Ousmane Sembene was the first film director from an African country to achieve international recognition, and he remains a major figure in the rise of independent post-colonial African cinema.
Born in Dakar, Senegal, Sembene's roots were not in the educated elite. He worked as a mechanic and bricklayer before joining the Free French forces in 1942, serving in Africa and France. After the war, he returned to Dakar and 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 later on the dock in Marseilles. During this time, Sembene became active in trade union struggles and began an incredibly successful writing career. His first novel, "Le Docker Noir", was published in 1956 to critical acclaim.
Sembene's writing career continued to flourish, and he produced a number of works that placed him at the forefront of the international literary scene. However, he 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, Sembene traveled to Moscow to study film at VGIK and then worked at the Gorky Studios. Upon his return to Senegal, he turned his attention to filmmaking and wrote and directed his first feature, "Black Girl" (1966). The film received great enthusiasm at a number of international film festivals and won the prestigious Jean Vigo Prize for its director.
Sembene's next film, "Mandabi" (1968),marked a sharp departure. Based on his novel of the same name and shot in color in two language versions, the film is a trenchant and often delightfully witty satire of the new bourgeoisie, torn between outmoded patriarchal traditions and an uncaring, rapacious, and inefficient bureaucracy.
In "Emitai" (1971),Sembene records the struggle of the Diola people of the Casamance region of Senegal against the French authorities during World War II. The film is shot in Diola dialect and French from an original script and offers a respectful but unromanticized depiction of an ancient tribal culture, highlighting the role of women in the struggle against colonialist oppression.
In "Xala" (1975),Sembene takes on the native bourgeoisie again, 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.
Finally, in "Outsiders" (1977),considered by many to be Sembene's masterpiece, he departs from his 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.
