BOROM SARRET Movie Review

A celebrated writer and social critic in the 1950s, Senegal's Ousmane Sembène traveled to Moscow in 1961 to study filmmaking, believing that the cinema was the most effective way for his voice to reach the largest possible audience. Upon his return, Sembène directed this riveting 20-minute film that packs the power of a full-length feature. Borom Sarret chronicles—in the uninsistent, straightforward manner that would become the hallmark of Sembène's style—one day in the life of a cart-driver in the bustling city of Dakar. As the small details and cumulative indignities of his life compound, the film achieves a haunting and precise sense of outrage that grows organically out of the near-documentary images. Though Borom Sarret doesn't aspire to the same richness and complexity that some of Sembène's later features like Black Girl, Emitai, and Ceddo reached, it remains not only a pioneering work of African cinema, but an early example of the cinematic skills of a master.

NEXT STOP … Black Girl, Mandabi, Ceddo

1966 20m/B D: Ousmane Sembene. NYR