Robert Fontaine

  • Ousmane Sembene – Emitaï AKA God of Thunder (1971)

    Ousmane Sembene1971-1980African CinemaDramaPoliticsSenegal
    Emitaï (1971)
    Emitaï (1971)

    With revolutionary outrage, Ousmane Sembène chronicles a period during World War II when French colonial forces in Senegal conscripted young men of the Diola people and attempted to seize rice stores for soldiers back in Europe. As the tribe’s patriarchal leaders pray and make sacrifices to their gods, the women in the community refuse to yield their harvests, incurring the French army’s wrath. With a deep understanding of the oppressive forces that have shaped Senegalese history, Emitaï explores the strains that colonialism places upon cultural traditions and, in the process, discovers a people’s hidden reserves of rebellion and dignity.Read More »

  • Ousmane Sembene – La noire de… AKA Black Girl (1966)

    1961-1970African CinemaArthouseDramaOusmane SembeneSenegal

    Ousmane Sembène was one of the greatest and most groundbreaking filmmakers who ever lived, as well as the most renowned African director of the twentieth century—and yet his name still deserves to be better known in the rest of the world. He made his feature debut in 1966 with the brilliant and stirring Black Girl. Sembène, who was also an acclaimed novelist in his native Senegal, transforms a deceptively simple plot—about a young Senegalese woman who moves to France to work for a wealthy white family and finds that life in their small apartment becomes a prison, both figuratively and literally—into a complexly layered critique of the lingering colonialist mind-set of a supposedly postcolonial world. Featuring a moving central performance by M’Bissine Thérèse Diop, Black Girl is a harrowing human drama as well as a radical political statement—and one of the essential films of the 1960s.Read More »

  • Ousmane Sembene – Emitaï AKA God of Thunder (1971)

    1971-1980African CinemaDramaOusmane SembenePolitics

    As World War II is going on in Europe, a conflict arises between the French and the Diola-speaking tribe of Africa, prompting the village women to organize their men to sit beneath a tree to pray.Read More »

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