SAT OCT 14, 2023 1:00 PM “Borom Sarret” / EMITAÏ $8.00 (member) ; $13.00 (general admission) Los Feliz 3 | New 4K Restoration of EMITAÏ courtesy of Janus Films ‘Ousmane Sembène Centennial: An American Cinematheque Retrospective’ Tickets are no longer on sale for this event.
ABOUT THE FILMS: “Borom Sarret”, 1963, Dir: Ousmane Sembène, 18 Minutes, Janus Films, Senegal. In French with English subtitles. This groundbreaking short film, which won first prize at the 1963 Touris Film Festival in France, was the directorial debut of Ousmane Sembène. FORMAT: DCP EMITAÏ, 1971, Dir: Ousmane Sembène, 91 Minutes, Janus Films, Senegal. In Wolof and French with English subtitles. Seething with outrage, Ousmane Sembène’s EMITAÏ envisions both the cruelties of oppression and the revolutionary potential of the oppressed. During World War II, Marshal Pétain’s French forces and their African lackeys comb the Senegalese countryside, conscripting young Diola men into service and attempting to seize rice stores for soldiers back in Europe. Torn between allegiance to their silent gods and fear of fomenting a resistance of their own that might upset them, the tribe’s patriarchal leadership frays; meanwhile, the French humiliate the women of the tribe when they refuse to yield their harvests. With unflinching realism, Sembène explores the strains that colonialism places upon cultural traditions and, in the process, discovers a people’s hidden reserves of rebellion and dignity. FORMAT: DCP