The Lasting Legacy of Ousmane Sembène
Casamance River at Ziguinchor, Senegal. Photo credit: KaBa (KaaBaa), CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
The 100th anniversary of the birth of Ousmane Sembène was celebrated around the world last year in recognition of his many contributions to Senegalese, West African, and human society via his writings, films, and ideas. The man whom many consider to be the “Father of African Cinema” lived a far-reaching life in his reflective yet determined quest to tell African-centered stories and advocate for social progress while prompting thought and action among those reached by his work.
Sembène was born in January 1923 in Zigouinchor, a port city in the Casamance region of southwestern Senegal. From a young age he exhibited a defiant streak that would play a prominent role throughout his life as he never stopped observing, questioning, taking action, and reaping both positive and negative consequences. He was expelled from school for disobedience as an adolescent and followed his father into the fishing trade before moving to Dakar. There, he worked as a laborer and was introduced to cinema before being drafted into the Senegalese Tirailleurs and serving with the Free French Forces during World War II. Sembène‘s extensive interactions among family, co-workers, fellow conscripts, French authorities, and French military commanders gave him a broad range of perspectives regarding human relationships and power – who had it, how it was deployed, how it could be changed. After the war, Sembène briefly returned to Dakar where he participated in a multinational African trainworkers’ successful strike against French management. He then moved to France where he first worked in an automobile factory and then as a dockworker in Marseille, joining the national trade union CGT (Confédération Générale du Travail). While recuperating from an injury, Sembène read widely and mastered French sufficiently enough to write his first novel in that language, Le Docker Noir, inspired by his own experiences and observations.
Ousmane Sembène in 1987. Photo credit: © Guenter Prust, used with permission from the photographer.
He went on to author additional French-language works that depicted African experiences within the constraints of French institutions and African society, using stories of individuals to illustrate broader themes and draw attention to issues arising from power dynamics and their effects on various community members. In 1962, Sembène went to Moscow to study filmmaking and then returned to his newly independent homeland. He turned to film in the 1960s to reach a broader audience, particularly among the multilingual – but not necessarily Francophone - populations of Senegal and its neighbors whose lives provided the subject matter of his films.
His first feature-length film, La Noire de. . . (1966) was based on one of his own short stories about a young Senegalese woman who moves to France to work for a French couple, but her dreams of forging new paths in her life are crushed by her employers’ stifling treatment and their disregard for her as a person. Two years later, Sembène produced Mandabi in Wolof based on his novel Le Mandat (The Money Order), believed to be the first full-length African-language film. The audiences Sembène wished to reach understood and identified with Wolof more than French, and Mandabi addressed ways that colonialism, human nature, and traditional relationships intertwined to complicate daily life. Both films were commercially and critically acclaimed, bringing Sembène international attention. La Noire de. . . received the 1966 Jean Vigo Prize in France and the 1966 Tanit d’Or at the Carthage Film Festival whereas Mandabi was awarded the Special Jury Prize at the 1968 Venice International Film Festival.
Sembène continued to expose themes of colonization, corruption, and moral compromise through his writings and films of the 1970s and 1980s. His 1977 film Ceddo about a village trying to preserve its traditional African ways was censored by Senegalese authorities and Camp de Thiaroye (1988), based on a protest by West African soldiers who were subsequently massacred by their commanders at the end of World War II, was banned for a decade in France despite winning the Grand Special Jury Prize at the Venice International Film Festival. Consistent with his desire to tell stories by and for West Africans first and foremost, Sembène set up movie screenings around Senegal to bypass the censors and was a regular presence at the Pan-African Film and TV Festival of Ouagadougou (FESPACO). The filmmaker’s final film was released in 2004. Mooladé, the story of a Burkina Faso woman who defies her husband and village elders to defend local girls against feminine genital mutilation, garnered multiple festival awards, including Un Certain Regard at the Cannes Film Festival.
Sembène passed away in 2007 at the age of 84 but left a legacy of not only books and films, but also showing Senegalese, Africans, and the world that people not only have the capability but the right to present their own cultures and stories in their own ways. His work and dedication set a model for the spreading of ideas to include voices that had yet to be heard and disseminating them first and foremost throughout the communities whose identities were represented by them. In so doing, Sembène also prompted reflection among Africans and others to value as well as critique their own lives and societies - a universally human concept.
Dr. Samba Gadjigo, Sembène’s close friend and official biographer, and Jason Silverman oversee The Sembène Project, an effort to “preserve African cinema and culture and make it available to Africans both on the continent and in the diaspora.” For an in-depth look at the life and influence of Ousmane Sembène, watch their 2015 film Sembene: The Inspiring Story of the Father of African Cinema (available on Prime video).
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One of Sembène’s priorities was to reach as wide an audience as possible - not for fame and glory, but to shine an accessible light on African culture and prompt the exchange of ideas and viewpoints. Watch the video clip below of him discussing his move into film despite his preference for literature ( in French with English subtitles).
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