mandabi (w&d ousmane sembène)

Anyone who lives in the third world could relate to Mandabi. A man receives a cash giro from his nephew who is working in Paris. It’s for a lot of money. There are two problems. One is that everyone in the barrio gets wind of it and comes to the man asking for a loan or a favour. The other is that in order to cash the giro, he has to go through a whole heap of bureaucratic hoops, and the further down then line he gets, the further away the money seems to be. The chaotic results are desperately predictable, as the tensions affect the man’s family and ultimately his personal safety. Sembène’s film is also about a society on the verge of change. Once upon a time, the reach of the state was less invasive. People could get by without needing to possess an ID or even knowing the date of their birth. But by 1968, the time Mandabi is made, that innocence is fading. Now there will be few in the world who don’t have to possess all the accoutrements of citizenship and its clutter, digital or otherwise. It’s a secondary effect of globalised travel, the movement of peoples which underpins the entire narrative of Sembène’s film.

borom sarret & la noire de (w&d ousmane sembène)

Sembène’s two short films, twinned at this screening, offer complementing visions of the struggles of the African continent through the differing tales of two characters. In Borom Sarret, the narrator drives a cart for a living, constantly on the edge of penury, until the worst possible thing happens when his cart is confiscated by the police, having taken it into the affluent neighbourhood of Borom Sarret. Sembène’s camera prowls the streets of Dakar, showing us the beggars and the griots, and the ordinary lives of its citizens. The narrator takes a pregnant woman to the maternity  ward and a dead baby to the cemetery, impassive in the face of life and death, both just a fare to help him put food on the table for his wife and children. The short film has a neo-realist feel, and is laced with a dry humour. La Noire De follows the travails of Diouana, who has been hired by a French family as a childminder. She follows them when they move from Dakar to Antibes, but finds herself trapped in virtual servitude, leading to a savage denouement. As well as relating the clear venality of post-colonialism, Sembène’s film is elevated by the subtlety of the depiction of its characters. Diouana is no meek victim. She likes to dress up, she sulks, she fights her corner. There is one telling moment where the husband and her exchange a look which reveals the possibility of attraction, something that could destroy down the social divide. The closing sequence, where he returns Diouana’s meagre possessions to her mother, is laced with an implicit danger, and the skill of the filmmaking is that the viewer wants that confrontation between the arrogant Frenchman and the Dakar locals to ignite, and makes it clear that even if it doesn’t happen now, it will do sometime soon.