Biography for Ousmane Sembene : Melbourne Indymedia

Ousmane Sembene

Mini biography

The first film director from an African country to achieve international recognition, Ousmane Sembene remains the major figure in the rise of an independent post-colonial African cinema. Sembene's roots were not, as might be expected, in the educated élite. After working as a mechanic and bricklayer, he joined the Free French forces in 1942, serving in Africa and France. In 1946, he returned to Dakar, where he participated in the great railway strike of 1947. The next year he returned to France, where he worked in a Citröen factory in Paris, and then, for ten years, on the dock in Marseilles. During this time Sembene became very active in trade union struggles and began an extraordinarily successful writing career. His first novel, "Le Docker Noir", was published in 1956 to critical acclaim. Since then, he has produced a number of works which have placed him in the foreground of the international literary scene. Long an avid filmgoer, Sembene became aware that to reach a mass audience of workers and preliterate Africans outside urban centers, cinema was a more effective vehicle than the written word. In 1961, he traveled to Moscow to study film at VGIK and then to work at the Gorky Studios. Upon his return to Senegal, Sembene turned his attention to filmmaking and, after two short films, he wrote and directed his first feature, Noire de..., La (1966)(english title: Black Girl). Received with great enthusiasm at a number of international film festivals, it also won the prestigious Jean Vigo Prize for its director. Shot in a simple, quasi-documentary style probably influenced by the French New Wave, BLACK GIRL tells the tragic story of a young Senegalese woman working as a maid for an affluent French family on the Riviera, focusing on her sense of isolation and growing despair. Her country may have been "decolonized," but she is still a colonial -- a non-person in the colonizers' world. Sembene's next film, Mandabi (1968) (english title: The Money Order), marked a sharp departure. Based on his novel of the same name and shot in color in two language versions--French and Wolof, the main dialect of Senegal--THE MONEY ORDER is a trenchant and often delightfully witty satire of the new bourgeoisie, torn between outmoded patriarchal traditions and an uncaring, rapacious and inefficient bureaucracy. Emitai (1971) records the struggle of the Diola people of the Casamance region of Senegal (where Sembene grew up) against the French authorities during WWII. Shot in Diola dialect and French from an original script, EMITAI offers a respectful but unromanticized depiction of an ancient tribal culture, while highlighting the role of women in the struggle against colonialist oppression. In Xala (1975), Sembene again takes on the native bourgeoisie, this time in the person of a rich, partially Westernized Moslem businessman afflicted by "xala" (impotence) on the night of his wedding to a much younger third wife. Ceddo (1977), considered by many to be Sembene's masterpiece, departs from the director's customary realist approach, documenting the struggle over the last centuries of an unspecified African society against the incursions of Islam and European colonialism. Featuring a strong female central character, CEDDO is a powerful evocation of the African experience.

Trivia

Education: Ecole de Céramique, Marsassoum; VGIK, Moscow.

Father, Mousse, was a fisherman who migrated from Dakar to the southern part of Senegal.

Fought with the French in WWII.

Is the first African director to give the director's lesson at Cannes.

Personal quotes

"L'Afrique ne se développera pas sans la participation concrète de la femme. La conception que nos pères avaient de la femme doit être enterrée une fois pour toutes." [The development of Africa will not happen without the effective participation of women. Our forefathers' image of women must be buried once for all."]

"At a moral level, I don't think we have any lesson to learn from Europe."

"I benefited from a synthesis of values - in the house, the compound, the country and Koranic and French schools. We conserved our own culture; we had nightly gatherings with tales. Now I call it my own theater."

"Bread came wrapped in French newspapers. Each time my father unwrapped a baguette, he asked me to read to him."

"In the army we saw those who considered themselves our masters naked, in tears, some cowardly or ignorant. When a white soldier asked me to write a letter for him, it was a revelation - I thought all Europeans knew how to write. The war demystified the colonizer; the veil fell."

Filmography
A List of Films Written and Directed by Ousmane Sembene

L'Empire Sonhrai(1963) Sembene's first film is a documentary on the history of the Songhai empire, produced by the government of the Republic of Mali. In French. 16mm. Black and white. 20 minutes.

Borom Sarret(1963) Spare masterpieceof protest against economic exploitation. depicts the typical daily encounters of a cart driver in Dakar, Senegal. in french with English subtitles. 16mm. black and white. 20 minutes. Won First Prize at the Tours Fim Festival (France)

Niaye(1964) Narrated by a village griot, "Niaye" is the tragic tale of a young girl whose pregnancy scandalizes her community. A visiting worker is acccused of being responsible for the pregnancy, but subsequently it is discovered that her own father is the culprit. The community strives to keep the scandal from the French colonial administartion. In French. 16 mm. Black and white. 35 minutes. Won a Prize at the Locarno Film Festival (Switzerland)

La noire de...(1966)
Sembene's first feature film, known in English as "Black Girl," made a profound impression at several international film festivals in 1966. The evolution of the African cinema can probably be dated from this point. Shot in a simple, freewheeling style reminiscent of the early New Wave, it tells a direct, bitter, unambiguous story of exile and despair. The heroine, Diouanna, is a Senegalese maid taken to the Riviera by her French employers. It is only when she is out of Africa that she realizes what being African means: it means being a thing, no longer Diouanna, but "the black girl." Jean Vigo Prize, 1966. In French with English sub-titles. 16 mm. Black and white. 60 minutes.
Jean Vigo Prize (Paris) Also won, the Grand Prize at the Dakar Black Arts Festival

Mandabi(1968) Based on Semb6ne's short novel The Money Order, this feature film is a deceptively simple story of a man who receives a money order from his nephew in Paris and attempts to cash it. "Mandabi" is a deeply moving, witty, masterful portrait of a vain man whose vanity pales against the chicanery and callousness of the youthful ambitious petite bourgeoisie. In Wolof with English sub-titles. 16 mm. Color. 90 minutes.
Taaw(1970) Taaw is a young unemployed man in modern Senegal who fends off accusations of laziness for his unemployment and makes a home for his pregnant girlfriend who has been rejected by her family. In Wolof with English sub-titles. 16 mm. Color. 24 minutes. Won the Asmara Gold Lion Prize, Addis Aaba (Ethiopia)

