Ousmane Sembène: The Making of a Militant Artist

Conclusion

149 We began this study by following the ship bringing Oumar Faye back to his native Casamance in O pays, mon beau peuple!, after years of war, exile, and learning in Europe. This foreshadowed Sembène’s own return, after Senegal’s independence in 1960. Like Oumar Faye, Sembène went back to his native land after twelve years in Marseilles; years of personal struggle, that of the war veteran now engaged in a fight against colonialism and frustrated by his own ignorance. During those formative years, Sembène was to gain a new knowledge and embrace a humanism steeped in Marxist ideology, which would eventually structure his thinking and orient his action. In so doing he was, unawares, forging his own destiny. The conquest of this new knowledge empowered Ousmane Sembène, who emerged from silence and anonymity, and found, through writing, a voice all his own. This Marseilles period was also marked by collective struggles within various political and labor organizations, alongside thousands of men from Conclusion 150 ousmane sembène all countries, all driven and united by the same ideal: that of changing the world and ushering in a new era of equality, justice, and universal brotherhood . Sembène went back to Africa seething with a new passion: to take an active part, through his art, in Senegal’s cultural emancipation. Upon his return to Senegal, Ousmane Sembène ceased all political activities , devoting all his militant energy to filmmaking and literature. From 1960, he published ten novels, including three that he penned while still in Marseilles. A literary œuvre that has not only been a source of inspiration for subsequent generations of writers on the African continent, but has also generated a considerable amount of criticism. Translated into numerous languages,1 today Sembène’s work is taught everywhere in Africa and in the rest of the world. However, beyond this contribution to African literature, what future generations will learn from Ousmane Sembène is that, above all, he was quick to detect and acknowledge the limitations of the literary medium in a continent where most people were—and still are—unable to read and write, both in African or European languages—and also in Arabic, for that matter. By going back to school in 1942, and by attending a film institute later on at 40, Sembène gave himself the means to open new vistas of cultural expression for artists in his country and Africa. Although he was not the first African to shoot movies, Sembène remains nevertheless one of the most innovative filmmakers of his generation. In addition to his 1966 Black Girl, the first feature film ever released by a director from Sub-Saharan Africa, Sembène broke new ground with the 1968 Mandabi, the first movie made in an African language, in this case Wolof. Since then, always anxious to reach a wider public in Africa, Sembène made a movie in Joola (spoken in Senegal) and in Jula (spoken in Burkina-Faso and Mali)—movies that have also reached a large international viewership, through subtitling. In Africa, one simply cannot avoid Sembène’s cinematographic work, whether one is an epigone eager to perpetuate tradition or an innovator contesting the master’s legacy. Likewise, his work is steadily arousing interest among African literature and film scholars. In addition to his participation, since the 1956 First International Congress of Black Writers and Artists, in literary and artistic activities, Semb ène was also the co-founder of numerous cultural organizations. He took part in all the major cultural events on the continent, whether it was the Journées cinématographiques de Carthage (Carthage International Film Festival), the Semaine du cinéma africain de Ouagadougou (later to be- conclusion 151 come FESPACO), or the First World Festival of Negro Arts, held in Dakar in 1966. As already pointed out, Sembène’s work has attracted much critical interest , but all the studies devoted to it are fragmentary, analytically unfocused, and often “hemiplegic,” dealing either with cinema or literature. The present biography is an attempt to synthesize Sembène’s life experiences, so as to gain insight into the existential matrix, the genesis of his ideas and works, both literary and cinematic. A recent study by David Murphy, entitled Ousmane Sembène: Imagining Alternatives in Film and Fiction (2000), and drawing on the findings of Senegalese historians such as Mamadou Diouf, has...