Ousmane Sembène

Sembene Ousmane (born January 1, 1923) is a Senegalese film director, producer and writer. He has often been called the "Father of African film".

Ousmane Sembène was born in Ziguinchor, a town in the Casamance region. His father was a fisherman. He went to an Islamic school (common for many boys in Senegal) and to the French school, learning French and basic Arabic. His mother tongue is Wolof. He had to leave his French school in 1936 when he clashed with the principal.

He was drafted into the French Army in World War II and later fought for the Free French forces. After the war he returned to his home country and participated in a long railroad strike on which he later based his seminal novel God's Bits of Wood. (The English translation is of a Wolof expression referring to "children.")

Later he worked on the docks at Marseille, becoming active in the French trade union movement. He joined the communist union CGT and the Communist party. He was a leading figure in a strike to hinder the shipment of weapons for the French colonial war in Vietnam. He drew on his experiences for his first novel, The Black Docker (1956), and established himself as a writer.

He was both a prolific writer and one for whom political "engagement" was extremely important. Due to widespread illiteracy, he realized that his written works would only be read by a small cultural elite in his native land; he therefore decided at age 40 to become a film maker, in order to reach wider African audiences. He studied film in Moscow, and, after returning to Senegal, became the first African filmmaker to achieve international noteriety, winning the Jean Vigo Prize for his first feature, La Noire de... (Black Girl)(1966). Seventy-one years after the birth of cinema, this was the first feature-length film ever released by a sub-Saharan African director. The film is based on a short story by the same title which is the most well-known in the collection Voltaique. His subsequent films, including Mandabi (1968), Xala (1974, based on his own novel), and Ceddo (1977) were in his local Wolof language. His later films include Camp de Thiaroye (1987), Guelwaar (1992) and Faat Kiné (2000).

Recurrent themes of Sembène's films are the history of colonialism, the critique of the new African bourgeoisie and the strength of African women.

He scored another success with his 2004 feature Moolaadé, an award winner at the Cannes Film Festival and at the FESPACO Film Festival in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. The film, an exploration of the controversial subject of female genital mutilation, set in a small African village in Burkina Faso, showed that the director was as strong as ever.

Works

Books

• Le docker noir (Paris: Debresse 1956), novel, new edition: Présence Africaine, Paris, 2002, engl. The Black Docker (London: Heinemann, 1987).
• O pays, mon beau peuple! (1957)
• Les bouts de bois de Dieu, 1962, engl. God's bits of wood, London : Heinemann, 1995
• Voltaïque, Paris: Présence Africaine, 1962, short stories
• L’Harmattan (Paris: Présence Africaine, 1964), novel.
• Le mandat, précédé de Vehi-Ciosane (Paris: Presence Africaine, 1966), The money-order : with, White genesis, London : Heinemann, 1987
• Guelwaar
• Xala, Paris : Présence africaine, 1973
• Le dernier de l'Empire, L'Harmattan 1981, – "a key to senegalese politics" (Werner Glinga), engl. The last of the Empire: A Senegalese Novel (London: Heinemann, 1983).
• Niiwam (Paris: Presence Africaine, 1987), engl. Niiwam and Taaw: Two Novellas ( Oxford and Portsmouth, N. H.: Heinemann, 1992).

Some of his films

• Borom Sarret (1963)
• Niaye (1964)
• La Noire De...(1966)
• Mandabi (1968)
• Xala (1975)
• Ceddo (1979)
• Faat Kiné (2000)
• Moolaadé (2004)

External links

• OUSMANE SEMBENE: THE LIFE OF A REVOLUTIONARY ARTIST