Explor­ing Ous­mane Sembène’s activist cin­e­ma at 100

Some direc­tors make films to be artists. Oth­ers, to be enter­tain­ers. Ous­mane Sem­bène saw film as the most effec­tive tool for polit­i­cal activism. ​“Of all the arts”, he said, ​“it’s the form of expres­sion that’s most acces­si­ble and appeal­ing to a large audience”.

In hon­our of the cen­te­nary of his birth, the BFI are cel­e­brat­ing ​‘the father of African cin­e­ma’ with a new sea­son: Rebel Cin­e­ma: Ous­mane Sem­bène at 100. Before his death in 2007, Sem­bène pro­duced a diverse body of work: he was a satirist, a human­ist, but above all, he was an activist. It’s not that his films aren’t enter­tain­ing or artis­tic; they are expert­ly craft­ed and were wide­ly pop­u­lar. Rather, their val­ue as art and enter­tain­ment lies in their abil­i­ty to alert view­ers to the entrench­ment of colo­nial­ism and their sug­ges­tions for alter­na­tive futures.

Born in Sene­gal in 1923, Sem­bène worked a series of man­u­al jobs as a young man. His mil­i­tary ser­vice with the French dur­ing World War Two and his work­ing-class upbring­ing shaped his lat­er artis­tic out­put: ground­ed in real­ism and attuned to the polit­i­cal real­i­ty of ordi­nary people.

In 1961, after pub­lish­ing sev­er­al nov­els, Sem­bène spent a year study­ing film at the Gorky Film Stu­dio in Moscow. He want­ed his films to awak­en con­scious­ness in ordi­nary Africans, to decolonise their think­ing in order to cre­ate a new Africa free from the cor­rupt­ing influ­ence of Europe. Sem­bène famous­ly referred to cin­e­ma as a ​‘night school’ for the mass­es, a way to speak to a pub­lic with high lev­els of illit­er­a­cy in a medi­um that was more acces­si­ble than literature.

That wasn’t an easy task. Despite Sene­gal hav­ing for­mal­ly gained inde­pen­dence in 1960, France con­tin­ued to exert major influ­ence over the coun­try, includ­ing its film financ­ing and dis­tri­b­u­tion. Unsur­pris­ing­ly, Sem­bène ran into dif­fi­cul­ties mak­ing films that tack­led neo­colo­nial­ism head-on.

This was cer­tain­ly the case for his first fea­ture film, La Noire de… (Black Girl, 1963). The film tells the sto­ry of Dioua­na, a young Sene­galese woman who moves from Dakar to Antibes to work as a maid for a bour­geois French cou­ple. There she endures racism, alien­ation and dehu­man­i­sa­tion; a sharp con­trast to her life in Sene­gal. ​“I’m their pris­on­er,” Dioua­na realis­es. ​“I don’t know any­one here. No one in my fam­i­ly is here. That’s why I’m their slave.” Even­tu­al­ly she kills herself.

As with all of Sembène’s films, La Noire de … is more than the sto­ry of its pro­tag­o­nist. Diouana’s plight rep­re­sents France’s con­tin­ued grip on Sene­gal, as well as the Sene­galese bour­geoisie who per­mit such exploita­tion. Sem­bène knew that the sto­ry of an exploit­ed indi­vid­ual was the best way to tell the sto­ry of an exploit­ed nation.

Women play a cen­tral role through­out Sembène’s work, and he argued that ​“the devel­op­ment of Africa will not hap­pen with­out the effec­tive par­tic­i­pa­tion of women. Our fore­fa­thers’ image of women must be buried once and for all.” Sem­bène paid atten­tion to the con­di­tion of women through­out his career; even up until his final film, Moolad­dé (2004), which offers a stark con­dem­na­tion of female gen­i­tal mutilation.

In 1971, he made Emi­taï, por­tray­ing a revolt dur­ing the Sec­ond World War where vil­lage women under French rule refused to give up grain to the author­i­ties. Through this film, Sem­bène acknowl­edges women’s essen­tial role in colo­nial resis­tance and wider polit­i­cal strug­gles. Sembène’s desire was not to bring about an ide­alised pre-colo­nial Africa, but instead to realise a future where both men and women could con­tribute to the devel­op­ment of the con­ti­nent beyond colonialism.

