Ousmane Sembène’s (“The Father of African Cinema”) seminal film “La Noire de…” better known in the U.S. as “Black Girl” is one of the most important black films ever made. It’s the first film by an African filmmaker to get worldwide distribution and recognition, and heralded the great Golden Age of African Cinema.
The film was first released in 1966 making this year the 50th anniversary of the film, and as Tambay said about the film back in May, ”helped launch an era in film history that inspired many generations of artists.”
As he also said about the film “at the center of ‘Black Girl’ is Senegalese maid Diouana’s plight in Southern France, as it unfolds almost like a documentary, capturing the everyday mundanities of her monotonous life, and the resulting mental anguish she suffers, leading to the film’s tragic conclusion.
“Underneath the deceptively simple story of a Senegalese maid (played by the lovely Mbissine Thérèse Diop), and her relationship with the white French couple she works for, reveals a film rich with symbolism and complexities that are essentially reactions to, and analysis of, the cultural legacy of colonialism – a recurrent theme you’ll find in much of Sembène’s work; as well as commentary on the untapped strength and abilities of African women.”
Now today, Criterion has announced that it will release the restored and remastered version of the film on both standard and blu-ray DVD on January 25, 2017, following a successful theatrical run this past spring.
The new DVD release will feature, for all you technical buffs, a new 4K digital restoration, undertaken by The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project, in collaboration with the Cineteca di Bologna, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the blu-ray DVD, new interviews with scholars Manthia Diawara and Samba Gadjigo, an excerpt from a 1966 broadcast featuring Sembène accepting the Prix Jean Vigo for “Black Girl,” a new interview with actor M’Bissine Thérèse Diop, a new trailer, a new English subtitle translation, a new 4K restoration of the Sembeme’s 1963 first film, the short, “Borom sarret,” a neorealist look at the rough life of a wagon driver who encounters a cross-section of Dakar’s inhabitants as he makes his rounds through the city’s streets.
