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ARCHIVE

8th(2006)



Selbe

Safi Faye

  • France, Senegal
  • 1983
  • 30min
  • 16mmm
  • color

SYNOPSIS

39-year-old Selbe lives in a small rural village in Senegal and is the mother of eight children. Like the other women of the village, she does not have a husband. Most of the men have left for the city to work or have returned to just sit around and do nothing. However, Selbe and the other village women cannot rest even as the film reaches its end. They are carrying their children on their backs or suckling them at their breasts while cooking meals, chopping wood, catching fish, milling grains, making vessels and washing their children. Selbe sings to her children a song that laments the endless hardships of women like herself and her mother. Through her song we can encounter the history of African women passed down orally and through songs. Safi Faye, who is known as the godmother of Africa¡¯s women¡¯s films, gently, yet firmly explains the unequal burden regarding household labor and economic activities forced onto women. (Billy Choi)

PROGRAM NOTE

39-year-old Selbe lives in a small rural village in Senegal and is the mother of eight children. Like the other women of the village, she does not have a husband. Most of the men have left for the city to work or have returned to just sit around and do nothing. However, Selbe and the other village women cannot rest even as the film reaches its end. They are carrying their children on their backs or suckling them at their breasts while cooking meals, chopping wood, catching fish, milling grains, making vessels and washing their children. Selbe sings to her children a song that laments the endless hardships of women like herself and her mother. Through her song we can encounter the history of African women passed down orally and through songs. Safi Faye, who is known as the godmother of Africa¡¯s women¡¯s films, gently, yet firmly explains the unequal burden regarding household labor and economic activities forced onto women. (Billy Choi)

Director

  • Safi FayeSafi Faye

    Born in 1943 in Senegal, Safi Faye was the first sub-Saharan African woman to direct a feature film, Kaddu Beykat. She was educated in Senegal, where she received her teacher¡¯s certificate at Rufisque normal school. Faye¡¯s ethnographic films, Kaddu Beykat and Fad¡¯jal, brought her international acclaim and earned her several awards at the Berlin Film Festival in 1976 and 1979 respectively. Her filmography includes Many Say Yay (1980), Les Ames au Soleil (1981), Mossane (1996) and many others.

Credit

  • ProducerPierre Hoffman
  • Cinematography Papa Moctar Ndoye
  • Editor Andree Davanture