Ousmane Sembene

NYC retro coming at Film Forum, November 30 - December 13.

star Mbissine Thérèse Diop on the newly restored Black Girl

http://www.filmcomment.com/blog/interview-mbissine-therese-diop/

Watched Emitai on Cinephobe yesterday. The extras for the BFI edition of Black Girl have an interview where he talks about actually preferring literature but choosing cinema because it will reach more Africans - so it's a bit weird that in this film I thought the visual style was really popping and the script suffered from some awkwardness (characters describing what we've already seen happen on screen, dialogues of ppl agreeing) - tho I am of course open to the idea that I misapprhended these due to lack of knowledge of the cultural context.

There's a crazy psychedelic scene of a man confronting the Gods which reminded me of Power Rangers a bit.

There's also a cool (tho awkwardly staged) moment of satire where the French get the news that De Gaulle is now leader and have the posters of Pétain removed, a day after lecturing the village on how Pétain is the benevolent father of all French.

My favourite of the three I've seen is Ceddo from 1977. Maybe setting it in pre-modern times allowed Sembene to use a more simple, classical style. Unfortunately, what I found most memorable in Mandabi and Xala were the awkwardnesses.

Not seen Ceddo but it has a great soundtrack.

Ceddo is really good.

Was Xala awkward as in bad?

I say "awkward", in that the technical shortcomings were glaring enough to distract from what he was trying to get across. There were shaky tripod pans, mismatched edits, etc. They don't disturb me in Pasolini, but here they just looked like errors. Also, both Xala and Mandabi attempt to have "big endings" where he's using superimposition effects and quick montage, and it seemed really amateurish.

In Ceddo, as I remember it, he just planted the camera and told the story straight. It's likely his budget and technical abilities had both improved by 1977.

Funny, I didn't notice glaring technical mistakes other than, yes, a couple mismatched edits.

Thanks halfway, felt these issues didn't distract but my eye isn't very trained on technique in any of the arts.

Nice edition of Mandabi out on Studiocanal. Prob my fave Sembene so far, apart from early short Borom Sarret. Apparently still gets played on Senegalese TV, and I can see how this would be more of a crowd pleaser than Black Girl or Emitai.

Lots of extras but somewhat careless - it comes with a good essay but doesn't attribute the author, an interview with Sembene's son where he compares the movie to Patricia Highsmith and the subtitles say "Patrick Highmsith"...

I've now also seen Moolaadé and liked it a lot. When he's shooting in these village/rural environments, he just seems to know where to place the camera for maximum clarity and expressiveness. There's drama just in the layout of the village.

Also, both Xala and Mandabi attempt to have "big endings" where he's using superimposition effects and quick montage, and it seemed really amateurish.

According to the extras in Mandabi this happened because the guy playing the postman couldn't make it so Sembene had to shoot his speech without him.