Emitaï re-present the past by presenting it to the present viewers of 1971. Temporally located during WW2, the film’s narrative yet unrolls in the present time. Bringing back history to the present reality - resisting Nazi Germany while simultaneously being colonized – fictionalized to criticize colonialism and imperialism by re-presenting the atrocities of the French and the perpetual era of enslavement. A re-presentation of the wrongs, regarding a very present past, to question history with bleak present memories.

Didn't expect a movie about the struggles of villagers in French occupied Senegal during world war 2 to get surreal halfway through but here we are. I'm not complaining though, it was pretty amazing!

Foreign + Silent: Weekly Challenge 2019

The great Ousmane Sembéne paints a picture of brutality experienced in colonial Senegal by rural villagers who simply want to keep their food, perpetrated by the white French and their Senegalese military lackeys. Most of Emitaï is dire, as the mistreatment leads to inevitable disaster, but there’s some humor and a dash of the supernatural present as well. While I’d say the narrative isn’t as strong as in works like Guelwaar or Moolaadé, Emitaï is not one to be missed.

This one needs a restoration and re-release waaaaaaaay more than any film of the last 10 years. Criterion, are you listening?

Another great film from Sembene and another bit of frustration in my outsiders perspective looking in.

It's cinema like this that sort of slaps me in the face and reminds me I've still got a ton of the world to explore and understand (cinema wise), but I am loving that each of these new films from new places are bringing me new knowledge and new understanding. Both of film and of myself.

Sembene's work (this was the last of his features I needed to see), has hit me in one of those rare emotional ways that reinvigorates my love/appreciation for what cinema is able to accomplish. After all, when someone in modern day California can watch and gain from a Senegalese film made in the 1970's, you're probably doing something right.

“Colonies are the outhouses of the European soul, where a fellow can let his pants down and relax, enjoy the smell of his own shit.” 
- Thomas Pynchon

Sembene, that absolute titan, once again presents a remarkably direct and damning vision of imperialist powers actively underdeveloping Africa and it’s people.

Set during WWII, Emitai opens with the French abducting men and conscripting them to fight the white man’s war. A year passes and the colonizers turn farming communities into monocultures, forcing production of surplus grain for the army and then (naturally) taxing the villagers for their own output. Shades of Cisse and Mambety’s later explorations of class and folklore can be seen with the women laborers ceasing production/delivery of grain, and the elders turning to mysticism in order to resist the French. Semebene had his finger on the pulse, as always.

I want one of those red hats

A gripping and haunting film from Ousmane Sembene set in World War II where French soldiers try to get Senegalese villagers to give up their rice for the war as they refuse in this compelling study of colonialism and its many fallacies.

“Colonies are the outhouses of the European soul, where a fellow can let his pants down and relax, enjoy the smell of his own shit.” 
- Thomas Pynchon

Sembene, that absolute titan, once again presents a remarkably direct and damning vision of imperialist powers actively underdeveloping Africa and it’s people.

Set during WWII, Emitai opens with the French abducting men and conscripting them to fight the white man’s war. A year passes and the colonizers turn farming communities into monocultures, forcing production of surplus grain for the army and then (naturally) taxing the villagers for their own output. Shades of Cisse and Mambety’s later explorations of class and folklore can be seen with the women laborers ceasing production/delivery of grain, and the elders turning to mysticism in order to resist the French. Semebene had his finger on the pulse, as always.

A shout of independence and dignity.

Excelente filme sobre como foi o processo de recrutamento para a Liga Estrangeira Francesa, o poder da ideologia dominante, e o quão frágil é a máscara do liberalismo perante as atrocidades cometidas pelos países paladinos da moralidade no Ocidente. A direção é sloppy.

“We not are dealing, in other words, with “lands of famine” becalmed in stagnant backwaters of world history, but with the fate of tropical humanity at the precise moment . . . when its labor and products were being dynamically conscripted into a London-centered world economy. Millions died, not outside the “modern world system,” but in the very process of being forcibly incorporated into its economic and political structures.”

“But the agricultural populations of Asia, Africa and South America did not go gently into the New Imperial order.”

— Mike Davis, Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World

lol it’s still fuck the french. 

The camera and it’s many uses. In this instance, Ousmane Sembene uses the camera as a weapon against imperialism and he wastes no time with it; from the very first shot where we see a father held captive to force his son to fight the “white man’s” war, Emitai possess this sense of tenacity which grips imperialism by it’s throat. The euro-centric bubble of the imperialist is put on full display as we see the natives’ practices interrupted and the justification for these interruptions being to “think of your sons fighting in the war.” The same sons who were taken against their will.

It was only last month that they refused to apologise for their sins in foreign soil. like repentance will be enough anyway.

Em 1971, Truffaut lançou Duas Inglesas e o Amor, Malle estreou Sopro no Coração. Naquele ano, o senegalês Ousmane Sembène contou a trágica história da opressão francesa sobre seu país. Nesse registro sem enfeites, assistimos indignados ao horror de um exército humilhando homens, mulheres e crianças sem piedade.

O arroz exigido pelos militares franceses é comida e é oferenda do povo aos seus deuses. Mas aqui, Sembène faz uma provocação e mostra que a religiosidade popular que espera a intervenção dos deuses parece impedir a reatividade à tamanha violência. 

Emitaï (nome de um dos deuses) incomoda, transtorna. É tão impactante que, perto dele, os bonitos filmes de Malle e Truffaut não passam de white people problem de francês.

Uma obra prima do cinema.

Assisti com Louise, foi divertido.

Importantísima para comprender el impacto indirecto de la Segunda Guerra Mundial en los que menos tienen y más pierden, esas historias que nadie tiene interés por contar. Sembène nos transporta y nos enseña la cultura y cotidianidad de la aldea sin perder el foco en la lucha que siempre lo caracterizó como cineasta, personalmente uno de mis directores favoritos. No por nada fue censurada en la Senegal francesa.

Find the full review here: wp.me/s3waMl-emitai

One of Sembène's most searing and powerful films. The mistreatment of this director, surely one of the finest who has ever lived, continues with this film's lack of availability on Blu-ray or streaming services.