In this conversation about Faat Kiné, a 2001 film directed by Senegalese filmmaker Ousmane Sembene, we will be joined by Mariama Baldé, a Senegalese actress who plays a role in this film, and who previously studied the films of Ousmane Sembene, and by Columbia Professors Souleymane Bachir Diagne and Mamadou Diouf.
Like Borom Sarret, Black Girl, The Money Order, and Xala, Ousmane Sembene’s film Faat Kiné is another chapter in the writer-director’s laser-sharp commentary of post-independence in Senegal. Faat Kiné brings the viewer face to face with politically, economically, and morally corrupt social fabric.
This program of documentary shorts is both a stirring introduction to the Beninese/Senegalese filmmaker Paulin Soumanou Vieyra, considered the first sub-Saharan African film director and a rich overview of the period of African independence and nation-building. Vieyra’s 1955 essay film Africa on the Seine (co-directed with Mamadou Sarr) begins on the banks of the Niger but moves quickly to Paris, “the capital…