LAUSR

Critical reading on the Senegalese filmmaker Safi Faye is scarce, on her embodiment of different shifts in ethnographic film or on her relationship with Jean Rouch’s work; but her oeuvre is now seen as an important case in the complex relationship between African cinema and ethnography. Safi Faye pioneered in two important respects. First, after being filmed by Rouch and so participating in his ethnographic method, she became an ethnographic filmmaker herself, and her insider position as a filmmaker in her own Serer community employs an observational style. Comparing their respective film styles reveals the questions of alterity, which inevitably remain at the center of representation. Secondly, her last film [Mossane, 1996] already exemplified the move from ethnographic cinema to fiction. In this film about a girl who resists her parents’ will, Safi Faye challenges the “ethnologizing gaze” on Africa while remaining embedded in her culture. She thereby forces another look at “African cinemas” in their cre...