Emitai(1971) "Emitai" is a historical film that functions also as a timeless allegory. In his clear, spare style, Semb6ne depicts the clash between French colonists and the Diola of Senegal in the closing days of World War II. It is the women who provide the first voice of resistance and the film conveys their social power as the retainers of ancient myths, rituals, and recent history. In Diola and French with English sub-titles. 16 mm. Color. 101 minutes. Goldn Bear Prize at the Moscow Film Festival. First Afro-Asian Prize 1972 Tachken Festival (Soviet Union0

Xala(1974) Sembene's savage and hilarious satire of the modern African bourgeoisie was heavily censored in Senegal. Forsaking the more obvious (and politically acceptable) targets of European exploitation and racism, Semb6ne here zeroes in on a far touchier subject: the entire blackfacing of white colonial policies after independence was granted. The hero of the film is a self-satisfied, westernized Senegalese businessman who is suddenly struck down with the xala, an ancient Senegalese curse rendering him impotent. His vain search for a cure becomes a metaphor for the impossibility of Africans achieving liberation through dependence on western technology and bureaucratic structures. In French with Karlovy-Vary Secial Prize (Czech Republic)
Silver Medal at the figueria de Fos Film Festival (Portugal)

Ceddo(1976) An exciting political thriller concerning the kidnapping of a beautiful princess is used to examine the confrontation between opposing forces in the face of Muslim expansion. The ceddo, or commoner class, refuse to submit to Islam. Set loosely in the 19th century, "Ceddo" is not strictly a historical film, as it ranges far and wide to include philosophy, fantasy, militant politics, and a couple of electrifying leaps across the centuries. In Wolof with English sub-titles. 16 mm. Color. 120 minutes. Special Award, Los Angeles, 1980

Camp de Thiaroye(1989) Towards the end of 1944, at a bleak military transit camp in Senegal, soldiers from several parts of Africa who have fought with the Free French army to overthrow fascism in Europe, await demobilization, severance pay, and a trip home. French Captain Raymond sincerely tries to convince his Senegalese NCO Diatta that the massacres by French troops, such as that in which Diatta's parents were killed, are a banished phenomenon from the Vichy past. The film's dialectic is intent on proving him wrong. By the end, Raymond has been ostracized as a Communist by his fellow officers, and gradually the attempt by the French command to cheat the African veterans out of their severance pay provokes a mutiny. The French response is an armored attack on the camp with a near total loss of life. "Camp de Thiaroye" is true both to the historical record of the massacre and to the underlying culture of European imperialism. In Wolof and French with English sub-titles. Color. 153 minutes. 45th Venice mostra (Italy): -Jury's Special Grand Prize -Golden Ciak Prize -Unicef Nuovo Prize -Prize Youth and Cinema

Guelwaar(1992) In choosing "Gelwaar: An African Legend for the 21 st Century" for the opening of the 13th Pan-African Film Festival (in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, February 1993), the organizers of this event sought to honor Ousmane Semb6ne as the father of African cinema. "Gelwaar" is based on a true story: The body of Pierre Henri Thioune, alias Gelwaar and leader of a Christian community, is mistakenly delivered to Muslims who bury him in a Muslim cemetery following the teachings of Islam. When the mistake is found out, the Christians seek to recover "their" body. Semb6ne in this film develops familiar themes: real versus imaginary independence, women's emancipation, the brain. In French and Wolof with English sub-titles.115minutes. Color Gold Medal at the Venice 49th Mostra

L'heroisme au quotidien(1999) Set in a small village in rural Senegal, Heroisme au quotidien is the first of a trilogy (Faat Kine and Moolaade) Ousmane Sembene was devoted to the awakening and daily heroism of African women at the beginning of the new century. Hitherto exploited in their daily toil and for centuries enslaved by patricarchal and religious obscurantism and indoctrination, teh women of a small village suddenly start hearing new voices broadcast from the city in national languages. Channelled through antiquated battery-powered radio sets, a contact is born with the outsideworld; the world they share with other women. Their new knowledge blows open teh walls of their prison, broadens their horizon and challenges their centuries-old relation of subordination to their men. Heroism au quotidien is teh voice of change; teh sudden discovery of a new Value (freedom) that leads to a revolt a la Camus. It heralds a new dawn for African women and for African men.
Faat Kine(2000) Sembene tackles the question of women's lives in contemporary Dakar, Senegal's bustling capital in this warm often funny story of a single mother, her two children, two ex-husbands, aged mother and assorted friends. Sembene contexualizes his heroine's thoroughly modern triumphs and anxieties culturally and politically in Dakar where women's lives have been shaped by tribal custom and male prejudice as much as by their cutting-edge aspirations.

Moolaade(2004) Moolaadé is a rousing polemic directed against the still common African practice of female circumcision. The action is set in a small African village, where four young girls facing ritual "purification" flee to the household of Collé Ardo Gallo Sy, a strong-willed woman who has managed to shield her own teenage daughter from mutilation. Collé invokes the time-honored custom of moolaadé (sanctuary) to protect the fugitives, and tension mounts as the ensuing stand-off pits Collé against village traditionalists (both male and female) and endangers the prospective marriage of her daughter to the heir-apparent to the tribal throne.

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Gadjigo Creates Film on Making of Moolaadé

A documentary film by Samba Gadjigo, professor of French, about the making of the award-winning film Moolaadé has been released by New Yorker Films. The Making of Moolaadé marks the first time that Senegalese filmmaker Ousmane Sembène, widely credited as the father of African cinema, has allowed an outside camera to document his work.

Gadjigo, who is Sembène's biographer and the provider of the English subtitles for Moolaadé, was given unrestricted access to the filmmaker during two weeks of filming in the spring of 2002. He captured Sembène, then 79, working 12-hour days in a dusty, remote African village where midday temperatures usually exceeded 100 degrees. There was no running water, and generators had to be brought in to provide electricity.

"That is a price to pay to make images in Africa, and Sembène believes it is worth it," Gadjigo said. The filmmaker believes it is important that images of Africa presented to the outside world be created by Africans themselves, not by outsiders who impose their own images on the continent. "To Sembène, an image is worth dying for -- images are as important as bread and clothing."

Gadjigo flew into Burkina Faso, bringing with him a digital video camera. He hired another camera operator after arriving, and the two traveled to the village where Moolaadé was being filmed.

The documentary illustrates the difficulty of making a film in Africa. In interview after interview, more than a dozen actors, electricians, production personnel, camera assistants, and others connected with the film describe the challenges presented by the environment and the scarcity of funding. "It's an adventure, a job for crazy people," Timothee Bosori, a production adviser, says into the camera. "Every film that gets made is a miracle." Electrician Maiga Hazou Sassane agrees: "It's not talent we lack, it's equipment."

