Souls in the Sun
(Souls in the Sun)

Despite the brilliant success of her first two feature length films, Letter from my Village and Fad’jal, during the 1980s Safi Faye was limited to corporate and commissioned films. Souls in the Sun is one of these, commissioned by the UN at a time when the West was waking up to the Third World’s condition. With its double paced voice over, the film gives a dry and large overview of the concrete, rural realities of a Senegalese village, in under thirty minutes. Opening the film, a woman counts down how many of her children have died, leading to the precise description of everything that is lacking or malfunctioning here and intertwining with the proclaimed demand that there be “reparation for the centuries of exploitation”. AR