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Licensor Information
Alain Sembène
Directed by: Ousmane Sembène
Ousmane Sembène was one of the greatest and most groundbreaking filmmakers who ever lived, as well as the most internationally renowned African director of the twentieth century—but his name deserves to be better known in the rest of the world. He made his feature debut in 1966 with the brilliant and stirring Black Girl. Sembène, who was also an acclaimed novelist in his native Senegal, transforms a deceptively simple plot—about a young Senegalese woman who moves to France to work for a wealthy white couple and finds that life in their small apartment becomes a prison, both figuratively and literally—into a complexly layered critique of the lingering colonialist mind-set of a supposedly postcolonial world. Featuring a moving central performance by M’Bissine Thérèse Diop, Black Girl is a harrowing human drama as well as a radical political statement—and one of the essential films of the 1960s.
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Technical Specifications
Format:
Blu-ray
Disc:
BD-50 (1 Disc)
Total: 1 Disc
Regions:
A (Blu-ray)
Aspect Ratio:
1.37:1
Audio Options:
French PCM Mono 1.0
Resolution:
1080p/24
Subtitles:
English
Supplements
Types of Supplements Included: Short Film, Interview, Television Program, Theatrical Trailer, Insert
- 4K restoration of the short film Borom sarret, director Ousmane Sembène’s acclaimed 1963 debut
- New interviews with scholars Manthia Diawara and Samba Gadjigo
- Excerpt from a 1966 broadcast of JT 20h, featuring Ousmane Sembène accepting the Prix Jean Vigo for Black Girl
- New interview with actor M’Bissine Thérèse Diop
- Trailer
- An essay by critic Ashley Clark
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Picture
Audio
Supplements
Artwork
Release Credits
Producer: Curtis Tsui
Artwork: Eric Skillman
Release Notes on Restoration
Black Girl
Black Girl is presented in its original aspect ratio of 1.37:1. On widescreen televisions, black bars will appear on the left and right of the image to maintain the proper screen format. This new digital transfer, undertaken by The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project, was created in 4K resolution at L’Immagine Ritrovata in Bologna, Italy, on an ARRISCAN film scanner from the 35mm original camera negative, which was provided by INA, Institut national de l’audiovisuel, and the Ousmane Sembène estate, and preserved at the CNC (Centre national de la cinématogrphie) – Archives française du film. Using a print preserved at the Cinémathèque française as a reference, L’Immagine Ritrovata performed extensive digital restoration on the wet-scanned transfer to minimize visible scratches and spots that were the results of processing errors and that had been aggravated by time. Invaluable help with the restoration was provided by Alain Sembène. Additional restoration was undertaken by the Criterion Collection using MTI Film’s DRS and Digital Vision’s Phoenix.
The monaural soundtrack was remastered from the 35mm original soundtrack negative by L’Immagine Ritrovata. Additional restoration was undertaken by the Criterion Collection using Pro Tools HD and iZotope RX.
The monaural soundtrack was remastered from the 35mm original soundtrack negative by L’Immagine Ritrovata. Additional restoration was undertaken by the Criterion Collection using Pro Tools HD and iZotope RX.