DOCSLIB.ORG

Ousmane Sembene and Haile Gerima

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Ousmane Sembene and Haile Gerima ARTISTIC AND IDEOLOGICAL CONVERGENCE: OUSMANE SEMBENE AND HAILE GER IMA By Mbye Baboucar Cham History is replete with examples of intellectual, artistic, and political pairings that have in various degrees influenced and shaped human thought and actions over time. Perhaps the most celebrated of such duos is that of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels whose formulations and reflections on the human being and human society continue to guide and inspire many forms of thought and action in many parts of the world today. Other pairings did occur within the conte.xt of what could be referred to loosely as "schools of thought." Such is the case of black literary greats of the Harlem Renaissance like Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, and Zora Neale Hurston whose literary as well as socio-cultural acts marked a historic turning point in black aesthetics. Negritude, taking some inspiration from the Harlem Renaissance Movement, highlights Leopold senghor, Al.me cesaire, and Leon Damas. The impact--literary and otherwise--that Okot p ' Bitek and Ngugi wa Thiong'o have made on literary creativity is well documented. The revolutionary orientation given to cinema and to the entire process and technique of making film in early twentieth century Russia is credited to luminaries such as Sergei Eisentein and Vladimir Pudovkin. Out of Latin America have emerged progressive film theoreticians and prac­ titioners such as Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino who~e concept of "Third Cinema" or revolutionary cinema has made a profound contribution to the effort to redefine and reorientate cinema, especially in Third Worid countries. The anti­ imperialist and anti-neo-colonial struggle in Africa produced the minds of Kwame Nkrumah and Franz Fanon, Julius Nyerere and Amilcar Cabral whose historic contributions to African and black thought and action are only too well known. The traits which mark each of these pairings include (a) some degree of similarity in field action and in ideological orientation, and (b) the fact that the individuals involved are more or less contemporaries and seriously committed to the theory and praxis of transforming society to bring about freedom, social justice, and equality. Ousmane Sembene and Haile Gerima belong to this category of celebrated duos, and in this paper we explore the artistic, political, and ideological thought and action of these two African filmmakers whose work has shaped and continues to shape the contours and essence of the African film. The differences in their general background notwithstand­ ing, sembene and Gerima have in separate ways combined to help define the broad outline of what can be referred to as the 140 quintessential African film. This is a film that dramatizes and exposes the truth of the African historical and/or con­ temporary experience in order to create a consciousness for liberation from all forms of oppression, injustice, and in­ equality, and a consciousness for the construction and develop­ ment of a just and viable African society. The quintessential African film draws upon the artistic resources of the film­ maker' s indigenous creative traditions, modifies these, if necessary, and integrates them skillfully and realistically into the medium. Thus, the quintessential African film captures and scrutinizes typical forces in society in a structure, rhythm, pace, and language that are largely, though not ex­ clusively, African, and the mission of this film is revolution­ a.ry. Such is the synthesis that emerges from a careful examin­ ation of the work and pronouncements of these two premier African filn'anakers, one working out of Senegal and the other forced by current circumstances in his native Ethiopia to work tempor­ arily out of Washington, D.C. Together, Sembene and Gerima account for a pretty large share of the feature films made by Africans for the period from 1960 to 1980. Of the approximately 38 films--documentary as well as fiction--made by 14 Senegalese filmmakers from 1958 to 1977, 8 belong to Sembene,1 the rest average 2 . 5 films per director. In the case of Gerima, he is so far (apart from Solomon Bekele who made The Rotten Existence) the only known filn'anaker from Ethiopia, and to date he is credited with 6 films2 and is currently editing a new film tentatively entitled Calalloo, for release in 1981. Quantitatively, then, one is dealing here with a comparatively substantial body of work. Both Sembene and Gerima came to film via another medium and for the same reasons, too. How this impinges upon their conception and practice of film will be examined in another pa.rt of this paper. One of the most striking characteristics of the work of Sembene and Gerima is the clarity and effectiveness with which their very similar ideological orientations are imparted on different levels within the context of any given film, and these levels, the most central of which are structural and thematic, work to reinforce and comment on each other in various ways for maximum impact. In this way, the ideology embodied in their work does not in any way emerge as a result of direct moralizing or preaching by the director through mouthpiece characters; rather, the ideology emerges primarily from the structure of the work itself, and it is this structure, a structure of opposites in_most of the films of Sembene and Gerima, that enables Sembene and Gerima to organise and control shots and sequences and the component elements of these so that the final product usually becomes a living dramatisation of ideology. 