Emitaï [SEP] director
Emitaï
Emitaï is a 1971 Senegalese drama film directed by Ousmane Sembène. It was entered into the 7th Moscow International Film Festival where it won a Silver Prize.
The film is set in late World War II, with the Vichy government conscripting men from France's colonies. A revolt breaks out in a Diola village where the women hide the rice crop harvest instead of submitting to the French tax. The resistance unfolds in the village simultaneous to the resistance fighting in metropolitan France. When the metropole is liberated, the Diola
Years".
Through the 1970s the industry grew. In 1971 Sembène made a film in Diola and French, "Emitaï". Director Djibril Diop Mambéty released a number of films during this period with deep social meaning and representation. Like many of his contemporaries, Djibril Diop Mambéty used the cinematic medium to comment on political and social conditions in Africa, and like Sembène his films were unconventional, surrealist, fast-paced, with social realist narratives.
In his films, Mambéty confronted and engaged with complexities and contradictions