Blanc d ebène
Guinea / France,
1991, 88 min
Shown in 1992
CREDITS
- dir
-
Cheik Doukoure
- prod
-
Gilles Legrand, Frédéric Brillion
- scr
-
Cheik Doukoure, Guy Zilberstein
- cam
-
Patrick Blossier
- editor
-
Luc Barnier
- cast
-
Bernard-Pierre Donnadieu, Maka Kotto, Marianne Basler
- source
-
Epithète Productions
-
COMMENTS
Cheik Doukoure in person.
OTHER
Ebony White is set in a small, isolated village in Guinea (French West Africa) in 1943 and deals with the gradually intensifying conflict between two key figures in the village’s life: Warrant Officer Mariani, the local representative of French colonial authority and Lanseye Kante, a young radical teacher who has returned to the village where he was born to become the head of its school. Guinean director Cheik Doukoure—in a film debut of quite extraordinary brilliance and assurance—uses their confrontation as the basis for a powerful and disturbing study of the effects of imperialism on rulers and ruled alike, and analyzes the ethnic hierarchies, power struggles and contradictions of colonial life with a sardonic irony which by no means precludes a sense of tragedy. Donnadieu gives a magnificent performance as the Conradian figure of Mariani, alienated from the traditions of the people he rules and those of the dying empire whose authority he imposes.
—Andrew Britton, London Film Festival
FACTOID #85
In 1996, Harvey Keitel was the first recipient of the Peter J. Owens Award, honoring “brilliance, independence and honesty” in acting. Honest he was. During the clip show at his tribute Keitel, unhappy with one of the clips, began waving his arms and shouting until the screen went black. The screen lit up with a new clip and the tribute continued.
