Ousmane Sembène's Faat Kiné

Faat Kine (film still), 2001 T he blackgirl of Sembene Ousmane's first film has reemerged as an African Woman in the artist's latest film Faat Kine. This title character, with an affectionately familiar Wolof female name, is the newest in Sernbene's line of "everyday heroes." Black Girl (1965) was a narrative of a colonially generic blackgirl, i.e, of undetermined and insignificant origin, as marked by the ellipsis in the original title La noire de...(literally, "Black girl of ..."). That earlier narrative has now advanced to a new level: of a character now not colonial, but independent; not generic, but specific; not a blackgirl, but an African Woman, as marked by her own name, Faat Kine. Diouane, the subject of the first film, was an oppressed but self-aware maid to a French master and mistress, who found no space in which she could be a person. Faat Kine, by contrast, is, in a sense, mistress of all she surveys, as manager of a gas station at a bustling intersection and as owner of a comfortable home, complete with her own maid. While Diouane was shown usually in the family's kitchen preparing the family's meals, and exhibited to their friends for her "exotic" African cooking, Faat Kine is shown poring over the books in her office or measuring the chemical mixture of the gasoline delivered to her station. Diouane gave to her employer family-but ultimately took back-a traditional mask to decorate their home; Faat Kine's own home is deocrated with likenesses of Africa's modern independence heroes. Diouane pined for her boyfriend left behind in Dakar, her source of affirmation as a woman; Faat Kine debates the benefits of taking on a husband. And, while Diouane's duties included entertaining and babysitting her employers' children, Faat Kine experiences the pride of seeing her own two children complete their baccalaureat. Black Girl, the film, was based on Sernbene's 1962 short _ Journal of Contemporary African Art story! and marked the beginning of his medium-transition from literature to cinema in his desire to reach more immediately the African audiences whose stories he wanted to tell. (Xala (1974) also had its origins in literature, as Sernbene's second novel.jThe 35 years that separate the films La noirede ... and FaatKine is virtually coincidental with the life of the character Faat Kine, a period when African women's image and, commensurately, Sernbene's artistic image of them has matured from secluded, voiceless, powerless girl to the sophisticated, self-determining, self-defining woman-in-control. Diouane's situation permitted her to say very little except "Viye, madame."Thus, we could view her only as an object manipulated by the people and forces of her surroundings. Silenced in her environment, we could hear her inner monologue, her analysis of her condition resulting from her disillusionment over her life in France. But for the most part it is others' voices that defined and articulated Diouane's life. While we only heard the voice inside her head, we did see her face, whose stoically expressionless mien spoke with visible volume . As the character Diouane appeared in nearly every frame of the film, clearly making her its subject, her face-or alternately ,the back of her head-spoke with its expressive silences. To be sure, the black girl was not, however, a passive victim She indeed achieves agency through her few forceful acts of resistance as reactions to her situation: taking back the gift mask, literally struggling to wrest it from the madame's hands; dressing herself with deliberateness as a lady, including high heels, while doing her maid 's work; and, of course, the ultimate act of resistance, her suicide. But these are reactions to conditions over which she has no control; they are conditions in which she has no space to control any aspect of her life except, of course, its termination. Thus, Sernbene, in portraying the African female as an oppressed victim of colonialism, with virtually no choice or voice, but finding the means to act, presents a sensitive image of an oppressed African womanhood. In contrast to the voiceless, dramatically expressionless blackgirl, Diouane, the African...