Focus on ONE of these films and explain how it engages with French colonialism and African struggles for independence through its narrative and form.

Focus on ONE of these films and explain how it engages with French colonialism and African struggles for independence through its narrative and form. Keep in mind that the Marker “essay film” is made during the colonial period by French European filmmakers, for French audiences. Black girl is a fiction based on a short news story and made by the Senegalese director/author Ousmane Sembene six years after Senegal’s independence, and it is set in France. Emitai is made a decade after Senegal’s independence. Set among the Diola in Senegal, it is a historical drama set in the WWII period, not in the present-day of 1971.

Statues Also Die (Marker and Resnais, France, 1953)

Emitai (Sembene, Senegal, 1971)

Black Girl (Sembene, Senegal/France, 1966)