative Documentary program at the Gaston Berger University of Saint Louis. Face à face, her graduation film which she made in 2009, won the l’Ebène du Meilleur documentaire au Festival du Film de quartier (best documentary). In 2011, she directed Une journée avec Ngoné as part of a series in collaboration with Arte. In 2016, she directed her first medium-length film, Agora Braille, which deals with the education of blind children in Senegal focusing on the struggle of an emblematic woman, Aïssata Pouye. In 2018, she directed her first feature documentary Fiifiiré en Pays Cuballo. 

Ndèye Fatou Fall: Walk On My Own - Women’s Voices Now Film Festival 2023 winner for Best Youth Documentary

Ndèye Fatou Fall

Walk On My Own

Women’s Voices Now Film Festival 2023

Winner for Best Youth Documentary

Ndèye Fatou Fall

Walk On My Own

Senegal - 30 min - 2019

In her film, 13-year-old Ndèye Fatou Fall tells how her life has been affected by profound changes that occurred in her village a few years before she was born.

“My film is about the changes that have occurred in my community. Today, these social changes are of great importance, especially for children. If I’d been born in 1990, I would be married by now. Many communities still do harmful practices, like child marriage. Tradition is very strong, and to abandon these practices is difficult. When people from other countries watch the film, if they are still practicing child marriage and female genital cutting, they will wake up after they see this film and will want to stop doing those things.” – Ndèye Fatou Fall 

Safi Faye : La Grande Référence - 1943-2023 - A Tribute, "I dared to make a film!"

African Women in Cinema Collection

Safi Faye : La Grande Référence - 1943-2023

A tribute to her life and work

"J'ai osez faire un film!"

"I dared to make a film!"

Safi Faye has joined the ancestors, she passed away on Wednesday 22 February in Paris. "Na Touti" as she is called by her loved ones, will be buried in her native paternal village of Fadial. In a first tribute to her, some reflections on her life and work and excerpts from an interview with her at Fespaco in 1997--Beti Ellerson

When tracing a timeline of the history of African women of the moving image, we can better appreciate Safi Faye's place as a pioneer. Moreover, it is not by chance that the person recognized as the "father" of African cinema—Ousmane Sembene is also Senegalese. The time span between the emergence of these two firsts is relatively short: Sembene made his first film in 1963, while Faye's debut film was released in 1972. Ousmane Sembene released La Noire de...(Black Girl), in 1966, the year that Safi Faye was initiated into the world of international culture during the First World Festival of Black Arts in Dakar, Senegal, there she realized how little she actually knew about Africa. There she began her connections with people and places that led her to her career path. She also became aware of the importance of the preservation of African history and culture, a theme that was omnipresent at the festival and became a leitmotif in her work. She describes that event as an expression of national energy and recalls her desire to meet the intellectuals and researchers who had gathered there. Her encounter with French ethnologist and filmmaker Jean Rouch at the festival was important, since it allowed her to travel abroad as an "actor" after May 1968for the film Petit à Petit. She returned to her position as school teacher in Senegal after the film was completed, though soon after she would leave for France to study ethnology at the Sorbonne in 1970.

Jean Rouch is often described as Safi Faye's mentor because of similar elements in their work—anthropology and cinéma-verité documentary filmmaking. However, Safi Faye herself refutes this interpretation, that he influenced her evolution into filmmaking and her study of ethnology. While film critics and historians have drawn these conclusions, she views her decisions as more intuitive, opting for ethnology in order to better understand the continent, which she did not know very well. Moreover, one significant component of the ethnology curriculum at the Sorbonne where she was a student, was the use of the camera as an instrument for field research, there she discovered that the camera was an important tool for comprehending what she observed. She also became aware of the importance of film as a means of communication with the predominantly oral people of her country. She realized that even though they did not read literature and books, the 70 percent of the population that was non-literate knew how to read images.

