Ousmane Sembène

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Ousmane Sembène (1987)

Ousmane Sembène (born January 1, 1923 in Ziguinchor , † June 9, 2007 in Dakar ) was a Senegalese writer and director . He is considered one of the most important writers in Africa and the "father figure" of cinema south of the Sahara .

Life

Sembène, the son of a Muslim fisherman, had to leave school at the age of 14 and worked from 1938 to 1944 as a mechanic and bricklayer in Dakar. During this time he discovered the cinema for himself and read a lot. In 1944 he was drafted into the French army for the war against Germany as a so-called Tirailleur Sénégalais ("Senegal shooter"). In 1946 he returned to Dakar and in 1947 took part in the great railroad strike.

In 1948 he returned to France and worked in a Citroën factory in Paris and then for ten years as a dock worker in Marseille . During this time Sembène was very active in union struggles, including the blockade of shipments for the French war in Vietnam . In 1956 he published his first novel.

Sembène realized that his books could not reach the workers and the people of the countryside in his homeland. He decided to make films and in 1961 traveled to Moscow to study film studies.

In 1966 he received the Prix ​​Jean Vigo for Die Schwarze aus Dakar , a film about a young African woman who works as a maid in France . The film is based on a short story from Le Voltaïque .

Sembène's most important novel is God's Pieces of Wood (originally Les Bouts de bois de Dieu ) about the great railway strike under French colonial rule, which was supposed to paralyze the Dakar – Niger railway line . The main themes of his filmmaking are the history of colonialism , the criticism of the new African bourgeoisie and the strength of African women.

On June 9, 2007, Sembène died in Dakar after a long illness.

Works

Books

  • Le docker noir. Novel. Debresse, Paris 1956; New edition by Présence Africaine, Paris 2002.
  • O pays, mon beau peuple! Novel. 1957.
    • dt. My people's beautiful home. Kindler, Munich 1958.
    • German also as upstream to Santhiaba. Construction, Weimar 1970.
  • Les bouts de bois de Dieu. Novel. 1960.
  • Le Voltaïque. Short stories. Présence Africaine, Paris 1962.
  • L'Harmattan. Présence Africaine, Paris 1964, novel.
  • Le mandat, précédé de Vehi-Ciosane. Novel. Presence Africaine, Paris 1966.
  • Guelwaar.
    • German Guelwaar. A hero of the future. Peter Hammer, Wuppertal.
  • Xala. Novel. Présence Africaine, Paris 1973.
    • German Xala. The beggar's revenge , Peter Hammer, Wuppertal 1979. ISBN 3-87294-145-3 .
    • German new edition: Chala , Dialog Africa series, Ullstein, Frankfurt am Main / Berlin / Vienna 1982, ISBN 3-548-20223-3 .
  • Le dernier de l'Empire , L'Harmattan, 1981 - "The novel of the Senegalese politics" (Werner Glinga).
  • Niiwam. Presence Africaine, Paris 1987.

