Film Screening:

Faat Kine 

(Ousmane Sembene, 2001, 121 min, Senegal, in French and Wolof w/ English subtitles, Color, DVD) 

[Note: This debut screening for the 2016 African Film Festival will take place in the Griffith Film Theater, Bryan Center, West Campus. But the remaining screenings in the festival will take place in the Richard White Lecture Hall (Main Auditorium), East Campus.]

A cheerful movie of simple pleasures, Faat Kine stars Venus Seye as the movie's eponymous heroine. Kine is the successful manager of a gasoline station in Dakar, and an unmarried mother of two, each the product of a failed relationship with a delinquent father. Independent, well-to-do, and equable, Kine flits between the demands of her job, her family and her friends with admirable composure. The movie follows Kine's activities with an unobtrusive eye, capturing matter-of-factly the eventfulness of daily life. Confrontations punctuate her relatively comfortable existence, from a tearful quarrel with her restive daughter to a roadside spat with a woman who accuses her of having an affair with her husband. Amid the bustle of Kine's day-to-day routine, the movie offers wistful flashbacks that explain Kine's complex but happy situation.

The movie ends on a triumphant note at a party thrown by Kine for her son and daughter, where a climactic meeting between her son and his father offers an explicit glimpse into Sembene's outlook on Senegal's past and future.

--"A marvelous film, offering the psychological insight of Rohmer into its familial story, while contextualising it with a wise, vibrant African optimism all Sembène's own." -- Time Out

Cost: Free and open to the public

Sponsors: The Africa Initiative, the Program in the Arts of the Moving Image (AMI), the Center for French and Francophone Studies, the Department of Cultural Anthropology, and the Department of African and African American Studies.