Ousmane Sembène

In 1960, when Senegal became independent from France, Ousmane Sembène was already an established author in French. He had published Le docker noir (1956), O pays mon beau peuple (1957), and his famous novel, Les bouts de bois de Dieu (1960). His other books are Voltaïque, Véhi-Ciosane ou Blanche-Genèse: Suivi du Mandat, Xala, L’harmattan, Niiwam suivi de Taaw, Guelwaar, Le dernier de l’empire. However, Sembène had repeatedly expressed frustration that the overwhelming majority of audiences for whom he wrote could not read his work because they were not literate in French. To reach out to them, he resorted to cinema and made Borom Sarret (The Cart Driver) in 1963, a film admittedly referred to as the first sub-Saharan African film. Three years later, he released the very first sub-Saharan African feature length, La noire de . . . (Black Girl), in 1966. In 1968, he made the very first sub-Saharan African film in color using an African language, Manda bi (The Money Order). The films that followed incorporated a combination of African languages and French. His other films include Niaye (1964), Emitaï (1971), Xala (1974), Ceddo (1976), Camp de Thiaroye (1988), Guelwaar (1992), Faat Kine (2000), and Moolaade (2005). Born in 1923 during the pinnacle of Senegal’s colonial occupation by the French, Sembène was the son of a fisherman in the southern region of Senegal. He grew up under colonial rule, went briefly to a French-language school, worked as a mechanic and bricklayer, served in the French military, and then moved to France in 1946, at the age of 23. He was a self-taught man who learned to read and write while working at the docks in Marseilles. Although he lived to be 84—he passed away in June 2007—the first decades and most formative years of his life were spent under colonial domination. He was both an eyewitness to colonial rule and a subject of its dominance. He also lived through the tumultuous period during which Africans struggled to liberate themselves from the grip of foreign occupation. In other words, Sembène’s life spanned three of the most significant eras of recent African history: colonialism, the years of struggle for liberation, and the first half-century of independence. He was a living chronicler of Senegal’s history.