What also comes through is the tremendous respect and affection felt for Sembène, whose drive to reach his goals can make things difficult for those with whom he works. "He's tough on people's weaknesses," Gadjigo said. "He wants to extract the best of each individual in the crew, with a focus on productivity."

Toward the end of the documentary, Sembène speaks about his role as a filmmaker, and his reasons for making Moolaadé. The film is constructed on the tension between two ancient traditions: female circumcision and the right to offer Moolaadé, or protection of the weak from the strong. Moolaadé tells the story of four young girls in a small village in Senegal who, encouraged by radio broadcasts from the outside world, revolt against the tradition of female genital mutilation. They seek the help of a woman in the village who offers them protection against their seizure by the male elders of the village. Protection of the weak is also a powerful tradition, and those who violate it face a penalty of death.

"As far as I am concerned, politically speaking, cinema allows me to show my people their predicaments so they take responsibility," Sembène said. "They hold their destiny in their hands. Nobody other than ourselves can solve our problems. We are in 2004; out of 54 states of the African Union, more than 38 still practice female circumcision. Why? I don't know! Origins? I don't know! … But Moolaadé is not just about female circumcision, it's about the liberation of our societies, the freedom of our people."

"Unflinching both in its condemnation of genital mutilation and in its warm-hearted optimism, Moolaadé is an example of humanist cinema at its finest, a movie that reminds you of the dignity and heroism of ordinary life," wrote A. O. Scott in the New York Times.

Guardian/NFT interview
Ousmane Sembène

Ousmane Sembène, the Senegalese-born 'father of African cinema', talked to Bonnie Greer about film-making in Africa, his European experiences and why Live 8 is fake, before receiving the fellowship of the BFI. Here's a full transcript

Sunday June 5, 2005

Ousmane Sembene at the NFT
'I think big campaigns such as Make Poverty History and Live 8 are fake, and I think African heads of state who buy into that idea are liars. The only way for us to come out of poverty is to work hard' ... Ousmane Sembène talks to Bonnie Greer at the NFT. Photograph: Sarah Lee

Bonnie Greer: Before I start, I'd like to say that I am a huge fan of this gentleman, so I am really nervous. But I am going to do my best. There will be simultaneous translation by Mr Samba Gadjigo, Mr Sembène's biographer and himself an eminent professor of French at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts. Moolaadé is the second film in a trilogy, and you call it a trilogy about the heroism of daily life. Could you expand on that, please?

Article continues
Ousmane Sembène: We are talking here about the African continent, and it is a continent going through a crisis. Nobody can deny that we have a lot of wars going on; brothers killing brothers; we have a lot of diseases and catastrophes. But on the other hand, we have a majority of individuals, both men and women, who are struggling on a daily basis in a heroic way and the outcome of whose struggle leaves no doubt. This is a struggle whose purpose is not to seize power, and I think the strength of our entire society rests on that struggle. And it is because of this struggle that the entire continent is still standing up. So I've tried in my own way to sing the praises of those heroes, because I am also a witness to that daily struggle. In the traditional society which I come from, when you look at our societies, whether you're talking about the Mandinka, Bambara or Fulani, we have the tradition of the storyteller called the griot and also other kinds of storytellers. Their role was to record memories of daily actions and events. At night, people would gather around them and they would tell those stories that they had recorded. I think there are parallels between myself and these storytellers, because in that traditional society, the storyteller was his own writer, director, actor and musician. And I think his role was very important in cementing society. Now, with new technologies and the tools that we have acquired, I think we can take inspiration from them and do some work.

BG: You have said that Moolaadé is your most African film. Can you expand on that?

OS: When I made such a statement, I was referring to its narrative structure and aesthetic. But then, ultimately, it's up to my people to judge whether or not I have come close to telling their reality. What makes the difference between this film and the others I've made, is I already know what the people are saying in the rural areas. I think it is up to you, brought here in the west by the contingencies of history, it is up to you to understand and to see what is African in this film. And I think your appreciation and judgment is going to help me improve my future work. Right now, I am very, very obsessed, because right now, Moolaadé is enjoying some measure of success. So what am I going to do with my next film? Since the setting for the next film is going to be an urban area, how am I going to talk about African cities? Of course when I talk about African cities, there is no difference between a building in London or Abidjan or anywhere in the world. But what is important is to wonder, the men or the women who live in that building, what kind of life are they living? It's not enough to have all kinds of gadgets. This is what I'm working on right now.

BG: I adore the title of the latest film in the trilogy, Brotherhood of Rats. I love it because you're talking about a very important subject: it's about the cities and the complicity or not of African governments in some of the troubles afflicting African states.

OS: I think that's just part of my job. If I centre that film on an urban area, how can I show it to people who live in the rural area? How can I make this film in such a way that a peasant in my village in Casamance can understand what's going on? And how can I now really raise my voice against all the embezzling that's going on in the cities? Here I am talking about people of this new generation. I am making this film for the young people who are here in this room, and who are going back home: how can I inspire them?

BG: What do you think of the cinema numerique, the digital cinema?

OS: For us, everything is good. I think that every tool that we can appropriate and use is good for us. What counts here actually is the result of the battle of the sexes, the war between husbands and wives.

BG: I want to go back a little bit to the early days - your life was formidable even before you began to make cinema. You were in the war, you fought for freedom in Algeria, you were a dockworker in Marseilles, you hurt your back and then decided to take a less strenuous job and investigate some of the literature of the African and diasporic world, particularly Claude McKay, the great Jamaican novelist and member of the Harlem Renaissance, and his idea about the docks in Marseilles and the languages of the African diaspora.

OS: I am really unable to talk about my life - I don't know my life. I've travelled a lot and this is the life that I have lived, but that doesn't mean that I know myself.

BG: All right then, women?

OS: I love all women. Can you show me one man who doesn't love women?

BG: Well, you are in England. I was struck, and the reason why I wanted to show Ceddo, although you didn't want me to show Ceddo, is because of the moment in it where a strong woman is putting a line in the ground. So I want to ask, first about the idea of women in African cinema, especially in your cinema, and how important they are for you?

OS: Here we are talking about past civilisations. When I was growing up, married women, of their own accord, always tied a belt around their waists. I think it's a symbol of their loyalty, their fidelity. It didn't have anything to do with the men. So when she takes off her belt and shakes it, she was putting her own life and honour on the line. So for husbands like myself, when they shake their belts and tell us not to cross the line, none of us would be able to do it. And it is only on those occasions that the community recognises the woman's right to kill. Of course you can rape the body, but you can never go against that rule. So one has to die for that rule to be broken. But here we are talking about what I call medieval Africa, and of course now things have changed. Right now, women wear belts that are gold or leather or whatever, but that doesn't mean that they are more loyal.

