Selbé: One Among Many

Selbe: One Among Many + Reassemblage

“Selbé: One Among Many” was commissioned as part of the series “As Women See It,” for which eight filmmakers from eight countries (including Atteyat Al-Abnoudy, María Barea, Deepa Dhanraj, and Annabella Miscuglio) produced thirty-minute shorts concerning female experience. Safi Faye, who holds a doctorate in ethnology and was the first woman sub-Saharen Africa to direct a commercially distributed feature film (“Letter From My Village”, 1976), here depicts the daily life of the eponymous Selbé as she provides for her family while her husband seeks employment elsewhere. As its title suggests, the film is a portrait of a single individual that equally seeks to represent a collective condition.

(Erika Balsom)