141 The dominant structural pattern which characterizes the films of Sembene and Gerima is a structure of opposites, the highest common denominator in their work being the framework of polar opposites within which the bulk of their material--the African historical and contemporary experience--is examined. This framework enables sembene and Gerima to graphically lay bare the nature and interrelationship of the forces that co­ exist in and shape African society, forces which, in the main, are conceptualized as antagonistic and therefore locked in conflict. Thus, in its detailed manifestation, this structure of conflicting opposites takes on the manner of a st.ruggle be­ tween the rich and the poor, the exploiter and the exploited, the honest and the dishonest, the progressive and the reaction­ ary, the powerful and the powerless, the landlords. and the peasants, the political and economic managers and those politi­ cally and economically managed. This organisational principle flows from a conception of reality or society as a highly structured and well-organised unit. Unlike conventional bour­ geois aesthetics which regard reality as a chaotic and unorgan­ ised mass out of which the artist selects and orders, at will, pieces of experience into a work, the aesthetics of Sembene and Gerima see reality as a neatly structured unit composed of basically two forces engaged in a struggle for dominance, and the artist, by virtue of his conunitment to truth, justice, equality, change, and progress, meticulously examines, analyses, and exposes the real nature of these contending forces and the relationship between them. Ceddo, Xa1a (which Sembene labels "un film de contradiction") , Mandabi, Emi tai, La Noire de • ••• , and Tauw are constructed on the basis of this structure of opposites, as are Gerima's Harvest: 3000 Years, Wilmington 10: USA 10,000, and Bush Mama. These films not only expose the oppressive, exploitative, and reactionary nature of one force and the oppression and exploitation suffered by the other po­ tentially progressive force, but they also reveal the ideologica] implications of regarding reality as chaotic. Reality--the African reality--is a reality of oppression and exploitation of the majority by a powerful and resource-laden foreign and indigenous minority, and the systems and modalities of this oppression and exploitation are highly studied, well-structured, planned, and organised. As such, there is nothing chaotic about this reality. The films of Sembene and Gerima expose and de­ nounce the inhumanity of the structures and the dynamics of these systems of oppression and exploitation, and the inevitable lesson that forces itself upon the viewer is the imperativeness of struggle and change. Ceddo constitutes the most critical artistic scrutiny to date of the history of Islam in senegalese society. Using the principle of opposition as a structuring device, Sembene pitches on one side the local earthly agent of Islam, the Imam together with his followers, against, on the other side, the so- called 142 'pagan' African mass- -the ceddo. Within this f r amework he pro­ ceeds to examine and analyse the events and the factors that affect and shape the relationship and the outcome of the rela­ tionship between these two forces, which represent different sets of values, interests, and aspirations. Islam emerges as a usurper, oppressive, insidious, and calculatedly ruthless in its determined quest for dominance, not unlike colonialism and imperialism of the kind portrayed in Emitai,3 a film which also uses this structure of opposites to examine the French colonial oppression and exploitation of the Diola of cassamance. The same principle of polar opposites defines the struc­ ture of Xala, where the nascent indigenous but impotent com­ mercial bourgeoisie is pitted in a conflict with the poor, cheated, and despised majority. El-Hadji Abdou Kader Beye, on the one hand, and the beggar, on the other, constitute the representatives of these two antagonistic polarities whose values, interests, and aspirations are not the same . This grid provides sembene the scope within which he analyses and exposes the neo-colonial, dependent, and impotent nature of the Senegal­ ese bourgeoisie, and the calm resolve and dignity of the strug­ gling poor. Looking at Gerima's Harvest: 3000 Years, a film set in feudal Ethiopia, one discovers this same structure of opposites. The contending forces in this film are so sharply defined and detailed by the structure that the temptation to dogmatically argue only one possible approach becomes extremely strong.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • David-Murphy-An-African-Brecht.Pdf