BG: Madame [Fatoumata] Coulibaly [who played the lead role of Colle in Moolaadé], how was it for you, playing in this movie?

Fatoumata Coulibaly: Thank you first of all, and I think that it shows that you have a strong interest in African films. Even before I was called upon to act in this film, I was already working in Malian radio and TV. My job was working in programmes designed for women and children, and centred on the family. I travelled a lot into rural areas, and I talked to the women and everybody there. And I tried to touch on all the issues relevant to their lives. During that work, I noticed that many young girls died following the female genital mutilations (FGM), through haemorrhaging. So I did some research in the rural areas. When I decided to conceive of a programme without consulting my boss, I ran into a lot of problems.

I myself made a documentary film which was broadcast only once on Malian television, and of course people hid the tape and said that it was lost. That's when our administration decided to silence any dialogue about FGM. In spite of that, of course, I wanted to continue that kind of work. In my work I also collaborated with an NGO composed of women. We would go to the rural areas, and we would try to educate them about hygiene and the family, in their own languages, not in French or English. We brought together the village chief and every man, woman and child - everybody came to those meetings. Of course, we don't start head-on with FGM; we would strategically beat around the bush for a while and then only come to the issue that is important to us. Because in our society, talking about sex is still a taboo, and of course many village chiefs don't want to hear about that issue. "You are trying to deviate us from our way of life, our traditions." And of course the argument they give is that these traditions date back to before our birth, and actually they accuse us of being funded by the outside world to subvert their way of life. But with persistence we would come back and get our message across.

Sometimes we used dolls to show the body parts of a woman in childbirth, we show them the pain and suffering of a woman who has been excised. Of course when we show those things graphically, they hide their faces. But we always managed to find a strategy, through jokes and whatnot, to bring them to look and take responsibility and face what we are showing them as a reflection of their own bodies. Of course, the position I hold in Mali - I am very popular - so that helped me in my job. After a while I can see that they are not closing their eyes anymore and they face the body from which a baby is emerging. Of course we do all this with the complicity of a midwife. People ask us questions and we engage in dialogue. We also talk about all the consequences of excision, and I think that has yielded some positive results in abandoning FGM. And so afterward, when Mr Sembène was casting in Bamako - at the time, he did not know how involved I was in the struggle against FGM - I was honoured, privileged and lucky to be chosen to play this lead role. I'll tell you, this is just the beginning of my struggle, and I want you all to join and support me so that we can reach a positive result.

BG: This leads me to the two most interesting lines in the film. One, the last words of Colle's husband, "It takes more than a pair of balls to make a man", but the strongest sentence is when Mercenaire says, "Africa is a bitch". I'd like you to elaborate.

OS: Mercenaire says "Africa is a bitch" because he's completely in despair: he was shocked at what he was witnessing. Maybe it's me who put my words into his mouth.

BG: That's what I would like you to speak about.

OS: Because I love Africa, that's why I call it a bitch. When you love something ... I think there is no contradiction between loving Africa and calling it a bitch. I am saying it out of desperation. And the other sentence you refer to is a phrase that is used a lot in Africa, in many languages. Actually, when you look at the Bambara version, it is rendered as "It takes more than a pair of trousers to make a man." But since I wanted to make it a more powerful statement, I made it "It takes more than a pair of balls to make a man". In the Bambara, the metaphor of trousers is important because a male child cannot wear trousers before circumcision. Circumcision is a symbol of entry into manhood. So that's why I was playing with those two metaphors; but I decided to use "pair of balls".

BG: You've said that Africa is matriarchal, the idea of the woman as the strong force in Africa. But for us in the west, polygamy is not an acceptable or pleasant practice. Yet you sort of nuance it, the way you nuanced several customs like the excision and the protection, so in the film it is a polygamous situation, yet the women are very much in control. So is this the African language of cinema, is this an African aesthetic?

OS: As far as I am concerned, Africa is a woman. As far as I can tell, and maybe my knowledge is very limited, I really don't think that 2,000 years of Christianity has brought anything to humanity. When you look at African education, the basis of all African education is this idea of femininity that I'm talking about. Whether you are talking about me or my father, usually, women just give us the illusion that we are in control. Actually, even our virility depends on the gaze and the control of women. Without women, we cannot do anything. I think it's a good thing.

BG: One, almost final question, and this is a political and philosophical question, about pan-Africanism. You've been a great fighter for the liberation, through cinema, of African consciousness, African thought, African people. People in the diaspora, as many of us are in this room - I am myself a soixante-huitard, so I understand, but for the generation after me, and the generation after them, does pan-Africanism necessarily speak to them? Does it have any meaning at all today?

OS: For me, anything that unites is useful. Anything that can bring understanding and peace is important. And for me, there was a phase in which pan-Africanism was a political action. At the beginning of the last century, London was the centre of pan-Africanism. Actually, the first time I visited London was for a meeting about pan-Africanism. In the 1920s, Africa was not the centre of pan-Africanism; the centre was in the diaspora. And it was during those early years, around the 20s, that we saw the first educated Africans. After the first world war, it became stronger and all the people who came from all horizons knew each other. And we met and talked about independence: Chou En-Lai from China, George Padmore, WEB DuBois - those were the people engaged in the struggle. After independence, we preserved the idea of pan-Africanism for the unity of the continent. For me, that is very important.

BG: But today?

OS: Nowadays, with the kind of policies that our leaders are engaged in, and here I am specifically talking about the French-speaking parts of Africa, they are the most alienated individuals I have ever seen. I think it is France that is really leading the job of dividing Africa. Most of our presidents have dual nationalities, French and African. When the going gets tough, they run away to Paris and all our decisions are made in Paris. I think in that context it's very difficult to talk about pan-Africanism. Of course, it's just plain rhetoric. Why don't they abolish political borders in Africa? What is stopping them from developing education in Africa? And again, when talking about the francophone countries, there are a lot of states where the annual budget is secured only with the intervention of France. So that's why I think in that context it is difficult. But I don't think we should give up. I am positive that one day we will become independent.