In 1972 she enrolled in the Louis Lumière Film School in Paris. From the start of her filmmaking career in France, Safi Faye's visibility as an African woman was immediate. She recalls that it was relatively easy for her to enter into the profession. Since she was the only African woman making films; a lot of attention was given to her and her work. At the end of that year she completed her first film, La Passante, which she defines it as an intimist work. She recalls that she initially filmed for her own pleasure, but later her filmmaking interest evolved around her research. It is significant that in her film, she acts as the main character and uses Paris as the setting. In a very individual way, the film echoes her own experiences as a woman "divided between two cultures—French and Senegalese," yet defining herself as neither, "a Westernized or liberated woman". Faye's poetic sensibility, viewed early in her filmmaking with La Passante, evolved into an important element of her cinematic écriture. Beyond the film's poetic incantation, Faye attempted to deal with cultural diversity expressed in a woman's encounter with two men from different cultures; particularly in the way they experience food. With the European man, she dines at a restaurant. With the African man, she prepares a meal at home. They both live out their fantasies with her according to their cultural habits related to eating and cuisine. Food is explored as a medium of culture, a theme Faye also investigated later in the documentary, Ambassades nourricières.

While Safi Faye is a proponent of women's rights, she does not use the term "feminist" to describe herself or her work but rather sees herself as “feminisant”, doing womanist work by affirming women's rights and opportunities. She looks for the African specificities regarding women and their experiences, noting that many Western feminist issues are unrelated to African realities. While stating that "phallocracy is universal; she emphasizes that there are women in African societies who want to change their situations. Safi Faye has rejected the woman-focused element of Western feminist filmmaking, which has often privileged only women's lives. She emphasizes the very different experiences of African women and what she views as the more important issues regarding the agricultural sector and its ability to sustain itself. It is much more effective to present women in the context of their experiences and society. She does, however, call attention to the empowering aspect of a matriarchal society, where women are raised to be independent and self-sufficient. Hence, she attempts to evoke the contrasting aspects in women's lives, for example, with the character Mossane, whom she describes as "living between rebellion and effacement." Likewise, her film Selbé et tant d'autres (Selbé and So Many Others, 1981) describes village women left behind after men have migrated to cities in search of work. Selbé works hard to raise her children but finds herself alone in this endeavor, despite the fact that she has a husband, and she comes to understand her power when she relies only on her own strength.

Though modest in her acknowledgment of her role as "pioneer;' Faye recognizes that other women respect her accomplishments. When asked about her role as a "woman filmmaker;' she does not make a distinction between "Safi as a man or Safi as a woman" –to her, they are one. She emphasizes the similar problems that African men and women encounter as filmmakers; however, she also notes that it has been especially difficult to attract women to filmmaking.

Even when the themes in her films have not focused on women’s issues, they reflect a perceptible woman’s sensibility. There may not be a clear distinction between how Faye as a woman makes films compared to how a man would do so, but Mossane projects a female subjectivity in the way the female characters are assigned agency. Moreover, it shows a very distinctive interpretation of female sensuality and a specific emphasis on the female protagonist.

Safi Faye’s interest in anthropology and the visualization on film of experiences in her native village has continued throughout her career. While her earlier films privileged the documentary format in order to foreground social, political and economic realities of the village, Mossane, is a completely fictionalized saga of the eponymous protagonist who is the “most beautiful girl in the world.” Woven into the story of a fourteen-year-old girl and the myriad experiences she faces at that age is a fictionalized Serer myth that every two hundred years, a girl is condemned by her beauty to a tragic destiny. Mossane is so stunning that her beauty haunts even the Pangool, ancestral spirits of the Serer. In the end, through the arms of Mamanguedj, she is returned to the seashore where the ancestors live, the only place where she may be protected.

Refusing to focus only on the traditional aspects of African cultures, Safi Faye renounces the reductive tradition/modernity dichotomy that many Western viewers perceive in the portrayal of resistance to beliefs and customs. She does not offer a moral to the story but rather shows that tradition and modernity are undifferentiated in the reality of today’s Africa. For Safi Faye, Mossane is an adolescent as any other: adolescence is a time of confusion, and resistance to the wishes of parents prevails. Faye would view Mossane as a universal story within the specificities of an African culture and interpreted from an African perspective.

