Gothic Modes of Repression and Resistance in Franco-African Cinema

Gothic Modes of Repression and Resistance in Franco-African Cinema

French

In Ousmane Sembène’s LA NOIRE DE…, actress Mbissine Thérèse Diop’s heroine Diouana finds a fulfilling nanny job in Dakar, Senegal, but when it moves her to Antibes, France, she encounters a life of dull domesticity and household slavery that drives her to a tragic fate. In Jean-Pierre Bekolo’s genre mash-up LES SAIGNANTES, two witches who seduce the corrupt elite of a futuristic Cameroon must hide the body of a powerful man who dies during a sex act. Made across decades, in different countries, and in vastly different styles, this presentation shows how both works use Gothic tropes to reveal the contextual struggles of African women as they enact the “return of the repressed other” when confronted with continued marginalization in a supposedly post-colonial world. This will be presented entirely in French.