La femme au couteau (The Woman with the Knife)

A search for footing in postcolonial Côte d’Ivoire

YBCA describes a protagonist who finds reality difficult to bear. He looks for ways to regain his footing as visions of the woman seem alternately threatening and pleading, turning his private crisis into the film’s central tension.

Bassori sets that story at a postcolonial crossroads in Côte d’Ivoire. The film’s attention to sexual politics and its jazz-influenced score give viewers more to consider than the character’s search for answers: the personal disturbance sits within a society undergoing cultural change.

Further reading: La femme au couteau (The Woman with the Knife) - YBCA ↗

A survey that moves across national histories

YBCA frames The World of Black Film: Revolutions around decolonization and rising political consciousness, with recurring concerns including memory, migration, politics, identity and rebellion. The selections illustrate that range without reducing Black cinema to a single national tradition. Before Bassori’s December 5 screening, the series includes Med Hondo’s West Indies (1979), staged entirely on a constructed ship evoking the slave trade; YBCA identifies it as the African continent’s first musical. Djibril Diop Mambety’s Touki Bouki offers a fractured portrait of Senegal, and Ousmane Sembène made his feature debut with Black Girl in 1966.

After Bassori’s screening, the series turns to other histories. Sarah Maldoror’s Sambizanga, scheduled for December 12, follows Angola’s independence movement. Flora Gomes’ Mortu Nega, on December 19, considers Guinea-Bissau’s revolution and its difficult aftermath. Released in 1988, Mortu Nega also carries the series beyond the 1960s-to-early-1980s period emphasized in YBCA’s description, extending the conversation to life after independence.

The January screenings shift to Britain. YBCA identifies Horace Ové’s Pressure, scheduled for January 9, as the country’s first feature written and directed by a Black filmmaker and its first to center Black characters. Menelik Shabazz’s Burning an Illusion, on January 16, gives a Black woman the narrative center in a way YBCA describes as unprecedented in British cinema at the time.

Further reading: La femme au couteau (The Woman with the Knife) - YBCA ↗ · The World of Black Film: Revolutions - YBCA ↗

Ashley Clark’s curatorial perspective

Ashley Clark co-presents the series with YBCA. He is the Criterion Collection’s Curatorial Director; his previous work includes directing film programming at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and curating series at BFI Southbank, the Museum of Modern Art and TIFF Bell Lightbox.

The series draws on Clark’s book The World of Black Film: A Journey Through Cinematic Blackness in 100 Films, a survey spanning more than 100 years and 30 countries. YBCA says copies will be for sale at the front desk at a discounted price for moviegoers; it does not list the price.

Further reading: La femme au couteau (The Woman with the Knife) - YBCA ↗ · Ashley Clark - YBCA ↗