Such tensions and debates that center on interpretations of “documentary” versus “fiction” and “reality” versus “fantasy” appear to be the basis for Safi Faye’s refusal to make these delineations. As a filmmaker, she views life as the story— unlike western filmmakers who try to tell a story. Safi Faye considers her works as documents, oral reportage. Thus, her films are records, texts, or correspondence, especially in the dialogic sense of an exchange between interlocutors—the visual text, the interpreters in the story, and the viewer. Faye does not distinguish between fiction and documentary, she does not see linear progression in her work from documentary to fiction or in terms of thematic evolution over time.

What has been constant throughout Safi Faye's career has been to represent the realities of Africa. Based on research of her native village, in Kaddu Beykat (Peasant Letters, 1975) she highlighted the economic upheaval caused by the imposition of the groundnut monoculture, giving voice to inhabitants as they recount their stories in Kaddu Beykat (Peasant Letters, 1975). In Fad’jal (Come and Work, 1979), Safi Faye recalls Amadou Hampaté Ba’s well-known phrase: “When an elder dies in Africa, it is as if a library has burned down,” as she portrayed the richness of African oral tradition and the importance to future generations that people learn and pass on their history.

Using films as a tool for teaching and learning, Safi Faye aimed to teach future generations of Africans about their origins. The passion that she had for her continent and its people has been evident throughout her career as teacher, anthropologist, filmmaker: I do what I can for my Africa, to tell how beautiful Africa is, and show that the people will not disappear, even if one forgets us.

From “Africa Through A Woman's Eyes: Safi Faye's Cinema by Beti Ellerson. In Françoise Pfaff, Focus on African Films. 2004.

Excerpts from an interview with Safi Faye by Beti Ellerson at Fespaco in 1997

Safi, You hold the title of “Dean of African Women Filmmakers.” What do you think of this title that has been bestowed upon you?

 

I don't mind having it. Fate had it that I was the first woman to make films; I accept the role as such. However, it leaves me neither hot nor cold.

 

Do you feel in some way a model for the women who follow you?

 

Yes, the women who follow show a great deal of consideration for me. They respect me because I try to do my work as a filmmaker by giving my best, which, I suppose, commands respect. But also, the Senegalese people feel the same way. They call me the “National Safi.” However, those are not the things that I am concerned about or even think about.

 

What was it like during the time when you began in the 1970’s?

 

I did not come to the cinema by chance. I studied ethnology at the Sorbonne. We had access to cinematographic equipment once a week and had to learn how to use it. I realized that in order to be more efficient, I should go to film school. That’s why I went to L'Ecole Louis Lumière, one of the best film schools in France, in Paris. I learned like everyone else—I was the only African woman there—how to handle a camera, and I became familiar with how to use the cinematographic equipment.

 

At the end of the first year, I dared to make a little film [La Passante]. It was mainly to put myself to the test, for me to know whether I had learned cinematography well or not. That is how I came to learn filmmaking; it was very easy during those years. I made the film in 1972. Right away, everybody began to talk: “There is an African woman who is making films.” It was easy for people to hear about me because I was the first to appear on the scene. It was by chance and by choice that I made this little film, a little film, rather intimist, that I made for myself. Afterwards, out of curiosity, people began to ask about the film.

 

Your film Mossane is very striking and very touching. It treats the themes of beauty, virtue, and sensuality. In many ways, the film language is very different from your other films, in the manner in which you tell the story. Could you talk about the themes of Mossane and its evolution? What inspired you towards the idea of Mossane?

 

All my other films were half-fiction, half-documentary. Since I worked with the rural population, it was not possible to arrange the community and its people to fit within the story line of my films.  Only in Mossane was I able to adapt the community and the people to the story that I had imagined.

 

I don't know how a film is born.  It's an idea that comes and then I begin to work on it. I had been working on Mossane since 1982, I was while cooking, getting dressed, taking a bath, and everywhere I went. During that time, I made little films that were commissioned, which allowed me to earn a living. I don't know how Mossane was born. All that I know is that I have a daughter, my only child, whom I cherish. And perhaps because of these feelings I wanted to cherish Mossane and make her the most beautiful, the purest and most virtuous.

