Ousmane Sembene: The Work of an African Film Maker
Ousmane Sembene is an influential Senegalese film director most commonly referred to as the father of African cinema. He was born in 1923 in Casamance, Senegal in a family of poor fisherman. Sembene did not have much French schooling as a child because his family was in the lower class. As a colonial French citizen in 1944, he was drafted into the French colonial army, the Tirailleurs S�©n�©galais, to fight for liberation of the French from German occupation. Following his term of service he became a union organizer and joined the French Communist Party in Marseilles. Sembene participated in the protest movements organized by the FCP against the colonial war in Indochina (1953) and the Korean War (1950-1953). He also supported the Algerian National Liberation Front during its struggle for independence from France (1954-1962). He often yearned for the society of universal brotherhood and justice mirrored by the communist ideologies, which he meticulously studied.
During his stay in Marseilles from 1950-1960 he learned and mastered the French language. He also began to write and publish novels. Several titles are: O, Country, My Beautiful People, (1957), God’s Bits of Wood, (1960), The Money Order, (1965), Harmattan, (1965), and The Curse, (1973). Upon returning to Senegal in the early 1960s he felt alienated by the paucity of revolutionary artists and writers from Africa. He noticed most people in the West African sub-region were illiterate in French and could not understand the messages embedded in his writings. Thus Sembene decided to attend film school in the Soviet Union. He spent a year at the Gorki Studios in Moscow studying cinematography under the auspices of director, Marc DonskoÃ?¯. Since his return to Senegal in the early 1960s he has made L’Empire Sonhrai (1963), Borom Sarret (1963), Niaye (1964), La Noire deâÂ?¦(1967), Mandabi (1968), Taaw (1970), Emitai (1971), Xala (1974), Ceddo (1977), Camp de Thiaroye (1988), Guelwaar (1992), L’heroisme au quotidien (1999), Faat Kine (2000), and Moolaade (2004).
Through his films he seeks to resurrect the voices of the masses of workers, women, and “les bouches qui n’ont pas bouches”, those exploited and silenced by the combined external forces of colonialism and the complexities of the rigid African “traditionalist” thought. Sembene’s leftist views, Marxist influenced philosophies, along with his tension with the successive Senegalese governments beginning with the first president, Leopold Senghor, are well versed in his artistic works . “He believed that Senghor (like the French-speaking African elite) was a puppet [used by France] to perpetuate its economic, political, linguistic, and cultural domination over Africa.” Sembene was greatly influenced by the women in his life. His two grandmothers were his “wives” according to tradition. He sought to understand them as he observed their daily activities and their strength as powerful forces of resistance to post-colonial forces. His experiences as youth help to explain his leftist ideologies, his enmity for injustice, and the negative aspects of tradition. Sembene also felt passionately about corrupt politicians and governments, North-South relations, false idealism of France, neo-colonialism, forced marriages, the participation of African soldiers in French and European colonial and imperialist wars, and the mistreatment of women, and other marginalized people of the Senegalese society.
Origins of African Cinema
African Cinema has become a vessel of protest and cultural awareness within the last fifty years. In black Africa, centuries of European colonial occupation have obscured African ethnic cultural and national histories through ideological distortions. In Sembene’s words, “For us, African filmmakers, it was then necessary to become political, to be involved in a struggle against the ills of man’s cupidity, envy, individualism, nouveau-riche mentality, and all the things we have inherited from the colonial and neo-colonial systems.” There are various themes addressed in Sembene’s films that augment his views of how post-colonial and post-independence Senegal should evolve in terms of development, societal structure, and economy.
In spite of his keen reverence for cultural patrimony, he often casts a critical lens on the archaic nature of certain traditions in a contemporary African environment. Transition towards modernity is also a vital theme in relation to sociopolitical and economic liberation in Africa. In addition, the new indigenous bourgeoisie has emerged since 1960’s and continues to be a frequent theme in Francophone African films that reveal the nepotism, corruption, and mismanagement of the economy by the African elite.
Another subject that permeates African cinema is the conflictive dichotomy among Western pop-culture and traditional Africa. The exile and estrangement many Africans face in foreign countries due to the popularized idealistic notion of grandeur and success outside of the continent is a frequent theme in Sembene’s films such as Black Girl. African filmmaking differs from Western filmmaking both structurally and monetarily. The budgets for the films are minuscule and often times require additional government and/ or private funding. Many of Sembene’s early works are in French because the French Ministry of Cooperation provided the funds for the projects. Contrarily Sembene feels that Senegalese reality is better expressed in the mother tongue of the country rather than alien languages acquired from colonialism.
Various African films take on a particular story structure, which augments the stylistic and thematic concepts of the indigenous Griot (storyteller) in African Oral Tradition. The linear plot progression found in Sembene’s films mimics the ancient folktales. ” [His] films not only represent some kind of initiation and metaphorical rebirth, but also cause new awareness, and basic change in the existential world view of both the protagonist and the viewer.” Sembene works with the magical, emotional, and mystical aspects of filmmaking in tandem with the themes of death and rebirth to suggest and ignite the key to liberation embedded within the conscious of the “sleeping” African. The griots (modern day directors) “are simultaneously social critics, historians, bards and seers; they criticize the present to encourage change; re-examine and reconstruct the past to shed more light on its effects on the present and they transmit cultures and histories from the past generation to those who are present.” Sembene’s continuous support of progressive and modern ideas through storytelling is transcended through his treatment of female characters as catalysts of progress and change.
