A while back, two internationally acclaimed directors, one
(Senegal’s Ousmane Sembene) an old master, the other (China’s Zi’en Cui) a relative
newcomer, made their DVD debuts thanks to New Yorker and Water Bearer Films,
respectively. Both distributors now follow up those initial releases with more
works from these two highly distinctive filmmakers. From New Yorker comes Sembene’s
debut feature, Black Girl (1966), a stunning indictment of French colonialism
that, in the wake of the recent Paris unrest, remains as damning today as it
did then. Appropriating the rich, fluid black-and-white camerawork of French
documentarian Jean Rouch, Sembene draws us into the inner world of Diouana,
an African woman brought to the Côte d’Azur as a live-in maid by a French couple
she worked for back in Dakar. Strikingly beautiful, she withdraws from her blond
mistress’s domination into a claustrophobic, numbing routine, her life restricted
to the kitchen, her small bedroom and the living room in between, with its taunting
view of the coast. Barely speaking onscreen, Diouana bares her inner self through
voice-over and flashbacks that repeatedly return to the question “What am I
here?” As the answer becomes clear, Diouana grows increasingly desperate, setting
the stage for Black Girl’s final, powerfully understated tragedy. A similar
sense of dislocation and separation pervades Night Scene (2004), Cui’s
intimate and haunting portrait of the rent boys of Beijing. Shot illicitly on
video and proceeding from the barest hint of narrative — a son discovers his
father having a gay affair, then finds himself immersed in the gay hustling
scene — the film unfolds mostly as a series of moving testimonials and confessions:
In spare flats, public parks and garish nightclubs, a flurry of young men reveal
themselves before Cui’s camera to be on the leading edge of both China’s capitalist
flirtations and the age-old pursuit of true love.

Other recommended new releases: The 40-Year-Old Virgin
(VHS-DVD); Gallipoli: Special Collector’s Edition (DVD); The Simpsons:
The Complete Seventh Season (DVD).
Also released this week:
VHS-DVD: The Island.
DVD: Airplane!: Don’t Call Me Shirley Edition; The Bad News Bears: Special
Collector’s Edition; The Five Pennies; Gilmore Girls: The Complete Fifth Season;
King Kong: Peter Jackson’s Production Diaries; Sin City: Extended and Recut;
Suze Orman: For the Young, Fabulous and Broke.