The toughest fight we engaged in was the struggle against apartheid, and many people in Europe joined, supported that fight, and some of them were gunned down. I think what we need is goodwill because now our struggle is harder because it is an economic struggle. And now Europe is organising itself. So I think there needs to be a rupture between Africa and Europe, and all the international laws being conceived here in the west have to be revisited and changed. Just one case in point, now European countries are running into problems with China because of T-shirts. What did China do? China's flooding their markets with T-shirts. But last century, France and England bombed Shanghai - they took weapons and invaded them. They can no longer do that because China has organised itself; and Vietnam has organised itself. That is what we lack back in Africa: we have been subjugated so much that all we can do is beg, and some even think what we are going through is a comedy.

Then there is the issue of cotton. During slavery, negroes were in the cotton fields. Everybody knew about that. Now that they are not forcing us to make cotton, we make cotton and they don't want it. What should we do? I mean, even our leaders have failed to build factories to transform that cotton for our clothing. We could make any kind of material that would be even better than what is made here, but we wait for everything to come from European industry. They are selling us rags. And everywhere you go in Africa, in the big cities, you would think that you were in a Salvation Army store. They have even created an NGO whose role is to sell us second-hand clothes. I think the youth need to hear these stories. The struggle continues.

BG: That leads beautifully into my next question. What do you think of the big campaigns going on now in Britain: Make Poverty History, Live 8, Hear Africa 05? Big initiatives to make people aware and to maybe give money.

OS: I think they're fake, and I think African heads of state who buy into that idea are liars. The only way for us to come out of poverty is to work hard. Poverty means begging throughout the world. I know your prime minister is spearheading that kind of campaign. A few years ago, the British army was in Sierra Leone - were they there to fight against poverty? It's a mistake, it's a lie. But it's up to Africans to know that, and I think we have to start that revolution back home.

BG: Well, let's see if that hits the newspapers tomorrow. How much do you want to bet it won't? My last question, I saw you on French television, on a programme called Rideau Rouge. You were speaking with a young realisateur from Burkina Faso, and you said, "African realisateurs have to be less modest" and then you went into a discussion about the future of African cinema. Can you elaborate on those two things?

OS: I think cinema is needed throughout Africa, because we are lagging behind in the knowledge of our own history. I think we need to create a culture that is our own. I think that images are very fascinating and very important to that end. But right now, cinema is only in the hands of film-makers because most of our leaders are afraid of cinema. Europeans are very smart in that matter - every night they are colonising our minds, and they are imposing on us their own model of society and ways of doing it. And many of our men dress in English suits, with British ties. Our first ladies are called the duty-free ladies and they use only European perfumes and only wear labels.
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OUSMANE SEMBENE: THE LIFE OF A REVOLUTIONARY ARTIST
by Samba Gadjigo, Mount Holyoke College

(an introductory outline of the forthcoming authorized biography of Ousmane Sembene of the same title)

"Of all African film directors, Sembene is the first to confer value to images."
--Med Hondo

Crossing the geographical and national borders of his native Senegal, Ousmane Sembene's literary and cinematographic output places him today as the "father" of African films and as one of the most prolific "French-speaking" African writers in this first century of "creative" writing in francophone Africa. From the publication of his first poem in Marseilles in 1956, at age thirty three, to Guelwaar (1996), his lastest published novel, Sembene has produced five novels, five collections of short stories, and directed numerous films, four shorts, nine features, and four documentaries He has granted hundreds of interviews to teachers, researchers, students, and to dozens of film and literary critics from around the world. Scholarly articles on his work have appeared in scores of international journals. Particularly here, in the US, publications and invitations to university and college campuses almost equal those of Wole Soyinka, and Chinua Achebe. Of Sembene's ten published literary works, seven have been translated into English, and all of his films are subtitled in English, French, German, Japanese, and Chinese. In American universities, the attraction to Sembene's work crosses disciplinary boundaries. His literary work has entered the curricula of many high schools and universities throughout Africa. Tens of Mémoires de maîtrise ( MA dissertations) and doctoral theses have been devoted to Sembene's literary and film work.

Undoubtedly, in Africa, more ostensibly in Burkina Faso (the African capital of motion pictures), Ousmane Sembene's name has also captured the "popular" imagination. Some five years ago, while attending a festival in Ouagadougou, I discovered a restaurant menu labeled "Ousmane Sembene", and I smiled at a green and black-painted taxi cab self baptized Le docker noir (1956), the original title of Sembene's first published novel (published in English as The Black Docker in, 1987). In the US, in 1996, his literary and film work also inspired Florence Ladd, then director of Radcliffe College's Bunting Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with her novel Sarah's Psalm, recognized by Boston Magazine as " a story (that) has the making of a modern myth. (Emphasis mine). Set in the 1960's in Cambridge and in Dakar Senegal ( that space sometimes expanding to Europe, and the French Riviera), Sarah's Psalm tells the story of Sarah Stewart, a young black Harvard graduate during the bourgeoning of the Civil Rights Movement and the first re-discovery of Africa by many African American intellectuals and cultural elites. Although Ms. Ladd warned that all characters in her novel were fictional, for her main character, the yearning to go to Africa, was a journey of self discovery, and arose from reading and viewing the work of a character named Ibrahim Mangane, a Sembene prototype.

Not only has Sembene's work provided the African American Diaspora with an "alternative" knowledge of Africa, he is also among the most sought after African artists in the Caribbean. The University of the West Indies, at Cave Hill, Barbados was honored by his presence in the fall of 2000. I helped arrange for that event in the course of my one-year tenure at UWI, in 1999-2000. During my last visit to Guadeloupe in the Spring of 2000, I was happy to hear from the owner- managers of Librairie Jasor, the main literary outlet in the French West Indies, that they want to host Ousmane Sembene and to screen his work. During a literary conference organized by the University of Guyana, in Georgetown in the Spring of 2000, when I showed Black Girl (the film that first introduced Sembene to an international audience of writers and artists attending the 1966 Festival Mondiale des arts Nègres held in Dakar), the overflow audience asked for and was granted a second showing, for the same night. In many countries in Africa, high schools, libraries, and amphitheaters bear his name. Even in Paris, where his work is far from meeting official approval, in 1998, a whole week was devoted to a retrospective of Sembene's work, masterminded and organized by Mauritanian film maker Med Hondo who once told me that "Sembene is the first African director to confer value to African images." In 1996, a week-long screening of Sembene's work at the University of Victoria, in British Columbia, brought together fervent crowds of students, film critics, and other cultural workers. Sembene is also arguably the most interviewed Senegalese and African film director on the globe.

