A day in the life of a Dakar cart driver who loses his licence and his livelihood, ferrying passengers between the shanty town and the European quarter (1963)
Borom Sarret — usually called the first film made by a sub-Saharan African director.
Film · Around the world
Ousmane Sembène
1923–2007 · Senegalese
African cinema; social realism and anti-colonial satire
Ousmane Sembène was a bricklayer, soldier and Marseille docker who became a celebrated novelist in French and then, in his forties, taught himself to direct in Moscow because film could reach the many Senegalese who could not read. He is universally called the father of African cinema: the first sub-Saharan African director of international standing, the first to shoot a feature in an African language rather than French, and a relentless satirist of colonialism, Islam's local hierarchies and the new African elites.
How to spot them
- ▸'The father of African cinema'; his line that Europe is not his centre
- ▸Cinema as 'night school' for people who cannot read — screenings in villages followed by debate
- ▸Wolof and Diola dialogue rather than French; non-professional actors; tiny budgets
- ▸A novelist first: God's Bits of Wood, The Black Docker, Xala and other books in French
- ▸Films banned at home and abroad, by the French and then by Senegal's own government
Key films
A young Senegalese woman taken to the French Riviera as a nanny finds herself a housemaid, and takes back a carved mask (1966)
La Noire de… (Black Girl) — the first sub-Saharan African feature to reach international audiences; won the Prix Jean Vigo.
An illiterate man receives a money order from a nephew in Paris and is defeated by the paperwork needed to cash it (1968)
Mandabi — the first feature made in an African language, Wolof, rather than French.
A polygamous businessman takes a third wife and finds himself cursed with impotence; he is finally spat on by beggars to lift it (1975)
Xala — a satire on the Senegalese bourgeoisie, adapted from his own novel; cut by Senegalese censors.
West African soldiers who fought for France are massacred by the French army at their transit camp in 1944 over their unpaid wages (1988)
Camp de Thiaroye — banned in France for a decade; co-directed with Thierno Faty Sow.
A village woman shelters four girls fleeing ritual cutting, and defends them with a rope across her compound (2004)
Moolaadé — his last film, on female genital mutilation; won the Un Certain Regard prize at Cannes.
A village's rice is requisitioned by the colonial administration, and the women sit down in protest while the men consult the gods (1971)
Emitaï — set among the Diola of Casamance during the Second World War.
A princess is kidnapped by a nobleman resisting the king's conversion to Islam, in a pre-colonial village (1977)
Ceddo — banned in Senegal for eight years, officially over the spelling of its title.
Quick-fire facts
- •He is conventionally called 'the father of African cinema'; his declaration 'Europe is not my centre' is often quoted
- •Before filmmaking he was a fisherman, bricklayer, a Senegalese tirailleur in the French army, and a docker in Marseille and a union activist
- •His novel Les Bouts de bois de Dieu (God's Bits of Wood, 1960) fictionalises the 1947–48 Dakar–Niger railway strike
- •He studied film at the Gorky Film Studio in Moscow under Mark Donskoy, in his late thirties
- •Mandabi (1968) was the first feature film made in an African language, Wolof; he insisted on it to reach an audience who spoke no French
- •Ceddo (1977) was banned in Senegal for eight years by President Léopold Sédar Senghor, ostensibly over whether the title took one 'd' or two
- •Camp de Thiaroye (1988) dramatises the French army's killing of West African veterans at Thiaroye near Dakar in December 1944; it was effectively barred from French screens for years
- •Moolaadé (2004), made when he was 81, won the Un Certain Regard prize at Cannes and was his last film
- •He received a BFI Fellowship in 2005 and the Prix Jean Vigo for Black Girl
- •He died in Dakar in June 2007, aged 84
Drill it — 8 cards
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Sources
- British Film Institute — Where to begin with Ousmane Sembène