Sembène Ousmane would have been a hundred years old on January 1, 2023. This mythical figure of African cinema, also a novelist and short story writer, was born in Ziguinchor and had discovered the power of the 7th art, which he will put at the service of his political commitment, at the service of justice and representation of Africa. The French Cinematheque in Paris will pay tribute to him with a retrospective from next Thursday.
Sembène Ousmane, who died on June 9, 2007, has become a major figure in contemporary Africa, whose work is taught in American universities.
“ I grew up in a small village in Senegal, without radio, without television. All I had were my grandmother’s tales… “, he said. This is how Sembène Ousmane became a storyteller himself, determined to represent Africa at a time when the images of the continent came from the white colonizer.
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An undisciplined student, in turn a mason, a docker at the port of Marseille, a Senegalese skirmisher, an activist of the French Communist Party, Sembène Ousmane fights for the independence of his country. He does it camera in hand, convinced that cinema is an evening school. In 1963, his film Borom Sarretthe journey in 18 minutes of a poor of the poor of Dakar, is the first film shot in Africa by an African.
Self-taught filmmaker, also a writer, Sembène Ousmane paves the way for African directors. In all, he leaves nine feature films, a work devoted to the history of Africa, from slavery to the Islamic conquest, from French colonization to the new African bourgeoisies.
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The eldest of the elders will have remained a rebel all his life, denouncing the forced conversions to Islam in Ceddoa film long banned in Senegal, the massacre of Senegalese skirmishers by the French in Thiaroye Camp or the excision of girls in Moolaadehis last film in 2004.
► The program of the retrospective at the Cinémathèquefrom January 5 to 15