    Change of Focus—4 david murphy AN AFRICAN BRECHT The Cinema of Ousmane Sembene usmane Sembene, unruly progenitor of the new African cinema, was born in 1923 in the sleepy provincial port Oof Ziguinchor, Casamance, the southernmost province of French-run Senegal. His background was Muslim, Wolof- speaking, proletarian—his father a fisherman, who had left his ancestral village near Dakar for the south; prone to seasickness, Ousmane showed little aptitude for the family trade. It was a turbulent childhood. His par- ents split up early, and the boy—strong-minded and full of energy—was bundled from one set of relatives to another, ending up with his moth- er’s brother, Abdou Ramane Diop. A devout rural schoolteacher, Diop was an important influence, introducing Ousmane to the world of books and encouraging his questions. This favourite uncle died when Sembene was just thirteen. He moved to Dakar, staying with other relations, and enrolled for the certificat d’études, passport for clerical jobs open to Africans. But wilful and irreverent, Sembene was never the sort for the colonial administration. He was expelled from school, allegedly for raising his hand against a teacher, and ran through a series of manual jobs—mechanic, stonemason. His spare time was spent at the movies, or hanging out with friends in the central marketplace in Dakar, where the griots or gewels, the storytellers, spun their tales. Gewels ranked low in the Wolof caste hierarchy, but had traditional licence to depict and comment on all ranks, from king to beggar; the best had mastered the insights of xamxam, historical and new left review 16 july aug 2002 115 116 nlr 16 social knowledge—a formative influence in Sembene’s later work, as were the structuring tensions of African trickster stories: the narrative quest, the reversal of fortunes, the springing traps of power relations.1 Sembene was seventeen when Senegal’s colonial masters capitulated to Hitler, and was witness to the seamless reincarnation of Governor- General Boisson’s administration as an outpost of Vichy.
    [Show full text]
  • Sembène! Dir. Samba Gadjigo & Jason Silverman. 2015. 90 Min. Wolof, Peul, French & English with English Subtitles
    This material has been published in African Studies Review https://doi.org/10.1017/asr.2016.73. This version is free to view and download for private research and study only. Not for re-distribution or re-use. © African Studies Association 2016 Sembène! dir. Samba Gadjigo & Jason Silverman. 2015. 90 min. Wolof, Peul, French & English with English subtitles. The Film Sales Company. Screening fee: £200 Sembène! is a documentary film about Senegalese filmmaker Ousmane Sembène, director of one of the first African narrative film made in sub-Saharan Africa, Borom Sarret (1963), and the first feature-length sub-Saharan African film, Black Girl (1966). Usually referred to as the father of African cinema and as a modern “griot”, Sembene was born in 1923 in the Southern region of Casamance and passed away in Dakar in 2007. His social realist narrative films not only mirror Senegalese realities but aim to question, challenge, and respond to those realities from an African perspective and with a desire to speak to African audiences. Sembène! is a film about the filmmaker’s life and oeuvre, and has screened internationally in numerous film festivals (for example, the BFI London Film Festival, the UK-based African film festivals network, the New York Film Festival and the Sundance Film Festival). It is a celebration of cinema and particularly of African cinema made in Africa for Africans, with the challenge of ensuring Sembène’s heritage is not disregarded but celebrated all over the world. However, it is also a re-writing of the history of cinema. Released just two years after Mati Diop had explored the legacy of the avant-garde Senegalese film Touki Bouki (1973) by her uncle Djibril Diop Mambety, Sembène! has the distinction of being the first biographical documentary of an African filmmaker.
    [Show full text]
  • Présentation. Le Rendez-Vous D'ousmane Sembène Avec La Modernité Africaine
    Document generated on 10/02/2021 1:17 p.m. Études littéraires africaines Présentation. Le rendez-vous d’Ousmane Sembène avec la modernité africaine Phyllis Taoua Ousmane Sembène Number 30, 2010 URI: https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/1027343ar DOI: https://doi.org/10.7202/1027343ar See table of contents Publisher(s) Association pour l'Étude des Littératures africaines (APELA) ISSN 0769-4563 (print) 2270-0374 (digital) Explore this journal Cite this document Taoua, P. (2010). Présentation. Le rendez-vous d’Ousmane Sembène avec la modernité africaine. Études littéraires africaines, (30), 6–19. https://doi.org/10.7202/1027343ar Tous droits réservés © Association pour l'Étude des Littératures africaines This document is protected by copyright law. Use of the services of Érudit (APELA), 2011 (including reproduction) is subject to its terms and conditions, which can be viewed online. https://apropos.erudit.org/en/users/policy-on-use/ This article is disseminated and preserved by Érudit. Érudit is a non-profit inter-university consortium of the Université de Montréal, Université Laval, and the Université du Québec à Montréal. Its mission is to promote and disseminate research. https://www.erudit.org/en/ PRÉSENTATION LE RENDEZ-VOUS D’OUSMANE SEMBÈNE AVEC LA MODERNITÉ AFRICAINE La liberté est toujours et exclu- sivement la liberté de celui qui pense différemment. Rosa Luxemburg L’idée de ce dossier consacré à Ousmane Sembène a vu le jour au cours de conversations durant les journées d’études organisées par l’APELA à Paris en septembre 2007. Sembène venait de mourir, le 9 juin : soudain nous réalisions que l’œuvre était à présent définitivement achevée, et nous pensions à ce qu’il avait laissé comme héritage.
