Who is he?
Senegalese film director, producer, scenarist and author who wrote and directed close to 10 feature films between the mid-sixties and the mid-2000s. Sembène, who once worked at the docks and was conscripted in the French Army, started out his artistic career as a novelist, taking to film direction only in his forties. He won the Un Certain Regard prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 2004 for his final film, Moolaadé .
What are his films about?
Themes
Sembène’s films are ideologically driven, and are conscientious and critical of both local and global issues. The tyranny of colonialism, social malaise because of religious wars, oppressiveness and superstition of traditional institutions, women’s liberation, the search for a national identity, class conflict post independence and the corruption of the state are some of the many themes his films deal with. Characters in these movies are caught between a pre-colonial “African” identity and a post-colonial Western one, and can seldom integrate themselves successfully anywhere.
Style
Sembène’s style of filmmaking, which has been hailed by Western critics as a precursor of the “African film aesthetic”, stands in contrast to the flamboyant modernism of his compatriot Djibril Diop Mambéty and is characterised by an uncomplicated directness of narration, cinematography and philosophical intent. Satire is a preferred mode of expression, as are didactic editing patterns and story situations. The acting is generally understated and shot compositions head-on and symmetrical. Motifs from traditional African art and religion are regularly employed in Sembène’s films.
Why is he of interest?
Sembène is widely regarded as the father of African cinema, partly because he made the first prominent, entirely independent film, and also because his films have become the face of the continent’s cinema and the prism through which subsequent work from the continent is analysed. Though this perspective may betray the short-sightedness of Western film culture, Sembène’s position as a crucial African filmmaker is beyond question.
Where to discover him?
Sembène’s most famous film, Black Girl (1966) revolves around a young Senegalese woman who moves to France to work at the house of her former French employers in her home country. Black Girl is a sharp commentary on the ambivalent identity of African people after independence, in which they have neither gained true autonomy nor are on an equal footing with the Europeans.
