14th May 2024 - 28th May at 18:30
Film Cicle Ousmane Sembène: the Voice of Critic
Auditório Ilídio Pinho
 

This cycle aims to showcase the work of a filmmaker who is crucial to the History of Cinema and one of the key figures in African cinema.

Diving into some of the works that make up his body of work, the cycle consists of three feature films and one short film by the Senegalese director.
Throughout the three sessions, we will be confronted with the human condition through the lens of this acclaimed filmmaker.

Ousmane Sembène, born on January 1, 1923, is considered by many to be the father of African cinema. 
This statement is highly justified, as he is the first black African director to make a film, or because he is the director who took African cinema to international levels.

The films chosen for this cycle reflect the conditions faced by the Senegalese and African people, both within their countries/continent and abroad. His films reflect the main themes of Sembène’s work: post-colonial trauma, the role of women, class differences, and religious and traditional dilemmas.
Sembène's cinema speaks for Africa. According to Sembène himself, his cinema represents Africans to Africans.

Ousmane Sembène started as a writer, but he understood that to reach the public, cinema was the best and most activist tool, as it was the most appealing art form to the people.
For him, cinema was a continuous political rally with the public.

As previously mentioned, the cycle features several works from Ousmane Sembène's filmography that address human condition themes and have been chosen and organized in a way that helps the viewer understand and feel the filmmaker’s evolution and how his approach to cinema and themes changed throughout his career.

The cycle begins with a double session: Borom Sarret (1963) and La Noire de... (1966), the first short and the first feature film by the director.

In Borom Sarret, Sembène depicts Senegal in the post-colonial era of French occupation, following a cart driver who must deal with the harshness of life on the streets of the country.
From a neorealist approach, we are confronted with the daily struggle of the Senegalese people, a struggle that Sembène later presents in La Noire de... from the perspective of a Senegalese woman who emigrates to work as a maid in France and faces the way Europeans discriminate against her, realizing what it means to be colonized.

The cycle continues with the film Mandabi (1968), a work that critiques Senegalese bureaucracy and the economic disparities in the country.
Following the tragicomic journey of a man who cannot retrieve a payment order from his nephew who emigrated to Paris, it is the first feature film in history to be spoken in an African language, Wolof.
Since then, Ousmane Sembène made all of his films in this native dialect of Senegal.

The cycle concludes with the director’s final film, Moolaadé (2004), which tells the story of a woman who protects a group of girls from female genital mutilation through a protective magic (moolaadé), a common practice in some African regions.
This film critiques tradition, religion, patriarchy, and the belief in immorality.
It is an ode to the role of women in Senegalese society and their strength to survive the unjust world in which they live.

Ousmane Sembène’s cinema offers a lot, from issues that we never raise in a Eurocentric society to the beautiful, realistic, comedic, and tragic vision he has of Africa.
Participating in the sessions of this cycle will bring a new ideology to the viewer and more knowledge of a filmmaker who does not fit into the mainstream definition.

(José Antunes, Cinema Bachelor’s student and cycle programmer)