    [Show full text]
  • Ousmane Sembene: the Aestheticization of Memory and History
    OUSMANE SEMBENE: THE AESTHETICIZATION OF MEMORY AND HISTORY by PETER MWAURA GACHANJA (Under the Direction of RACHEL GABARA) ABSTRACT This dissertation examines the aesthetics of memory in five of Sembene’s texts: Le Dernier de l’Empire (a novel), Vehi-Ciosane (a novella) and three films (Ceddo, Emitai, Camp de Thiaroye). I argue that the literary and cinematic productions of Sembene invoke and construct memories that generate debate about testimony and survival. While I do not disagree with Samba Gadjigo who has defined Sembene’s fiction as self-defense literature and proposes that he became an author in order to escape his situation as a docker in Marseilles (2004), I go on to show that, throughout Sembene’s forty-eight year literary career, he creates an aesthetics of memory that writes back both to the Hexagon and his own African and Caribbean counterparts. The dissertation further shows that Sembene proposed his own theory of writing in which fiction meets (auto)biography. In the introductory chapter, I trace this theory to the preface of L’Harmattan (1964); this theorizing is further developed eighteen years down the line in Le Dernier de l’Empire. Thus, Sembene becomes the critic of his own writing and describes his ideal readers as he designates a number of theorists, many of who engaged in prolific writing even as they enjoyed remarkable political careers (Nyerere, Nkrumah, Cabral, Senghor, Mondlane, Césaire). I observe that, apart from a quest for self-identity within the realm of the imaged and the imagined, Sembene’s aesthetics of memory and history further opens the door to the study of auto-referentiality, the author as a survivor, and writing as testimony.
    [Show full text]
  • UC Berkeley Electronic Theses and Dissertations
    UC Berkeley UC Berkeley Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title The Limits of the Literary: Senegalese Writers Between French, Wolof and World Literature Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/355567z3 Author Warner, Tobias Dodge Publication Date 2012 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California The Limits of the Literary: Senegalese Writers Between French, Wolof and World Literature By Tobias Dodge Warner A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor in Philosophy in Comparative Literature in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Karl Britto, Chair Professor Judith Butler Professor Samba Diop Professor Susan Maslan Professor Gautam Premnath Spring 2012 ! ! "! Abstract The Limits of the Literary: Senegalese Writers Between French, Wolof and World Literature by Tobias Dodge Warner Doctor of Philosophy in Comparative Literature University of California, Berkeley Professor Karl Britto, Chair ! ! This dissertation argues that the category of the literary emerged in colonial Senegal through the exclusion of some indigenous textual cultures and the translation of others. In readings of Mariama Bâ, Ousmane Sembène, Cheikh Aliou Ndao, Maam Yunus Dieng and others, I examine how postcolonial Senegalese authors working in French and Wolof have responded to this legacy. Through analyses of a variety of 19th-20th century texts, this dissertation explores how the Senegalese literary field has been crosscut by a series of struggles over how to define proper reading and authorship, and what the shape of a future literary public might be. I argue that Senegalese writers working at the interstices of French and Wolof have engaged with a variety of crises of authorship and audience by addressing their work to a public that is yet to come.