Some moments in the life and work of Safi Faye (ongoing and continuing)

1943 - Born in Dakar

1963 - Begins teaching in Dakar after receiving her teaching certificate

1966 - Served as a hostess at the Premier Festival Mondial des Arts Nègres, Dakar

1968 - Begins participation as actor in Jean Rouch's Petit-à-Petit traveling to Cote d'Ivoire, France, Niger, Switzerland, the film was released in 1970

1970 - Studies ethnology at the Sorbonne (she stated in our interview) and Ecole des Hautes Études in Paris.

1972 - Begins studies in filmmaking at the Louis Lumière Film School, Paris.

- Completes student film, La Passante (The Woman Passerby). 10 min.

- Begins filming Kaddu Beykat (Peasant Letter).

1973 - Completes collective film, Revanche (Revenge). 15 min.

1975 - Release of film, Kaddu Beykat. 95 min.

Receives award at the Festival International du Film de l’Ensemble Francophone (FIFEF), Geneva, Switzerland.

1976 - Kaddu Beykat receives the Georges Sadoul Prize, France.

- Special award, 5th Pan-African Film Festival of Ouagadougou (FESPACO), Burkina Faso.

- International Film Critics Award, Berlin Film Festival, Germany.

- Daughter, Zeiba is born.

1977 - Completes studies in ethnology

1979 - Receives doctorate in ethnology

- Release of film, Fad'jal (Come and Work). 108 min.

- Selected for “Un Certain Regard,” Cannes Film Festival, France.

- Release of film, Goob na ñu (The Harvest Is In). 30 min.

- Spends the academic years from 1979-1981 at the faculty of the Freie Universität in Berlin as a guest professor

- Studies video production in Berlin, Germany.

- Begins film, Trois ans cinq mois (Three Years, Five Months).

1980 - Completes film, Man Sa Yay (I, Your Mother). ZDF production, Germany. 60 min.

Fad'jal receives award at Carthage Film Festival, Tunisia.

1981 - Release of film, Les Ames au soleil (Souls Under the Sun) commissioned by the United Nations. 27 min.

1982 - Release of film, Selbé et tant d'autres (Selbé and Many Others). «As Women See It» Series, UNICEF and Faust Films Production. 30 min.

1983 - Completes film, Trois ans cinq mois. Daad Production, Germany. 30 min.

Selbé et tant d'autres wins Special Prize, Leipzig Film Festival, Germany, and Vancouver Film Festival, Canada.

1984 - Completes film, Ambassades nourricières (Culinary Embassies). «Regards sur la France» Series, FR3 Television, France. 58 mins.

1985 - Completes film, Racines noires (Black Roots) for Télé-Europ and FR3 television, France. 11 min.

- Completes film, Elsie Haas, femme peintre et cinéaste d'Haiti (Elsie Haas, Woman Painter and Filmmaker from Haiti), FR3 Television, France. 8 min.

- Member of Jury at the 10th International Film Festival of India, New Delhi

1989 - Completes film, Tesito, commissioned by Comité Catholique contre la Faim et pour le Développement (CCFD). 27 min. 

1990 - Completes the shooting of Mossane.

1990-1995 - Legal proceedings for film rights for Mossane.

1996 - Release of Mossane. 105 min.

Mossane selected for for “Un Certain Regard,” Cannes Film Festival, France. 

1998 - Safi Faye Retrospective and Gala, Festival International de Films de Femmes, Créteil, France

2001 - Member of Jury, Fespaco

2006 - African Film Summit, South Africa, Panelist.

-Hommage to Safi Faye and Nour-Eddine Sail at the festival de Khouribga (Maroc) 

2010 - Tribute to Safi Faye at the 32nd Festival International de Films de Femmes Créteil, France

2015 - Prix Safi Faye pour la meilleure réalisatrice - Safi Faye Award for the best woman filmmaker - JCC - Journées Cinématographiques de Carthage (CREDIF - UNESCO). Initiated by the CREDIF Centre de Recherches, d'Etudes, de Documentation et d'Information sur la Femme (Centre for the Research, Study, Documentation and Information on Women) and supported by UNESCO (United Nations Organization for Education, Science and Culture). It aims to reward a woman filmmaker whose film—be it a feature or a long documentary—has been selected in the official competition. The award bears symbolically, the name of Safi Faye; as the first African woman filmmaker: "This pioneering artist has shown the way to a possible woman-inspired and African cinematographic creation."

