by Akinwande Jordan
Deep in the cavernous archives of any reputable film club or video store lie the visual gems of meandering cinema divinely crafted by the late Senegalese filmmaker Safi Faye (1943-2023). Amongst titans like Djibril Diop Mambéty, Cissé Souleymane, Med Hondo, and Ousmane Sembène, Safi Faye stands unparalleled and illustrious. Her films, like the short film La Passante (The Passerby) and KADDU BEYKAT (Letter from My Village), showcase her poetic and cinematic brilliance. She was the first African woman filmmaker to be commercially distributed, with works like Fad’jal (1979) and A Woman See It (1980), along with Mossane (1996), cementing her name in the uppermost echelons of African cinema.
Her most seminal work, Kaddu Beykat (translated as Letter from My Village) — short in less than a month remains a boundless meditation on post-colonial Senegal and the nature of the villages, the village of Fad’jal, devoid of the far city’s oozing reverie. The film — classified as a docu-drama — follows the story of Ngor, a struggling young agricultural worker who encounters a daunting reality in Dakar: impoverished and critically unable to finance his wedding, he must navigate the challenges of a monotonous life.
Through a thoughtful and observant lens, Faye deftly represents the intricate mores and cultural practices of Senegalese life, particularly Senegalese ruralism. However, the film’s unabashed portrayal of the government’s neocolonial agricultural policies led to its ban, amplifying the powerful impact of Faye’s uncompromising critique.
Kaddu Beykat opens with a paced invitation — into the delicacy of rural life and the valency of mood. The mood in the film is often discussed with an air of Eurocentrism; Bèla Tarr, Tarkovsky, Carlos Reygadas, etcetera… the usual suspects… but it’s rarely discussed with regards to African cinema and Safi Faye specifically. A voiceover instructs us to understand the movement we are witnessing — “This is my village. My parents are farmers and breed livestock. You are going to spend a moment with us at home”. What follows is a film drenched in solitude and glittering innocuous dialogue between family members and friends inhabiting Fad’jal.
It takes the constitution of a documentary, an examination of the protean African life through the sequestered lens of Senegal and you are almost incredulous when you are told this is Safi Faye’s first feature film. Such poeticism is only reserved for veterans. Patrick Fabry’s cinematography exudes a tension that embodies cinéma verité — a technique Safi Faye herself studied under Jean Loch when she sojourned to Paris. This style is evident in how Kaddu Beykat is shot, with an indifference to the rehearsed, kino-pravda-esque narratives, unfolding and layering simultaneously upon a potter wheel of truth.
If Deleuze had anything to say about this he’d call Kaddu Beykat a miracle in the composition of space. The eye of Safi Faye shows you space is the homely sub-saharan commodity in neocolonialist Africa.
Safi Kaye passed away in 2023, but her legacy still trudges on the horizon of African cinema. Filmmakers like Mahamat-Saleh Haroun, Abderrahmane Sissako, Raoul Peck, and Jean-Marie all owe their styles and experimentation to KADDU BEYKAT. It was quite the feat that her film, of such divine quality and importance, was the first commercially distributed film by an African woman.
As we celebrate International Women’s Day and the undying power of cinema—particularly African cinema—we must not forget the quiet divinity of Safi Faye.