    [Show full text]
  • Law of the Jungle: Idrissa Ouédraogo's Tilaï
    CHAPTER 20 LAW OF THE JUNGLE: IDRISSA OUÉDRAOGO’S TILAÏ When we go to a new film made by a director who has had a long career, we take considerable baggage with us. A first film or even a second film is one kind of experience; I can’t fix a number at which we change to another experience, but we don’t arrive at it gradually. Suddenly it comes about that a new picture by a familiar director is either a matter of continued eagerness or of newfound obligation—a feeling that it would be unfair not to see his or her latest work. In any case we take that director’s whole filmography with us to the movie theater, not necessarily in specifics but in state of mind. That is, we don’t see this latest offering quite as independently as we would a new director’s work: we are always comparing it, favorably or not, with its maker’s artistic past. Such was the case when I saw a film by a man “with a past”—followed, for a change of pace, by only the second film by a director from the same continent. Before treating the latter, I would like briefly to discuss the final picture by a distinguished predecessor of his. Osmane Sembène (1923–2007) was one of the most important literary figures of sub-Saharan Africa at the same time as he was its premier filmmaker. Sembène came to the cinema by necessity: painfully aware that he could not reach the largely illiterate population of his native Senegal by means of a written art form, he studied film in Moscow with Sergei Gerasimov and Mark Donskoi from 1961 to 1962, then began to work in this (for him) new medium shortly thereafter.
    [Show full text]
  • Resistance in Ousmane Sembène's Cinema
    This is the version of the article/chapter accepted for publication in Critical Muslim published by Hurst and Co. Accepted version downloaded from SOAS Research Online: http://eprints.soas.ac.uk/32535 Resistance in Ousmane Sembène’s Cinema “Colonialism took away our lands but not our heads” (Ousmane Sembène, in Gadjigo, 1993: 91). Ousmane Sembène (1923-2007) is a prolific Senegalese writer and filmmaker whose work is strongly linked to the decolonisation and liberation of African countries from the 1960s. He is the director of one of the first narrative films made in Africa, Borom Sarret (1963, French, 22 min.), and of the first postcolonial feature-length Black African film, La Noire De…/Black Girl (1966, Wolof and French, 65 min.), a milestone in his film career, whose release coincided with the celebration of the First World Festival of Negro Arts, following the independence of Senegal from France in 1960. Prior to the beginning of his film career at the age of forty, he had written ten books. He then directed and produced eleven films over four decades, being Mooladé (2004, Diola and French, 124 min.) the last of these, three years before Sembène passed away, in 2007, at the age of eighty-four. In 1967, he became an official jury member at Cannes Film Festival. In 2005, he was the first African director to ever deliver the director’s lesson at Cannes. This has led scholars and critics refer to him as the “father of African Cinema” (Andrade-Watkins, 1993: 29), despite Sembène’s reluctance to the term. Extensive literature has praised the impact of his work (Gadjigo, 1993, 2010; Dia & Barlet, 2009; Fofana, 2012; Pfaff, 1984; Murphy, 2000; Vetinde & Fofana, 2014; Vieyra, 1992, among others).
    [Show full text]
  • MOOLAADÉ / 2004 “Magia” Um Filme De Ousmane Sembène
    CINEMATECA PORTUGUESA-MUSEU DO CINEMA 1 e 5 de Setembro de 2020 A CINEMATECA COM O INDIELISBOA: OUSMANE SEMBÈNE MOOLAADÉ / 2004 “Magia” Um filme de Ousmane Sembène Argumento: Ousmane Sembène / Diretor de Fotografia (35 mm, cor): Dominique Gentil / Cenários: Joseph Kpobly / Música: Boncana Maïga / Montagem: Abdellatif Raïss / Som (Dolby): Denis Guilhem / Interpretação: Fatoumata Coulibaly (Collé Gallo Ardo Sy), Maimouna Hélène Diarra (Hadjatou), Salimata Traoré (Amasatou), Dominique Zeïda (Mercenaire, o comerciante), Mah Comaoré (chefe das mulheres que fazem a excisão), Aminata Dao (Alima Bâ), Rasmane Ouedraogo (Ciré Bathily), Ousmane Nonaté (Amath Bathily), Bakaramata Sanogo (Abdou), Modibo Sangaré (Balla Bathily). Produção: Les Films Doomirev (Dakar), em co-produção com a França, a Suíça e o Burkina Fasso / Cópia: 35 mm, versão original com legendas em inglês e eletrónicas em português / Duração: 124 minutos / Estreia mundial: Festival de Cannes (seção Un Certain Regard), Maio de 2004 / Inédito comercialmente em Portugal. Primeira apresentação na Cinemateca a 3 de Setembro de 2007, no âmbito do ciclo “In Memoriam Ousmane Sembène”. ******************** Se em filmes como La Noire de… e Emitai, Ousmane Sembène criticou com dureza as relações de dominação dos africanos pelos europeus, seria um erro pensar que o realizador e escritor senegalês tinha uma visão redutora das relações sociais e culturais. Em Xala, talvez o seu melhor filme, certamente o mais fluido, Sembène satiriza ferozmente as modernas elites africanas; em Ceddo, critica a implantação colonizadora do islão na África negra, num filme que irrita profundamente os árabes (quando uma tribo é convertida coletivamente, uma criança é batizada Ousmane…). E quando, num debate numa universidade americana, um jovem estudante lhe perguntou se não lhe parecia escandaloso que os Estados Unidos ainda não tivessem pedido perdão oficialmente aos negros pela escravatura, Sembène respondeu tranquilamente: “Ouça, o seu bisavô talvez tenha sido vendido aos traficantes de escravos pelo meu avô”.
