Image courtesy of Le Quotidien
One of the few women who worked in the early filmmaking period in the 1960s post-independence was Safi Faye. Faye was a Senegalese film director and ethnologist. Born in 1943 in Dakar, she was the first Sub-Saharan African woman to direct a commercially distributed feature film, Kaddu Beykat (1975).
Before her career in filmmaking, she was a school teacher for 6 years. This experience shaped how Faye approached her work. To her, films are a medium to inform the next generation about their ancestry. Her unique perspective on life and politics was a huge part of her work. Her films, which are personal and intimate, balance the divide between facts and fiction, and often highlights the everyday life in traditional rural communities.
“My films are collective works in which everyone takes an active part.” – Safi Faye
Before breathing her last in Paris in February, 2023, Faye was a passionate person and she represented the realities of Africa throughout her life as a teacher, ethnologist and filmmaker. She studied Ethnology at the École Pratique des Hautes études before she went to the Lumière Film School in the 1970s. She worked multiple jobs such as modelling and acting to support herself. She also worked in film sound effects.
In 1979, she received a PhD in Ethnology from the University of Paris. From 1979 to 1980, she studied video production in Berlin and was a guest lecturer at the Free University of Berlin. In 1988, she earned a second degree from the Sorbonne in Ethnology.
From her years of research and storytelling, she made films that represented her life as an African woman navigating new and foreign spaces in her work while representing the realities of Africa and amplifying African voices.
Her filmography includes:
- The Passerby (La Passante; 1972)
- Revenge (1973)
- Letter fr om My Village (Kaddu Beykat; 1975)
- The Harvest Is In (Göob Na Nu; 1979)
- Come and Work (Fad’ Jal; 1979)
- Three Years and Five Months (1979)
- I, Your Mother (Man Sa Yaay; 1980)
- As Women See It? (1980)
- Souls in the Sun (1981)
- Selbé: One Among Many (1983)
- Ambassades nourricières (1984)
- Elsie Haas, Haitian (Woman Painter and Filmmaker; 1985)
- Black Roots (1985)
- Tesito (1989)
- Mossane (1996)
The Passerby (La Passante; 1972) was her first film and it was drawn from her experience as a foreign woman in Paris. Revanche (Revenge; 1973) is about a madman who wants to climb the Pont Neuf, a bridge in Paris. In 1975, Faye became recognised as the first sub-Saharan African woman to direct a feature film: Kaddu Beykat (Letter from My Village), which was based on her native village and the economic upheaval caused by the imposition of the groundnut monoculture, giving voice to inhabitants as they recount their stories. Come and Work (Fad’ Jal; 1979) portrays the richness of African oral tradition and the importance of learning and teaching history to the future generations. Fad’jal, Goob na ñu (The Harvest Is In; 1979), and Selbé et tant d’autres (Selbe and So Many Others; 1982) highlights everyday life in the traditional Senegalese communities. Her classic 1996 film, Mossane, is a love tragedy and a spiritual quest in Sereer land. A Farmer’s Love Letter exposes the gap between the post-colonial state and the concerns of ordinary people.
Faye was a recipient of several awards for her work and she participated at film festivals like FIFEF (Festival International du Film d’Expression Française), FESPACO (Festival Panafricain du Cinéma d’Ouagadougou and the Berlin Film Festival.
