Safi Faye
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| Safi Faye | |
|---|---|
| Born | November 22, 1943 Dakar, Senegal |
| Occupation | Film director, ethnologist |
| Years active | 1972–present |
Safi Faye (b. November 22, 1943) is a Senegalese film director and ethnologist.[1] She was the first Sub-Saharan African woman to direct a commercially distributed feature film. She has directed several documentary and fiction films focussing on rural life in Senegal.
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[edit] Biography
[edit] Early life and education
Safi Faye was born in 1943 in Dakar, Senegal to a Serer family.[1] Her parents were from Fad'jal, a village south of Dakar.[2] She attended the Normal School in Rufisque and receiving her teaching certificate in 1962 or 1963, began teaching in Dakar.[3][2]
In 1966 she went to the Dakar Festival of Negro Arts and met French ethnologist and filmmaker Jean Rouch.[3] He encouraged her to use film making as an ethnographic tool.[3] She had an acting role in his 1971 film Petit à petit.[4] Faye has said that she dislikes Rouch's film but that working with him enabled her to learn about filmmaking and cinéma-vérité.[5] In the 1970s she studied ethnology at the École pratique des hautes études and then at the Lumière Film School.[2][4] She supported herself by working as a model, an actor and in film sound effects.[2] In 1979, she received a PhD in ethnology from the University of Paris.[1] From 1979–1980, Faye studied video production in Berlin and was a guest lecturer at the Free University of Berlin.[6] She received a further degree in ethnology from the Sorbonne in 1988.[1]
[edit] Film career
Faye's first film, which she also acted in, was a 1972 short called La Passante (The Passerby), drawn from her experiences as a foreign woman in Paris.[1][7] It follows a woman (Faye) walking down a street and noticing the reactions of men nearby.[5] Faye's first feature film was Kaddu Beykat which means The Voice of the Peasant in Wolof and was known internationally as Letter from My Village or News from My Village.[5] She obtained financial backing for Kaddu Beykat from the French Ministry of Cooperation.[2] Released in 1975, it was the first feature film to be made by a Sub-Saharan African woman to be commercially distributed and gained international recognition for Faye.[8][5] On its release it was banned in Senegal.[9] In 1976 it won the FIPRESCI Prize from the International Federation of Film Critics (tied with Chhatrabhang) and the OCIC Award.
Faye's 1983 documentary film Selbé: One Among Many follows a 39 year-old woman called Sélbe who works to support her eight children since her husband has left their village to look for work.[10] Selbé regularly converses with Faye, who remains off-screen, and describes her relationship with her husband and daily life in the village.[11]
Faye's films are better known in Europe than in her native Africa as a result of them rarely being shown in Africa.[6]
[edit] Personal life
Faye is divorced and has one daughter.[3] She lives in Paris.[3]
[edit] Filmography
- 1972: La Passante (The Passerby)
- 1975: Kaddu Beykat (Letter from My Village)
- 1979: Fad'jal (Come and work)
- 1979: Goob na nu (The harvest is in)
- 1980: Man Sa Yay (I, Your Mother)
- 1981: Les âmes au soleil (Souls under the Sun)
- 1983: Selbe: One Among Many (or Selbe and So Many Others)
- 1983: 3 ans 5 mois (Three years five months)
- 1985: Racines noires (Black Roots)
- 1985: Elsie Haas, femme peintre et cinéaste d'Haiti (Elsie Haas, Haitian Woman Painter and Filmmaker)
- 1989: Tesito
- 1996: Mossane
[edit] References
[edit] Notes
- ^ a b c d e Petrolle, p.177
- ^ a b c d e Foster, p.130
- ^ a b c d e Pfaff, Françoise. Safi Faye. FilmReference.com. Retrieved on 2008-05-04.
- ^ a b Ukadike, p.29
- ^ a b c d Spaas, p.185
- ^ a b Schmidt, p.286
- ^ Harrow, p176
- ^ Ukadike, p.30
- ^ Africa Beyond. BBC (2007). Retrieved on 2008-05-10.
- ^ Thackway, p. 153
- ^ Thackway, p. 154
[edit] Bibliography
- Foster, Gwendolyn Audrey (1995). Women Film Directors: An International Bio-critical Dictionary. Greenwood Publishing Group, 130–132. ISBN 0313289727.
- Harrow, Kenneth W. (1997). With Open Eyes: Women and African Cinema. Rodopi, 176–181. ISBN 9042001437.
- Petrolle, Jean; Virginia Wright Wexman (2005). Women and Experimental Filmmaking. University of Illinois Press, 177–192. ISBN 0252030060.
- Schmidt, Nancy J. (1999), “Sub-Saharan African Woman Filmmakers”, in Harrow, Kenneth W., African Cinema: Postcolonial and Feminist Readings, Africa World Press, <http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=kRR2fBv2NhUC>
- Spaas, Lieve (2001). The Francophone Film: A Struggle for Identity. Manchester University Press, 185–188. ISBN 0719058619.
- Thackway, Melissa (2003). Africa Shoots Back: Alternative Perspectives in Sub-Saharan Francophone. James Currey Publishers, 151–155. ISBN 0852555768.
- Ukadike, Nwachukwu Frank; Teshome H. Gabriel (2002). Questioning African Cinema: Conversations with Filmmakers. University of Minnesota Press, 29–40. ISBN 0816640041.
[edit] External links
- Safi Faye at the Internet Movie Database
