Memorial Evening for Filmmaker Safi Faye

22.02.2024 / 20:30 – 23:00

On February 22, 2023, Senegalese filmmaker Safi Faye (Fellow 1979) passed away in Paris at the age of 79. She had a close relationship with the Berlinale Forum as well as the City of Berlin, where she lived for some time as a fellow of the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program. Last year, the Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW) named an event hall after her. The program would thus like to commemorate her work with a screening of her film Kaddu Beykat (1975) in collaboration with the Berlinale Forum and HKW, as well as her daughter Zeïba Monod and the filmmaker Raoul Peck.

About the film:
Kaddu Beykat (Senegal, 1975)
Ongoing drought in a Senegalese village severely affects the farmers’ crop of millet and peanuts. The catastrophic damage, whose roots go back to the agricultural monoculture of the colonial era, starts taking its toll. As a result, the farm worker Ngor can’t afford the dowry for his beloved Coumba, and he sets out to try his luck in Dakar with various odd jobs.
The filmmaker Safi Faye studied ethnology and frames the action with her own commentary—the result is in an audiovisual letter about her home village. Shot over three weeks with a small team, the docu-fiction is an outstanding product of her participatory work with the villagers, including her grandfather, who died shortly after the filming ended.

Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Safi Faye Saal
John-Foster-Dulles-Allee 10
10557 Berlin

Photo: Still from Safi Faye „Kaddu Beykat“ (Senegal 1975). © Arsenal – Institut für Film und Videokunst e.V., Zeïba Monod