Born in 1923 in Casamance, southern Senegal, where his "crazy" fisherman father had migrated from Dakar around 1900, Ousmane Sembene has, from a marginalized and a very modest beginning, inscribed his name in world history. Expelled from school in 1936 for indiscipline, his formal education would never go beyond middle school. Also unable to take on his father's trade because he was always seasick, in 1938 he was sent to his father's relatives in Dakar, headquarters of the territories of French West Africa. From 1938 to 1944 he worked as an apprentice mechanic and a bricklayer. Although he was denied an opportunity of a formal education, Sembene developed a love of reading - mostly comics - and discovered cinema in the segregated movie houses of Dakar. He spent his days at work as a manual laborer and his after work hours either reading, watching movies or, along with his neighborhood mates, attending evenings of story telling, wrestling, and other "traditional" Senegalese cultural events . As a French citizen, in 1944, like many young Africans of his generation, he was called to active duty to liberate France from German occupation and subsequently was dispatched to the colony of Niger as a chauffeur in the 6th colonial infantry unit. Upon being discharged in 1946 at the end of the war, he went back to Dakar in the midst of charged social and political activism. That same year, for the first time, he took membership in the construction worker's trade union and witnessed the first general workers' strike that paralyzed the colonial economy for a month and ushered in the nationalist struggle in French Africa.

In 1947, unemployed in the thick of a war-ravaged colonial economy, Sembene left Dakar in search of a better living and also for the opportunity to feed his unquenchable thirst for learning- "apprendre à l'école de la vie."(to learn in the school of life), as he put it many times. He migrated to France and lived in the Mediterranean city of Marseilles until 1960, the year Senegal was granted its political independence. As an black African docker who "knows" how to read and write, in Cold War Marseilles, he was soon identified by labor union leader Victor Gagnère ("papa Gagnere", as Sembene affectionately referred to him) and enrolled in the CGT ( Confederation generale des travailleurs ), the largest and most powerful left wing workers' union in post-war France. After back-breaking work unloading ships during the day (containers did not exist then), at night and on weekends Sembene enthusiastically attended seminars and workshops on Marxism, joined the French Communist Party in 1950, and the MOURAP (Movement against racism, anti Semitism and peace) in 1951, a political organization born of the resistence movement during WWII. The same year, while unloading a ship, Ousmane Sembene broke his backbone. After a long recovery and now unable to sustain the physical effort required by the work of a docker, with the support of his comrades, he was assigned a post as (aiguilleur), a switchman. A new opportunity was opened to Sembene to rise from a laborer who could read and hardly write, into a well-rounded intellectual, an exceptionally cultured humanist. As his comrade and friend Bernard Worms put it: "He rose to the status of the intellectual aristocracy of the labor movement; he become "un honnête homme." He spent most of his free time roaming public libraries, museums, theater halls, and tirelessly attending seminars on Marxism and Communism. He read everything: literature on Marxist ideology, political economy, political science, works of fiction, and history. During those Marseilles years with the passion and obsession of a convert to a new religion, Sembene also participated in the protest movements organized by the French Communist Party against the colonial war in Indochina (1953) and the Korean war(1950-1953). He also openly supported (and later wrote about) the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN) in its struggle for independence from France (1954-1962), and he vehemently protested against the Rosenberg trial and execution in the United States in 1953. Dreaming of the universal freedom and brotherhood mirrored by communist ideology, Ousmane Sembene also worked to educate and liberate the community of mostly illiterate and "apolitical" African workers shipwrecked at the margins of French society.

It was also in the midst of such an intense political activism that Sembene discovered other communist artists and writers: Richard Wright, John Roderigo (Dos Pasos), Ricardo Neftali Reyes (aka Pablo Néruda), Ernest Hemingway, Nazim Hikmet (Turkey), the works of French Communist writer and resistance organizer Paul Eluart, and, Jean Bruller (Vercors) co-founder of Les Editions de minuit (devoted to the publication of works dealing with resistance), and author of the classic work about the German Occupation and the Resistance, Le silence de la mer (1942) (Silence of the Sea). He also came into contact with the works of the Jamaican Communist writer Claude McKay (whose 1929 novel Banjo would influence his first novel) and the novels of Jacques Roumain, another Communist writer from Haiti and author of the classic Masters of the Dew (1947). Master's of the Dew 's communist vision provided most of the powerful images in Sembene's O pays, mon beau peuple (1957). In Marseilles he also became involved with the international Communist youth organization Les Auberges de jeunesses (Youth Hostels) and discovered the Communist theater, Le Theâtre Rouge.

However, as Sembene struggled with millions of others for revolutionary change at the international level, he also felt alienated by the quasi absence of "revolutionary" artists and writers from Africa, the voices of the masses of workers, women, and all those exploited and silenced by the combined external forces of colonialism and the internal yoke of African "tradition". Through activism, Sembene proved that he was deeply aware of the urgent need for political and social change in Africa, but unlike many of his generation ( Sékou Touré in Guinée, Patrice Lumumba in Belgian Congo, Kwame Nkrumah in Ghana, and Amilcar Cabral in Bissau Guinea who chose the political arena) he, like Palestinian writer Edward Said, strongly believed and still believes that the struggle against colonialism is not solely a fight over who should own the land but it also a contest over who should have the right to represent whom. In the historical context and contest against colonization, for Sembene , the terrain of art and cultural representation are a sine qua none for the freedom and revival of African societies. "L'Afrique d'hier me fascine, L'Afrique de demain m'exalte" ("The Africa of the past fascinates me; the future Africa excites me") says Sembene. The need to invest in Africa, to contribute to a better self-awareness of the past, present, and future Africa became a passion for him. Africa became what Albert Camus called "Une valeur", that which transcends one's own life; that for which one is ready to give his/her life, like South Africa's Nelson Mandela who once stated: "Democracy is a value I live for, and if need be, for which I am prepared to die."

Thus, since 1956, while still a dock worker, and upon his return to an independent Senegal in 1960 until today, Sembene's daily life has been devoted to the production and dissemination of emancipating and restorative images for those Frantz Fanon named the "the Wretched of the Earth", those Africans disenfranchised and marginalized in their own society, but also whose unsung struggles are a Daily Heroism (The title of Sembene's latest trilogy of films.) Yet for Sembene, in both literature and film, the work of "art" should not be a mere re-presentation of "reality" "une pancarte" (a political banner), as Sembene terms it. It is a work of art, a symbolic form of representation. In order to capture the imagination of the people they "speak" to and for , those symbols first must be intelligible to them. They must stem from and reflect their cultural universe. What is at work in Sembene's literary and film creation is an endeavor to capture and project a genuine African film language and aesthetics, that would also entertain a "dialogical" relationship with other world cultures.