2016 - Tribute to Safi Faye - Luxor African Film Festival

2017 - Festival du Film Documentaire de Saint-Louis (Senegal), Invitée d'honneur receives the Grand Prix d'Honneur

2018 - One of the three halls at the Complexe Cinématographique Ousmane Sembène in Dakar bears the name of Safi Faye. The other two are Djibril Diop Mambety and Ousmane Sembene.

- Restoration of Selbe et tant d'autres with the Wolof-language version – screened at the African Film Festival New York in the presence of Safi Faye

- Safi Faye returns to Cannes with Fad,Jal, restored by the CNC, presented at Cannes Classics.

2019 - Special Focus: Safi Faye - Royal Anthropological Insitute (RAI) Film Festival 

2021 - Screening of Kaddu Beykat. Black Women at the Centre as part of ‘Ruptures – Beyond the frame: Experimental Cinema from Africa and the Diaspora’, a film program screened at the Cinemateket in Copenhagen in October-November.

2022 - Tribute to Safi Faye - Festival Films Femmes Afrique, Dakar with screening of Kaddu Beykat

Carte blanche à Fatima Sissani | Mossane de Safi Faye (30 November 2022) Marseille

2023 - Safi Faye Man sa yay | I, your mother Berlinale - Forum Special Fiktionsbescheinigung

- After an illness, dies in Paris

- Buried in paternal native village of Fadial

Homages to Safi Faye:

- Homage to Safi Faye as part of the Focus: Thérèse Sita Bella, Safi Faye and the evolution of African women’s cinematic practice. A project initiated by Rosine Mbakam through the KASK & Conservatorium / Gent School of Arts, Belgium, 20 March 2023

- Homage to Safi Faye at the Festival de films de femmes, Créteil with Franco-Senegalese filmmaker Mati Diop - 27 March 2023

- I Dared To Make A Film": A Tribute To The Life And Work Of Safi Faye. Indiana University Cinema, 12 April 2023, a conversation with Beti Ellerson

Articles on African Women in Cinema Blog

Safi Faye : La Grande Référence - 1943-2023 - A Tribute https://africanwomenincinema.blogspot.com/2023/02/safi-faye-1943-2023-tribute.html

Safi Faye: Man sa yay | I, your mother - Berlinale Forum Special Fiktionsbescheinigung 2023 https://africanwomenincinema.blogspot.com/2023/01/safi-faye-man-sa-yay-i-your-mother.html

Safi Faye's Mossane at 25

https://africanwomenincinema.blogspot.com/2021/08/safi-fayes-mossane-at-25.html

Black Camera: Safi Faye's Mossane: A Song to Women, to Beauty, to Africa by Beti Ellerson (Spring 2019)

https://africanwomenincinema.blogspot.com/2019/05/black-camera-safi-fayes-mossane-song-to.html

Safi Faye : Selbe, one among many | Selbe et tant d'autres – restored/restauré en/in Wolof – African Film Festival New York 2018

https://africanwomenincinema.blogspot.com/2018/05/safi-faye-selbe-one-among-many-selbe-et.html

Safi Faye : “Fad,jal” (Cannes Classics 2018)

https://africanwomenincinema.blogspot.com/2018/05/safi-fayes-fadjal-cannes-classics-2018.html

Prix Safi Faye de la meilleure réalisatrice - Safi Faye Award for the best woman filmmaker - JCC - Journées Cinématographiques de Carthage.

https://africanwomenincinema.blogspot.com/2015/11/prix-safi-faye-de-la-meilleure.html

Safi Faye: Role Model | La Grande Référence

http://africanwomenincinema.blogspot.com/2010/05/safi-faye-role-model.html

Gendered Sensibilities and Female Representation in African Cinema : An analysis of Mossane by Safi Faye and Ousmane Sembene's Moolaadé

https://africanwomenincinema.blogspot.com/2009/04/gendered-sensibilities-and-female.html