Short film
Les Princes noirs de Saint-Germain-des-Prés
Ben Diogaye Bèye · 1975
Synopsis
Saint-Germain-des-Prés, in the mid-seventies. Young Africans who have arrived in Paris without money occupy the café terraces of the district and watch there for young white women in search of exoticism, whom they persuade to keep them. Penniless for a time, they present themselves as princes from legendary kingdoms, and each one cultivates the character expected of him. The film watches them at it with the irony of a brisk satire, sparing no one.
Context
The first film by its author, it was shot in Paris in 16 mm and in colour, running fourteen minutes, with Azis Diop Mambety, Muriel Dovaz and Moussa Sarr. It takes up a vein that the continent's cinema has often worked, the African student or idler in the capital of the former colonial power, but through satire rather than drama. Sources date it to 1972 or 1975. The Centre Pompidou showed it in 2005 in a cycle devoted to fictions from Africa.
Who it is for
Fourteen minutes, in French, very much of their time in the best sense: the neighbourhood, the clothes and the music are more legible than the plot, which comes down to very little.
Prizes and reception
It made its author known, and it remains his most frequently cited title, before the next one was awarded a prize in Geneva and Carthage.
Sources for this page 3
The pages consulted to check this page.