The very fact that Sem­bène was able to make the rad­i­cal films that he did is tes­ta­ment to his effec­tive­ness as an activist. The French Min­istry of Coop­er­a­tion pro­vid­ed finan­cial and tech­ni­cal sup­port to African film­mak­ers in for­mer colonies, but, as Sem­bène him­self found out, assis­tance was often tied to pro­mot­ing French val­ues. Sembène’s script for La Noire de … was reject­ed for finan­cial aid, with the Coop­er­a­tion buy­ing the rights only once Sem­bène had inde­pen­dent­ly pro­duced the film.

It wasn’t the last run-in Sem­bène had with the sys­tem of French financ­ing. For his 1968 film Mand­abi, he received fund­ing from the French Cen­tre Nation­al Du Ciné­ma, but with a con­di­tion they hire a pro­duc­er for him, Robert Nesle.

Nesle tried to influ­ence the artis­tic vision of the film. Despite Sembene’s objec­tions, Nesle insist­ed the film be shot in colour. Anoth­er con­di­tion stip­u­lat­ed the film had to be in French, result­ing in Sem­bène effec­tive­ly shoot­ing Mand­abi twice: once in Wolof and then again in French. In the end, the French ver­sion was nev­er screened, and Mand­abi became the first African film to be shot in an African language.

Sem­bène suc­cess­ful­ly resist­ed oth­er requests, such as Nesle’s insis­tence for sex­u­al scenes to be includ­ed in the film, but only after Sem­bène stopped pro­duc­tion and took the mat­ter to court.

It wasn’t just Semebène’s artis­tic sen­si­bil­i­ty that was being threat­ened; to inter­fere with his films was to dis­tort his vision of a decolonised Africa. As Sem­bène put it, co-pro­duc­tion with the West was ​“taint­ed with pater­nal­ism” and amount­ed to ​“an eco­nom­ic depen­den­cy which, as such, gives the West the right to view Africa in a way that I can­not bear.”

How­ev­er, Sembène’s films didn’t just con­front Euro­peans. For Sem­bène, Africans who upheld Euro­pean val­ues for their own finan­cial gain stunt­ed a country’s devel­op­ment just as much as colo­nial pow­ers. By the 1970s – as relayed to Harold D. Weaver in an inter­view for Cineaste – he want­ed to make a film about ​“the birth of the black bour­geoisie”. The result was Xala (1974), based on his own nov­el from the year before.

Xala (the Wolof word for impo­tence) tells the sto­ry of El Had­ji, a busi­ness­man who finds him­self unable to con­sum­mate his third mar­riage on his wed­ding night. As with his oth­er films, the cen­tral sto­ry stands for some­thing larg­er: the impo­tence at the heart of the film rep­re­sents the impo­tence of the Sene­galese bour­geoisie; they fail to pro­duce any­thing mean­ing­ful for Sene­galese society.

Though the film opens with the Euro­peans being oust­ed from the local cham­ber of com­merce, Xala clear­ly shows Europe con­tin­u­ing to hold its grip over Sene­gal. In doing so, Sem­bène con­demns both the for­mer colo­nial pow­ers and the new bour­geoisie who help per­pet­u­ate this pow­er. The Sene­galese busi­ness­men wear West­ern suits, drink import­ed Evian and dri­ve lux­u­ry Mer­cedes. (Accord­ing to Sem­bène, nobody drove a Mer­cedes around Dakar for three months fol­low­ing the film’s release.)

In a cru­el irony for a film that tack­les France’s colo­nial lega­cy, Xala was not allowed to be released in Sene­gal with­out cuts. Sem­bène con­ced­ed but dis­trib­uted fly­ers that explained the lost scenes to the Sene­galese public.

Even­tu­al­ly, Sem­bène stopped seek­ing sup­port from the French. He did not want to see an African cin­e­ma depen­dent on aid from for­mer colo­nial pow­ers. In this way, Sem­bène mar­ried form and con­tent to cre­ate a tru­ly polit­i­cal cinema.

Sem­bène knew that his respon­si­bil­i­ty as a film­mak­er did not end with the film: he engaged with his audi­ences, debat­ing them on the future of the con­ti­nent. Watch­ing his films in the 21^st cen­tu­ry, we should acknowl­edge the con­tin­ued lega­cy of colo­nial­ism. But we should also remem­ber the idea that film­mak­ers can aspire to a cin­e­ma beyond enter­tain­ment or high art. In a world beset with prob­lems, we should fol­low Sembène’s exam­ple and embrace cinema’s poten­tial to hon­our the pow­er­less and chal­lenge the powerful.