See the Sky: Subjectivity and Social Meaning in Adams Sie’s Filmmaking

The filmmaker Adams Sie has crafted a unique filmography in contemporary Senegalese cinema as he has cobbled together a career through festival-submitted shorts, industry films for NGOs, and a reality television series. His process for procuring funding and production support exemplifies the difficult financial situation that many Senegalese filmmakers must face when working in the country. However, his films also demonstrate a cinematic sensibility that, when viewed alongside his funding and production strategies, offers a path of sustainability for up-and-coming cineastes in Senegal. Producing films that are generically documentaries, but that incorporate a highly subjective, personalized point of view, and that focus on subjects that are pulled from the specificity of Senegalese culture and society, Sie reimagines Senegalese cinema as a cultural product that can speak directly to the country’s citizenry to transform Senegalese society.

In this essay I argue that Sie’s filmmaking process, conceptualization of cinema, and films themselves are a creative and perceptive response to the cinematic crisis in the country. Sie carefully constructs subjectivity in his films in order to create communal meaning of their subjects and topics. He is part of a burgeoning group of young artists and cultural producers in Senegal that is engaging with Senegalese social change through their art forms. Sie has constructed a set of malleable and polyvalent filmmaking practices in order to navigate effectively between Senegal’s past and present, among various social groups, and across national, international, and global contexts.