Sembene the Writer

Nowadays, in the United States and around the world, Sembene is best known as a filmmaker. However, it should be clear that even Sembene's use of cinema is nothing but a compromise gesture to bring home what the widespread illiteracy in the continent would not allow him to accomplish in his literary work. It is through literature (or rather, it is because he failed to communicate with African "masses" through literature) that Sembene came to film making, as a last resort. Indeed, most of his film works (except Xala, 1973, and Guelwaar, 1993) are adaptations of earlier novels or short stories. Xala and Guelwaar are rather a re-writing of the original film script's political, social, and cultural affirmation.

Ousmane Sembene started his artistic career as a poet, a short story writer, an essayist and a novelist. His first published work was Liberté (1956), a long poem in which after an extended panegyric on the a vast inventory of human accomplishment in the area of art, the poet also launched into a heartbreaking lament over his estrangement from universal beauty. The long poem closes on a dream of a free Africa whose children will redirect rivers and build monuments to its beauty. This "programmatic" poem published in Cahiers du sud, a Marseilles-based left-wing review then directed by André Gaillard, also contains the contour of Sembene's future work.. His novels and short stories since 1956 are: Le docker noir (1956) (The Black Docker), his loosely reconstructed experiences as an black African dockworker in Marseilles; O pays, mon beau peuple (1957) is almost, thematically, a sequel to the 1956 novel. Here the former soldier, after experiencing the war and sojourning through Europe, returns to his native Casamance and in a manner reminiscent of Romanian Communism, spearheaded an agrarian reform (following the model of the Kokhoze, in Soviet Union, but here directed and controlled by farmers themselves) in order to promote economic, political, and social change for the farmers. Les bouts de bois de dieu (1960) (God's Bits of Wood) is a masterpiece of fictionalized history, conceived from Marxist ideology and yet Sembene's first genuinely "African" story. It was a move away from the canons of the European bourgeois novel of the nineteenth century. This third novel, a fictional recreation of the second and most comprehensive French West African railroad workers strike against their colonial bosses in 1947 was followed in 1962 by Voltaïque (Tribal Scares), a collection of short stories. In 1963, he released L'harmattan ( a political epic of the later years of the 50's, in the final struggle against colonial occupation). Le mandat suivi de blanche genèse (1966) (The Money Order with White Genesis), was, to be sure, a first presentation of the post-colonial situation in Senegal. Afterwards came Xala (1973), a sarcastic satire of the new and "impotent" Senegalese bourgeoisie, and Le dernier de l'empire (1981) (The Last of the Empire) which laid bare the internal contradictions and subsequent demise of an impotent and narcissistic political leadership. In 1992, a collection of two stories Niiwam et Taaw explored the despair of the Senegalese peasantry and urban youth. Guelwaar (1996), Sembene's latest novel, an adaption of a 1993 feature film (reversing the relationship between literature and film), warned against the dangers of religious fundamentalism while showing the ironies and humiliations if a nation relies on international aid for its own economic survival .

In Sembene's own life, reading and writing took center stage. There has been a long love affair (literally, and figuratively) between Sembene and literature. He once fell in love and married a literary scholar who specialized in his work. Sembene's rich literary imagination fed on a vast knowledge of world literature and its masterpieces. The success of his literary work around the world flows from his own phenomenal love of reading. In addition to Sembene's ten published volumes, there are also dozens of manuscripts, some waiting for that spark that will bring them to the public's attention and thus to life. Sembene also has this infuriating and deliberate habit of burning many of his papers.

Sembene the Film Director

Yet, since 1962, upon returning to Senegal and having visited many other countries in the region, Sembene had to face the endemic level of illiteracy among his intended audience and the paralyzing effect it was having on the dissemination of his work. Already in 1938, when movie going had started to become his passion, Ousmane Sembene realized the magical power of cinema in conveying messages. Ironically, the spark came from the viewing of Leni Riefenstahl's Olympiad, a documentary on the 1936 Munich Olympic games by one of Hitler's favorite filmmakers.

Touring the continent in 1961, at the moment he was sailing along the Congo River, and in the middle of the short-lived vitality of the Patrice Lumumba era, Sembene is said to have had a vision: landscapes, people, movements and sounds to which no written document could do justice. Then it dawned on him the necessity and desire to make movies - the technology and art of motion, color, and sound. He was not thinking of movies for escapism and dream making in the Hollywood model and paradigm, but movies as "école du soir" (night school). His efforts became aimed at educating the people, in the language of the people, following in the millennia-long tradition of many African oral cultures where, at night, people gathered around a wood fire and listened to stories told by either the griot (a professional storyteller) or by the elders. Although to this day Sembene has a strong personal preference for literature, he also sees motion picture combined with synchronized sound as a necessity, the only medium that could reconcile the African artist with the millions of peasants, workers, and women, whom Aimé Césaire called "les bouches qui n'ont pas bouches" (those mouths without a mouth).