Movies

  • L'Empire Sonhrai (1963): Sembène's first film is a documentary about the history of the Songhai eich provided by the Government of the Republic of Mali was produced. French. 16 mm. Black-and-white. 20 minutes.
  • Borom Sarret (1963): This masterful protest against economic exploitation shows the typical daily encounters of a cart handler in Dakar. French with English subtitles. 16 mm. Black-and-white. 20 minutes. The film won first prize at the Tours Film Festival (France) in 1965.
  • Niaye (1964): Told by a village griot , "Niaye" is the tragic story of a young girl whose pregnancy scandalizes her community. An out-of-town worker is accused of being responsible for her pregnancy but is later discovered that her own father is the culprit. The community tries to keep the scandal a secret from the French colonial authorities. French. 16 mm. Black-and-white. 35 minutes. The film won a prize at the Locarno Film Festival .
  • The black from Dakar ( La noire de… ; 1966): Sembenes first feature film, known in English as “Black Girl”, made a deep impression at various film festivals in 1966. The film is often seen as the starting point for the development of African cinema. Shot in a simple style with a portable camera, it is somewhat reminiscent of the Nouvelle Vague . It directly tells the bitter, unambiguous story of exile and despair. The heroine Douanna is a Senegalese maid who istakento the Riviera by her employers. There she realizes what it means to be African. She realizes that she is just a commodity, no longer Douanna, but just "the black girl". The film received the Jean Vigo Prize in 1966 and the Dakar Black Arts Festival Mandabi Prize (1968). French with English subtitles.
  • Mandabi : Based on a short story by Sembène, this feature film is the deceptively simple story of a man who receives a money order from his nephew in Paris and tries to get the money. “Mandabi” is a deeply moving, humorous portrait of a man whose vanity against the harassment and callousness of the ambitious young petty bourgeoisie pales. Wolof with English subtitles. 16 mm. Colour. 90 minutes.
  • Taaw (1970): Taaw is an unemployed young man in modern Senegal who defends himself against allegations of laziness and creates a home for his pregnant friend who has been rejected by her family. Wolof with English subtitles. 16 mm. Colour. 24 minutes. He won the Asmara Gold Lion Prize, Addis Ababa ( Ethiopia ).
  • Emitai (1971): Emitai is a historical film that works like a timeless allegory . In a clear, economical style, the film tells the confrontation between the French colonialists and the Diola in Senegal in the last days of the Second World War. It is women who first raise their voices in opposition. Diola and French with English subtitles. 16 mm. Colour. 101 minutes.
    • Golden Bear at the Moscow Film Festival .
    • First Afro-Asian Prize 1972 Tashkent Festival (Soviet Union)
  • Xala (1974): In this wild and funny satire on the modern African bourgeoisie, Sembène shows how white exploitation has taken on a black face. The hero of the film is a complacent westernized Senegalese businessman who is suddenly struck by Xala, an ancient Senegalese curse that makes him impotent. His unsuccessful search for a cure becomes a metaphor for the impossibility for Africans to achieve their liberation by relying on Western technology and bureaucratic structures. French and Wolof.
  • Ceddo (1976): A suspenseful thriller about the kidnapping of a princess is used to examine opposing forces in the Muslim expansion. The Ceddo, the common class, refuse to submit to Islam. Ceddo is not a historical film in the strictest sense, but encompasses philosophy, fantasy, militant politics and a series of electrifying leaps over centuries. Wolof with English subtitles. 16 mm. Colour. 120 minutes.
    • Special Award, Los Angeles, 1980
  • Camp de Thiaroye (1989): Towards the end of 1944, soldiers of the Senegalese infantry from different parts of Africa who fought for a free France against fascism in Europe came to the Camp de Thiaroye , a military transit camp in Senegal, to receive their release, overdue pay, her severance payment and her return home. The French captain Raymond is sincerely trying to convince the Senegalese Diatta that massacres like the one in which Diatta's parents were killed are part of the Vichy past. The dialectic of the film shows that he is wrong. In the end, Raymond is isolated from the other officers as a "communist" and the attempt by the French to cheat the African veterans out of their wages leads to a revolt, which the French respond to with a nightly massacre. This corresponds to historical facts and the underlying culture of European imperialism. Wolof and French with English subtitles. Colour. 153 minutes. 45th Venice International Film Festival :
    • Big special prize from the jury
    • Golden Ciak Prize
    • Unicef ​​Nuovo Prize
    • Youth and Cinema Prize
  • Guelwaar (1992): By choosing Gelwaar: An African Legend for the 21st Century for the opening of the 13th Pan-African Film Festival FESPACO ( Ouagadougou , Burkina Faso , February 1993), the organizers wanted to honor Sembène as the father of African cinema. Gelwaar is based on a true story: the body of Pierre Henri Thiounes, alias Gelwaar, leader of a Christian community, was mistakenly brought to the Muslims who, according to the customs of their religion, buried it in a Muslim cemetery. When the error is discovered, the Christians try to get "their" corpse back. In this film, Sembène develops familiar themes: real versus imaginary independence, the emancipation of women, the brain. French and Wolof with English subtitles. 115 minutes. colour
    • Gold medal at the 49th Venice Film Festival
  • L'héroïsme au quotidien (1999): [The everyday heroism] Set in a small village in rural Senegal, L'héroïsme au quotidien is the first film in a trilogy ( Faat Kine and Moolaade ) depicting Ousmane Sembene of awakening and everyday heroism dedicated to African women at the beginning of the new century. Exploited in their daily toil and enslaved for centuries by patriarchal and religious obscurantism and indoctrination , the women of a small village begin to hear new voices broadcast from the city in the languages ​​of their country. Old-fashioned battery-powered radios establish contact with the outside world, the world they share with other women. Their new knowledge opens the walls of their prison and challenges their centuries-old subordination to men. L'héroïsme au quotidien is the voice of change, the sudden discovery of a new value (freedom) that leads to revolt.
  • Moolaadé - Bann der Hope (2004): premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2004 , the latest, impressive film artwork was only released in 2006 by a German distributor who brought it to German art house cinemas as the original with subtitles. Moolaadé is the second part of the trilogy The Everyday Heroism , in which Sembène highlights the role of women in the African liberation movements and in traditional African society in times of transition. The location was a comparatively small village in Burkina Faso. As a result, most of the performers spoke Bambara , a language only common in some parts of West Africa. In order to be able to show the film in the whole of Africa, it had to be dubbed in several languages. In Moolaadé, Sembène describesa traditional, village-like community of values ​​into which modern influences break in through a trader, the groom of a princess and the media. With Sembène, the women of the village remain the only reliable moral backbone of community life.