    [Show full text]
  • Moolaadé a Film by Ousmane Sembene
    WINNER UN CERTAIN REGARD CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 2004 Moolaadé A film by Ousmane Sembene Press Contacts: SOPHIE GLUCK & ASSOCIATES NEW YORKER FILMS Sophie Gluck Ronald Ramsland 225 Central Park West 85 Fifth Ave., 11th Fl. New York, NY 10024 New York, NY 10003 Phone: (212) 595-2432 Phone: (212) 645-4600 Fax: (212) 595-4295 Fax: (212) 645-5445 MOOLAADÉ Filmmakers Director Ousmane Sembene Screen Writer Ousmane Sembene Cinematographer Dominique Gentil Sound Denis Guilherm Production Design Joseph Kpobly Film Editor Abdellatif Raïss Music Boncana Maïga Co-production Direction de la Cinématographie Nationale (Burkina Faso), Centre Cinématographique Marocain (Maroco) Cinétéléfilms (Tunisia), Les Films de la Terre Africaine (Cameroun) Executive Prod./France Ciné Sud Promotion With contribution from De la Commission Européenne: Fonds European de Développement Du Ministère des Affaires Etrangères et du Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication, Centre National de la Cinématographie (France): Fonds Sud Cinéma With participation of Agences du système des Nations-Unies au Sénégal (UNIFEM, FNUAP, PNUD, UNICEF, OMS), Stanley Thomas Johnson Foundation (Switzerland), Church Development Servise–ABP- EZEF (Allemagne) Agence Marocaine de la Coopération Internationale (Maroco) English translation & adaptation Samba Gadjigo Cast Collé Ardo Gallo Sy Fatoumata Coulibaly Hadjatou Maïmouna Hélène Diarra Amasatou Salimata Traoré Mercenaire Dominique T. Zeïda Doyenne des exciseuses Mah Compaoré Alima Ba Aminata Dao www.NewYorkerFilms.com Senegal, 2004 124 minutes, Color In Jula and French with English subtitles 1.66, Dolby SR 2 SYNOPSIS African cinema’s founding father, 81-year-old Ousmane Sembene, continues to be its most fiery, provocative spirit. Extending the strong feminist consciousness that marked his previous triumph Faat Kiné (as well as such earlier classics as Black Girl and Ceddo), Moolaadé is a rousing polemic directed against the still- common African practice of female circumcision.
    [Show full text]
  • Cahiers D'études Africaines, 172 | 2003
    Cahiers d’études africaines 172 | 2003 Varia Murphy, David. – Sembene: Imagining Alternatives in Film and Fiction Oxford, James Currey; Trenton, NJ, Africa World Press, 2000, 275 p., index, bibl. Teresa Hoefert de Turégano Electronic version URL: http://journals.openedition.org/etudesafricaines/1555 DOI: 10.4000/etudesafricaines.1555 ISSN: 1777-5353 Publisher Éditions de l’EHESS Printed version Date of publication: 1 January 2003 ISBN: 978-2-7132-1811-8 ISSN: 0008-0055 Electronic reference Teresa Hoefert de Turégano, « Murphy, David. – Sembene: Imagining Alternatives in Film and Fiction », Cahiers d’études africaines [Online], 172 | 2003, Online since 02 March 2007, connection on 22 September 2020. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/etudesafricaines/1555 ; DOI : https://doi.org/ 10.4000/etudesafricaines.1555 This text was automatically generated on 22 September 2020. © Cahiers d’Études africaines Murphy, David. – Sembene: Imagining Alternatives in Film and Fiction 1 Murphy, David. – Sembene: Imagining Alternatives in Film and Fiction Oxford, James Currey; Trenton, NJ, Africa World Press, 2000, 275 p., index, bibl. Teresa Hoefert de Turégano 1 Ousmane Sembene from Senegal is an acclaimed film maker of over ten films, including Borom Sarret, La noire de..., Mandabi, Ceddo, Xala, and the list goes on. He is also a confirmed author with ten books to his credit, among which the classic God’s Little Bits of Wood (Les bouts de bois de Dieu). There are surprisingly few book-length studies1 of Sembene’s work, even fewer with in – depth critical analysis, and David Murphy seeks to fill the gap. His principal aim is to dislocate the easy label of social realism in which Sembene’s work is most often categorised and as such the author emphasises elements of form and structure in his analysis.
