The Parkway Theatre's chosen Black Girl, the classic French-Senegalese film by Ousmane Sembéne, for its next free screening on July 13.
Black Girl, released in 1966, is a drama chronicling the exploits of Mbissine Thérèse Diop's Diouana as she takes a nannying job with a white couple. Their small apartment begins to feel like a prison for Diouana -- the couple gradually express a sense of ownership over the young woman due to the nature of her skin and nationality. "Exploits" was a carefully-chosen word seeing as the dynamic between Diouana and the couple begin to mirror those of colonial Africa, which was by no means a clumsy choice on Sembéne's part. Director Ousmane Sembéne was a devout critic of France's conquest of Senegal, considering he, himself, was Senegalese. Before venturing into filmmaking, he was an acclaimed novelist in his native Senegal, publishing classics in African literature such as God's Bits of Wood (1960) and Xala (1973). Black Girl was his directorial debut and launched his career as the "grandfather of African film", according to critics. The film is remarkably short at 65 minutes...Sixty-five minutes long, filmed in a handful of locations in narrow-screen black-and-white, with sound dubbed in afterward," A. O. Scott writes for The New York Times, "the movie can be regarded, among other things, as a masterpiece of thrift."
The Parkway Theatre has been choosing groundbreaking world cinema classics to screen for free every Thursday since its opening. On July 6, they screened Julie Dashs's Daughters of the Dust (1991); on July 20, they'll screen René Laloux's Fantastic Planet (1973); and on July 27, they'll screen Sergei Parajanov's The Color of Pomegranates (1969).
Black Girlclick here will be screened on July 13 at the theatre and you can for more information.
The film has seen a resurgence in popularity lately thanks to its 50th anniversary back this past year. To celebrate, the New York Times published a tribute to the piece that sums its essence up perfectly: "For all its abundant historical interest, Black Girl unfolds in the present tense, and directs its characters and its audience toward a still-unwritten future."
Will you be attending the screening on July 13? Have you seen the film before? What are your thoughts? Let us know in the comments below.
