Kaddu Beykat

Kaddu Beykat also known as Letter from My Village and Lettre paysanne is a 1975 Senegalese film directed by Safi Faye. It was the first feature film made by a SubSaharan African woman to be commercially distributed and brought international recognition for its director. Centred on a romance, it chronicles the daily lives of people in a rural Senegalese village.

Kaddu Beykat is set in Fayes family village, Fadjal in southern Senegal. Financing for the film came from the French Ministry of Cooperation and it was made with a crew of three people. It is a mixture of documentary and fiction. For some parts of the film, Faye gathered villagers together, gave them a topic of conversation and proceeded to film them. She took advice from the villagers on what to film. As with her other work, Faye was careful to show African culture from the inside, rather than as an objective observer. The film is a critique of colonial farming practices and government policies which have encouraged singlecrop farming of cash crops for export, in some cases leading villages further into poverty. The film is dedicated to Fayes grandfather who features in the film, and who dieddays after filming ended.Kaddu Beykat played at the 1976 Berlin International Film Festival where it won the FIPRESCI Prize and the OCIC Award. It also won the Georges Sadoul Prize and an award at the Panafrican Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou. It was released in France on October 20, 1976. It was initially banned in Senegal. ........

Source: Wikipedia