Black Girl/Borom Sarret
(aka The Wagoner/African
Film Shorts)
Picture: C
Sound: C Extras: D Shorts: C+
Earlier in 2005, we had the chance to watch Ousmane
Sembene’s films Mandabi (1968) and Xala (1974, reviewed on the
site) and both were comic films with some very serious issues out in the open
to deal with. Now, New Yorker has
paired two of his earlier short films (both from 1966) on a single DVD and both
are worth seeing. Though they have some
humor, it is in a much smaller way and the content is serious enough to make
those who have only seen his features happy.
Black Girl is about a young woman brought
into a French household to be their slave… I mean maid, but she is not very
happy about this and the hour-long piece deals with her unhappiness and how she
deals with it. The family is she is
with is not bad, though the wife is annoying and becomes the greatest force to
resist, as well as inspire the desire to break free. Borom Sarret (aka The Wagoner) only runs 20 minutes
and deals with a man who is sick and tired of the routine of being a human
taxi. Like his counterpart in the first
short, he is also sick of the endless routine and being enslaved to it. These are historically significant works and
hold up well enough, especially with the slew of usually bad shorts that keep
coming our way in this digital video (note the term HD is not used) era we are
in. That makes three Sembene DVDs to
catch if you have not seen them.
The 1.33 X 1 black and white images are poor, with bad
detail and though they are clean print, the Video Black is muddy throughout
both shorts. The Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
on both are dated and a generation or so down, though all are in French and/or
Senegal, so the subtitles will help in all cases. There are no extras, though four New Yorker trailers are
included.
- Nicholas Sheffo
