Black Girl (1966) tells the story of a young Senegalese woman who moves to France to work for a wealthy white family and finds that life in their small apartment becomes a prison, both figuratively and literally. The film is a layered critique of the lingering colonialist mind-set of a supposedly postcolonial world. It features a moving central performance by M’Bissine Thérèse Diop and has been described as "a harrowing human drama as well as a radical political statement—and one of the essential films of the 1960s".

Boron Sarret (1963) is a short, stark masterpiece chronicling a day in the life of a Dakar cart-driver. The frustrating day of this "borom sarret" (a Wolof expression for cart-driver) leaves him cheated out of his wages and deprived of his cart. Sembène conveys the toll of natural loss, poverty, and the stain of European colonization on Africa.

All Mayworks Festival events are free of charge.

Founded in 1986, Mayworks Festival of Working People and the Arts is a community-based festival which annually presents new works by a diverse and broad range of artists, who are both workers and activists. Our programming presents bold, insightful, responses to pressing issues at the intersection of art, social justice and labour.