Safi Faye

• Name — Safi Faye • Born — 22 November 1943 • Birthplace — Dakar, Senegal • Died — 22 February 2023 • Place of death — Paris, France • Education — École normal de Rufisque, University of Paris • Occupation — Film director, ethnologist • Years Active — 1972–2023 • Notable Works — Kaddu Beykat, Mossane • Children — 1 • Awards — Un Certain Regard

Safi Faye was born in 1943 in Dakar, Senegal, to an aristocratic Serer family. Her parents, the Fayes, were from Fad'jal, a village south of Dakar. She attended the École normal de Rufisque, or Normal School, in Rufisque and receiving her teaching certificate in 1962 or 1963, began teaching in Dakar. In 1966 she went to the Dakar Festival of Negro Arts and met French ethnologist and filmmaker Jean Rouch. He encouraged her to use film making as an ethnographic tool. She had an acting role in his 1971 film Petit à petit. Faye has said that she dislikes Rouch's film but that working with him enabled her to learn about filmmaking and cinéma-vérité. In the 1970s she studied ethnology at the École pratique des hautes études and then at the Lumière Film School. She supported herself by working as a model, an actor and in film sound effects. In 1979, she received a PhD in ethnology from the University of Paris. From 1979 to 1980, Faye studied video production in Berlin and was a guest lecturer at the Free University of Berlin. She received a further degree in ethnology from the Sorbonne in 1988.

She obtained financial backing for Kaddu Beykat from the French Ministry of Cooperation. Released in 1975, it was the first feature film to be made by a Sub-Saharan African woman to be commercially distributed and gained international recognition for Faye. On its release it was banned in Senegal. In 1976 it won the FIPRESCI Prize from the International Federation of Film Critics (tied with Chhatrabhang) and the OCIC Award. The film is her first to focus on the experiences of rural Senegalese and give particular voice to the women of such communities. It is also notable for the off-screen narration, delivered by Faye herself, which breaks from a more traditional authoritative male voice. Faye's voice, whether in narration or interview, is prominent in many of her films, including Fad'jal.

This purely fictive work, released in 1996 but completed in 1990, follows a 14-year-old's battle against the expectation and traditions of her community and family. Promised since birth to an emigrant living in France, she instead falls in love with a poor student. Rejecting the arrangement on the day of her wedding, she flees the village and drowns. Faye has said the story was inspired by “an African legend that stipulates that a girl of incredible beauty is born every other century...moss means beauty in the Serer language. It is a kind of beauty which is inaccessible to human beings.” Regarding the goal of the film the director has gone on to state "there is no moral to the story;" rather, it exists "to show how tradition and modernity currently confront each other in African reality." The film features many ceremonies and rituals. While not taken entirely from reality they, along with other spiritual symbols represented in the film, are born out of Faye's own imagery. On this, filmmaker Beti Ellerson states "Faye's capacity to intermingle fact and fiction, ethnography and mythology is born out of her desire to visualize the history and experiences of her people." Faye employed many cinéma-vérité techniques throughout the production, particularly in casting many of the community members of the village in which the Mossane was filmed.

Faye, who lived in Paris, had one daughter. She died there on February 22, 2023, at the age of 79.

• 1972: Passante (The Passerby) • 1975: Kaddu Beykat (Letter from My Village) • 1979: Fad'jal (Come and work) • 1979: Goob na nu (The harvest is in) • 1980: Man Sa Yay (I, Your Mother) • 1981: Les âmes au soleil (Souls under the Sun) • 1983: Selbe: One Among Many (or Selbe and So Many Others) • 1983: 3 ans 5 mois (Three years five months) • 1985: Racines noires (Black Roots) • 1985: Elsie Haas, femme peintre et cinéaste d'Haiti (Elsie Haas, Haitian Woman Painter and Filmmaker) • 1989: Tesito • 1996: Mossane