    [Show full text]
  • CINEMIEN Film & Video Distribution
    CINEMIEN Film & Video Distribution ABC Distribution Amsteldijk 10 Kaasstraat 4 1074 HP Amsterdam 2000 Antwerpen t. 020 – 577 6010 t. 03 – 231 0931 www.cinemien.nl www.abc-distribution.be [email protected] [email protected] presenteren / présentent Moolaadé WINNER «UN CERTAIN REGARD» CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 2004 Een film van Ousmane Sembene Beeldmateriaal en persmappen van alle actuele Cinemien titels kunnen gedownload worden van onze site: www.cinemien.nl Link door naar PERS en vul in; gebruikersnaam: ‘pers’, wachtwoord: ‘cinemien’ MOOLAADÉ – synopsis (NL) De 81-jarige initiator van de Afrikaanse Cinema, Ousmane Sembene, bewijst met zijn nieuwste film nog steeds over een levendige geest te beschikken. Hij werkt het sterk feministisch bewustzijn van zijn vorige film Faat Kiné (en voorgaande klassiekers als Black Girl en Ceddo) verder uit in Moolaadé, een film over vrouwenbesnijdenis. De plaats van handeling is een klein Afrikaans dorpje, waar vier jonge meisjes die het reinigingsritueel wat hun te wachten staat ontvluchten. Ze komen aan bij Collé Ardo Gallo Sy, een sterke vrouw die haar eigen dochter tegen een besnijdenis wist te beschermen. Collé roept een heiligplaats aan (een moolaadé) om de meisjes te beschermen, waarna ze zelf de conservatieve dorpelingen achter zich aankrijgt. Hierdoor komt het aanstaande huwelijk van haar dochter in gevaar. Ondanks het onderwerp is de film allesbehalve zwaar: Sembene gebruikt een waar kleurentapijt om het dorpse leven te laten zien en hij verrijkt het sociaal-realistische verhaal met een keur aan symbolen en metaforen. Als winnaar van de Un Certain Regard Award in Cannes 2004, werd Moolaadé door veel critici gezien als de beste film van het filmfestival.
    [Show full text]
  • The Uniqueness of Ousmane Sembene's Cinema
    Contributions in Black Studies A Journal of African and Afro-American Studies Volume 11 Ousmane Sembène: Dialogues with Critics Article 3 & Writers 1993 The niqueU ness of Ousmane Sembene's Cinema Francoise Pfaff Howard University Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/cibs Recommended Citation Pfaff, Francoise (1993) "The niqueU ness of Ousmane Sembene's Cinema," Contributions in Black Studies: Vol. 11 , Article 3. Available at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/cibs/vol11/iss1/3 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Afro-American Studies at ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. It has been accepted for inclusion in Contributions in Black Studies by an authorized editor of ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Pfaff: Sembene's Cinema 13 The Uniqueness of Ousmane Sembene's Cinema by Fran~oise Pfaff Howard University The author of two documentary and nine fiction films made over a period of twenty-five years, Ousmane Sembeneis presentlyoneofAfrica'sleading writersaswell as the continent's best-known film director. His seminal films, by their very nature, content, and style, have left an indelible mark on the history of African filmmaking. Before launching his career as a writer and filmmaker, Sembene had worked as a mason, carpenter, mechanic, dock worker, union organizer, and had also served as a sharp­ shooter in the French colonial army during the Second World War. Many critics agree that the major characteristic ofSembene's career as a writer and a filmmaker is his socio-political commitment. And here we have to remember that it was precisely his concern to reach out to the largely non-literate African masses, his empathy with Senegal's common people, which led him to embrace a film career.
    [Show full text]