Ousmane Sembene's La Noire de…: melancholia in photo, text, and film

This article explores Ousmane Sembene's short story La Noire de… (Black Girl) and its film version by using the poster for the film as the linking cog, and by analysing the various shapes melancholia takes across these mediums. Sembene's interior sets are often ornamented with posters that have a double meaning: what they signify within the space of the film, and what they mean within the larger social context of Senegal and West Africa in general. By focusing on the promotional, extra-diegetic poster we can trace a similar binary relationship in reverse. This original path leads to the study of melancholia, first within a wider historical context, and, second, within the confines of the relationship between the poster, the film, and the short story.