Ousmane Sembene Senegalese film director, screenwriter, actor, writer and communist activist Date of Birth: 01.01.1923 Country: Senegal

Biography of Ousmane Sembene

Ousmane Sembene, a Senegalese film director, screenwriter, actor, writer, and activist, was born on January 8, 1923, in the small village of Zinguinchor on the Casamance River in southern Senegal. His father was a fisherman. Due to their impoverished circumstances, Sembene was unable to continue his education and started working at the age of fifteen. He worked as a potter, car washer, and mechanic's assistant. At the age of eighteen, during World War II, Sembene was mobilized into the French army and became a military driver in the "Senegalese Rifles" unit. He fought in Africa and on European fronts. After his demobilization, he lived in Marseille, worked as a docker in the port, and actively engaged in trade union activities. He studied art and tried his hand at literary writing. Starting from 1956, his literary works were published. His artistic works, such as "Le docker noir" (Black Docker) about the lives of Africans in France, "L'empire de Negal" (God's Bits of Wood), a widely known novel "The Last of the Empire", the novella "Le Mandat" (The Money Order), poems, plays, and short stories, were published. In 1960, Sembene returned to Senegal. He was shocked by the enormous gap between the poverty of the illiterate people and the wealth of the local bourgeoisie. Realizing that his literary works were only accessible to the educated elite, Sembene decided to pursue filmmaking as the most accessible form of art for the masses. After receiving an invitation for an internship in the Soviet Union, the future director arrived in Moscow in 1962. He worked as an intern at the M. Gorky Studio, studying under the guidance of M. Donskoy and S. Gerasimov. He filmed his first movie scenes on the streets of Moscow. In 1963, his art short film "Borom Sarret" ("Man with a Cart"), an adaptation of his own novella, won an award at the international film festival in Tours. This film already showed the director's creative style: an interest in the inner world of the characters, the ability to highlight social issues, and authentically recreate a realistic atmosphere and an engaging, dynamically developing plot. The film tells the story of a poor cart driver from the suburbs of Dakar, who, at the request of a wealthy client, enters a restricted area of the capital city. He does not have the money to pay the fine, and his only possession, the cart, is confiscated by the police, leaving the cart driver and his family condemned to desperate poverty. To save their children from hunger, his wife is forced to become a sex worker. The humanistic tone of this twenty-minute film was so poignant that critics compared it to the best films of Italian neorealism.

Sembene achieved international success with his first feature film, "Black Girl" (1966), which won the Jean Vigo Award in Paris, the Critics' Prize in Cannes, and the "Silver Antelope" at the World Festival of Negro Arts in Dakar. The film follows the story of a young black girl, Diouana, who is hired as a maid by a French couple in Dakar through the "servants market." She ends up in France, where she soon realizes that she made a mistake leaving her homeland and finds herself in complete spiritual isolation. Unable to bear the loneliness, she takes her own life. The role of Diouana was played by non-professional actress Mbissine Thérèse Diop, a tailor whom Sembene accidentally met in a movie theater. This talented woman was able to convey all the nuances of the character's emotions, from hopes of a new life in Europe to the complete collapse of those dreams. Sembene continued to explore the theme of the "little" man in his tragicomedy film "The Money Order" (1968), which won the Venice Film Festival prize in 1968. The film centers around Ibrahim, an elderly unemployed man living on the impoverished outskirts of Dakar. He receives a notification that he has received a money order from his nephew, who works as a janitor in Paris. However, Ibrahim cannot collect the money because he does not have identification. As he tries to obtain the necessary document, the naive protagonist becomes entangled in the grip of the bureaucratic machine, experiencing red tape, bribery, deceit, and blackmail. The protagonist's journey turns into a genuine drama. He becomes a victim of the arbitrary actions of his compatriots, officials who cynically disregard the interests of ordinary people, and even his own relatives.

In Sembene's films of the 1960s and 1970s, he portrayed the main contradiction of Senegal, as shown in his films, as the confrontation between the poor and the local authorities. This idea is also explored in his film "Taw" (1970), the story of an unemployed young man who wanders in search of a job from one heartless bureaucrat to another. Sembene's satirical comedy "Xala" (1975) became the most popular and well-known film in Africa and Europe. In this film, the director sharply criticizes the new bourgeoisie, who have detached themselves from the people and mimic Europeans in everything. The film grotesquely presents the African businessman Kader, from his highest state of prosperity to his complete downfall. The character embodies all the negative traits one can imagine. His snobbery, self-satisfaction, and boasting are taken to absurd levels. Demonstrating his wealth and decadence to others, Kader even drinks water brought exclusively from France and washes his car only with it. However, the fate of the character unexpectedly changes. Just when he is about to marry a young girl for the third time, he discovers that he has become impotent. "Xala" means impotence in the Wolof language. After experiencing a personal collapse, the character loses his social status and wealth, becoming a laughingstock to those around him. Sembene emphasized that Kader's "xala" was not an isolated case but a common illness of the bureaucratic bourgeoisie, incapable of creation.

Sembene called cinema the evening school of Black Africa. Therefore, in his films, he aimed not only to create art but also to educate, inviting the audience to contemplate complex issues of the present and the past. In the film "Emitai" (1971), which means "god of thunder" in the Diola language, the director tells the story of the colonial era, showing the vulnerability of tribal ethics in the face of the cruelty and pragmatism of the French conquerors. In the film "Ceddo" (1978), set in the 17th-18th centuries, Sembene explores the clash of African beliefs with the spread of Islam on the continent. In this film, the director turns to the principles of montage cinema to overcome the language barrier. He focuses not on dialogue, as in his previous films, but on visual expressiveness. The film was successful both in Africa and the West, attracting audiences not only with its thought-provoking content but also its extraordinary visual richness. The film "Camp de Thiaroye" (1988) transports the audience to the end of World War II. The film depicts the lives of the "Senegalese Rifles" soldiers, returned to their homeland and placed in the transit camp of Thiaroye. The people who experienced the horrors of war now spend their time in agonizing negotiations with the military authorities regarding their financial benefits and prospects for the future. The experience gained during the war completely reshaped their way of thinking. The Senegalese Rifles are no longer the "good Negroes," obedient executors of white officers' orders; they now negotiate with the administration on equal terms. Alongside the Senegalese soldiers, the film depicts the residents of Dahomey (Benin) and Ivory Coast. All of them experience their time in the Thiaroye camp as a bitter human drama.

In the 1990s, Sembene did not release any new films. Known as the father of African cinema, he focused on literary activities and traveled to different countries, including America, to give lectures. However, in his small office located in the old part of Dakar, the walls are adorned with sketches of an unrealized five-part film about the history of the liberation struggle of African countries. Despite the lack of funds, the director still dreams of making this epic film.