Sembene was nearly 40 when he decided to seek scholarships and go back to Europe and learn the technique of film making. In the context of the Cold War, the Soviet Union (hoping to extend its influence over Africa) was eager to oblige. Thus, in 1962, Sembene spent a year learning cinematography at the Gorki Studios in Moscow, under the tutelage of Soviet director Marc Donskoï. At the end of 1962, he returned to Senegal with his knowledge and an old Soviet camera. In 1963, with Borom Saret , his first short, Sembene ushered Senegal and Africa into the landscape of world cinema, albeit 68 years after the invention of cinematography, and 63 years after the first Lumiere brother's L'arroseur arrosé was screened in Senegal. His film work would transform Africa from a mere consumer of images made elsewhere to that of a "producer" of its own images. As Borom Saret shows, Sembene was urgently concerned with pointing his camera on the present day, post colonial Senegalese society whose spatial mapping reflects the internal conflicts between the old and the new, between the powerful and the powerless, the changing of the old markers of identity. In 1964, Niaye (an adaptation of the short story White Genesis) a story of incest in a village noble family documented the withering of old moral values. These first two shorts were followed by La noire de... (Black Girl) in 1966, a first and prize-winning feature that put Africa on the map of world cinema. However, it was with Mandabi (The Money Order) in 1968, that Sembene's dream to reconnect with Africa's masses came through. For the first time, indeed, an African filmmaker was experimenting by using an African language (Wolof, the dominant language in Senegal), hence setting a new trend which would be followed by all film makers on the continent. In 1969 he released two shorts: Taumatisme de la femme face à la polygamie (Women and the Trauma of Polygamy), and Les dérives du chômage (The Afflictions of Unemployment). Two years later, in 1971 Sembene would adapt the short story Tauw and direct Emitaï, his first historical film, a dramatization of the forced conscription of Senegalese soldiers during WWII, followed by Basket Africain aux jeux olympiques de Munich, RFA (African Basketball in the Munich Olympic Games) in 1972, and L'Afrique aux Olympiades (Africa at the Olympic Games) in 1973. In 1974, Xala, an adaptation of his earlier 1973 novella would be released, followed by a controversial and internationally acclaimed historical film Ceddo, a re-writing of the history of Islam in Senegal. Camp de Thiaroye (1988) a sequel to Emitaï, centers around the massacre by French authorities of returning African soldiers from WWII.The award winning Guelwaar, une légende du 21 ème siècle (Guelwaar, a Legend of the 21st Century) would be released in 1993. Sembene would close the century with two films devoted to the struggle of African women: Héroisme au quotidien (Daily Heroism) in 1999, and Faat Kine in 2000 and open the new century with Moolaade in 2003 a crusade against a century-old practice of female circumcision which still plagues more than twenty-five out of the fifty -four African states recognized by the United Nations.

Importance of Sembene's Film Work

As can be seen from this brief presentation, Ousmane Sembene's forty year film work bears an unparalleled social and artistic significance in the context of both world and African cinema. At the international level, Sembene has been unequivocally recognized as the father of African cinema and his has received countless awards and distinctions. His images are intended not only for entertainment and profit (Sembene adheres to Lenin's prescription that "An artist must make money in order to live and work, but not live and work in order to make money"), but rather as an educational tool. His work is aimed at promoting freedom, social justice, and at restoring pride and dignity to African people. To reach such a goal, Sembene seeks first to "indigenize" the medium by resorting first to the use of African languages (Wolof and Diola, two Senegalese languages, and Bambara, a language spoken in Eastern Senegal, in Mauritania, Mali, Burkina, and Côte d'Ivoire in Moolaade) Secondly, this primary emphasis on language allowed him to specify his public : "Africa is my "audience" while the West and the "rest" are only targeted as "markets". Thirdly, he borrows from the rich heritage of African oral narratives, handed down by the griots and rejecting a mere imitation of Hollywood's narrative techniques, Sembene's cinema ushered in a genuinely African film aesthetics. "We will never be Arabs or Europeans; we are African", Sembene likes to philosophize. Finally, bent on educating and on liberating the disenfranchised, Sembene's cinema uses the tools provided by Marxist analysis and the passion of a visionary who profoundly believes, like Antoine de Saint-Exupery's character, Riviere, (Vol de nuit ; Night Flight) that only creation gives meaning to life. Counter to the hegemonic"official" history of Senegal, produced by its local elite, Sembene's filmography, which critics have perceived as "A call to action" has given voice to the millions of marginalized and voiceless African peasantry, its workers, women, and children, while often putting him at odds with his country's powerful. Indeed, most of Sembene's films have been either banned or censored by former president Leopold Senghor's regime.

Moreover, since Camp De Thiaroye (1988), through Guelwaar (1993), Faat Kine (2000), and Moolaade (2003), Sembene's film work has taken on and fulfilled a manifold objective that, symbolically, goes well beyond the strict realm of art as symbolic representation. Indeed since 1957, with the independence of Nkrumah's Ghana, and the creation of The Organization of African Unity (OAU) in Addis Ababa in 1963 by thirty newly independent states (and the fifty-three nations making up the current African Union), Africa's political leaders have failed to reach the triple objective of putting an end to its "balkanization" by political unity, of performing its economic integration, nor of ending its technological dependence on the West.

Indeed, for the financing of Camp De Thiaroye, Sembene, without giving up on the vertical model of cooperation with Europe (North-South axis), took the fresh approach of a hitherto uncharted model of a horizontal, inter-African (South-South axis) cooperation. For the financing of the film Sembene performed a symbolic "economic integration" through a co-production budget between SNPC (Senegal), ENAPROC (Algeria), SATPEC (Tunisia), and his own production company (Filmi Domireew/Filmi Kajoor). For the first time, Sembene also called on the services of a Tunisian lab for post-production of his film. Moreover, a film about a colonial massacre (the killing by French officers of African soldiers who returned from WWII, Camp Thiaroye ) also offers a unified approach to African history by also echoing the 1954 Setif colonial massacre that heralded the war of independence in Algeria. Although Guelwaar (1993) is a co-production with Galatee-Films, a French production company, its post-production was also done in Morocco. As for Faat Kine, the production was the result of a truly international cooperation (France, Germany, Switzerland, USA, Cameroon, and Senegal) and the post-production was again done in Morocco. With Moolaade, for the first time, Sembene has made a film outside Senegal's national borders, in Burkina Faso, seventeen kms, east of the border with Côte d'Ivoire, and in Bambara (a language spoken in eastern Senegal, in Mali, southern Mauritania, and, of course Burkina Faso). The technical crew was French (camera, sound, lighting), the set designer was from Benin, the production managers were from Burkina Faso and some machinists were from Senegal. The cast was selected by Casting Sud in Burkina Faso and includes Malians and Burkinabe as well as actors from Côte d'Ivoire. Thus, in his project as an artist-film maker, Ousmane Sembene realized the dream of a unified Africa, which its political leaders still have yet to produce.

Sembene's Filmography

1963 - BOROM SARET - short
1964 - NIAYE - short
1966 - LA NOIRE DE…(Black Girl) - feature
1968 - MANDABI (The Money Order) -feature
1969 - TAUMATISME DE LA FEMME FACE A LA POLYGAME - documentary
1969 - LES DERIVES DU CHOMAGE - documentary
1971 - TAUW - short
1971 - EMITAI - feature
1972 - BASKET AFRICAIN AUX JEUX OLYMPIADES - documentary
1973 - L'AFRIQUE AUX OLYMPIADES -documentary
1974 - XALA - feature
1976 - CEDDO - feature
1988 - CAMP DE THIAROYE - feature
1993 - GUELWAAR - feature
1999 - HEROISME AU QUOTIDIEN - short
2000 - FAAT KINE - feature
2003 - MOOLAADE - feature