Quotes

  • "I want to remove all unnecessary words and speeches and only show the essentials."
  • "When there is silence, we can begin to write with the camera, describe places, show something else that is hidden behind the language."
  • “All of my films are about Africa. For me it is about speaking to my people in my films. I am referring to a genuinely African history, our culture, our philosophy and try to describe the African evolution. Our metaphors or our music cannot be compared with those of Europe. For me, however, there is no antagonism. I just see it as an addition, a continuation of human history. Nevertheless, today we have reached a point in our history where we can no longer rely on others. Our fate is in our own hands. "
  • "Cinema is mathematics."

See also

literature

  • Paulin Soumanou Vieyra : Sembène Ousmane. Cinéaste . Paris 1972
  • Françoise Pfaff: The Cinema of Ousmane Sembène . New York, London 1984
  • Pierre Haffner: The resistance fighter: Sembène Ousmane . In: CICIM. Revue pour le Cinéma Français. No. 27/28, Institut Français de Munich, Munich 1989, pp. 76–92 (Sembène tells his life in his own words, based on an interview from 1977)
  • Sembène Ousmane . CinémAction 34, 1995.
  • Annett Busch, Max Annas (Eds.): Ousmane Sembène: interviews. Univ. Press of Mississippi, 2008.
  • Hilaire Sikounmo: Ousmane Sembène: écrivain populaire. Paris: L'Harmattan, 2010, ISBN 978-2-296-13331-0 .
  • Samba Gadjigo: Ousmane Sembène: the making of a militant artist. Bloomington, Ind .: Indiana University Press, 2010, ISBN 978-0-253-22151-3 .
  • Johannes Rosenstein (Hrsg.): Ousmane Sembène (= film concepts 32), edition text + kritik, Munich 2013.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ “The Enlightenment” , taz , June 10, 2006, review of Moolaadé - Ban of Hope
  2. ^ Sembène, Ousmane. Moolaadé (drama). 2004. Senegal / France / Burkina Faso / Cameroon / Marocco / Tunesia, Color, 120 min reviewed by Daniela Hrzán, Humboldt University Berlin ( Memento from September 27, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Page 4 of the PDF file 272 kB

Web links
personal data
SURNAME Sembène, Ousmane
BRIEF DESCRIPTION African humanist, writer and film director
DATE OF BIRTH January 1, 1923
PLACE OF BIRTH Ziguinchor , Senegal
DATE OF DEATH June 9, 2007
Place of death Dakar , Senegal