Safi Faye (born 1943), the Senegalese filmmaker and ethnologist who has made her home in Paris, is the best-known woman filmmaker in sub-Saharan Africa.

Safi Faye was born in 1943 in Fad Jal, Senegal, a village south of Dakar, where she made the ethnographic films that brought her international acclaim. She was educated in Senegal, where she obtained her teacher's certificate at Rufisque normal school. Faye was teaching in Dakar in 1966 when she met Jean Rouch, the foremost French ethnographic filmmaker and father of cinema verité, at FESTAC, the World Black and African Festival of Arts and Cultures. Subsequently she played a role in Rouch's Petit à Petit (1969), and with Rouch's encouragement she studied ethnology at the University of Paris, first earning a diploma in 1977 and then a doctorate in 1979 based on research on the religion of the Serer, her own ethnic group. While in Paris she attended the...